HOW NOT TO RUN YOUR DEBUT MARATHON. by Ash Khan
Last year I started training for the London Marathon in July and was running around 45miles per week 5 days a week. Everything was going well until December when I caught the Flu and I was worried that I would loose my fitness so I decided to train when I was ill. I guess my body wasn’t strong enough and I injured my Achilles. It took me until March 2003 to recover, therefore missed the Marathon. This year I decided to do less training 3 days a week, totalling 30 miles per week. My main aim was to complete the Marathon and not run a good time.
Training went well and I manage to run 35:21 for 10K and 1hr 17min for Half Marathon, so I felt fairly confident that I could run the Marathon sub 3hrs. However on the day of the race I left my self only 3 minutes before joining start and had to rush through the crowd to get near the front. In the first Mile I had to dodge and weave through the slow runners and ran over 7min mile, so I decided to pickup the pace to make up for the lost time and ended up running the next three miles in sub 6min. Since this part of the race was slightly down hill I felt ok and carried on running at the same pace and completed first Half Marathon 1hr 19min. Considering my best Half Marathon time is 1hr 17min, I realised that I had run too fast for the first half but it was too late, I was already started feeling tired.
When I reached 20 miles I got cramp in my left leg, stopped and stretched and started running. At 22 miles I got cramp in my right leg. After this I could only run at a slow pace to prevent the cramp from returning since I was determined to complete the race.
Lesson’s Learnt:
Get to start at least 15min before.
Wear plasters to protect nipples; Vaseline is not adequate in the wet.
Cut your toe nails to prevent losing one in the race as I did.
Don’t play football on Saturday and pull a muscle the day before the race.
Don’t drink too much water on Saturday; apparently the access water washes all the salts from your body and therefore causes cramps.
Think of 18miles as half-way point in a Marathon and not 13 miles.
Pace your entire race and don’t run at someone else’s pace.
I am pleased that I was firstly able to complete the race considering the last six miles were very painful, but I still managed to achieve my second goal of running sub 3hrs and the official time was 2hr 55min. It hasn’t put me off running the Marathon, instead I am more determined to train harder and use the lessons learnt for next year. I have also inspired some other short distance runners to attempt the London next year which can’t be bad.