It’s the end of January and for many runners they have begun
or are beginning marathon training for the major Spring marathons; whether it
be in the UK, Europe or the US. Whether it’s your first marathon, you are still
chasing that golden personal best or fundraising for a great cause; marathon
training can be tough. From the initial euphoria of clocking up the mileage, it
can quickly become a very tiring enterprise. What seemed like a relatively
easy plan to follow can become a slog and the long weekend runs can start to
seem like out of body experiences, where low-blood sugar and overall tiredness
start to play tricks on the mind.
This isn’t to seem negative about marathon training, far
from it, I enjoy the consistency and purpose to one overall cause. I may have
gone a bit over the top this year by avoiding cross-country to not get injured
for the London Marathon, but there is something I find so amazing about how
all-consuming marathon training is. That’s not to say that training for 10k or
half marathon races is easy, but there just seems to be something about trying
to run as fast as you possibly can over 26.2 miles that leads us on an endless
path to see how far we can really push ourselves.
