If you see that you are not managing to beat your records, you should review some parameters of your training plan and ask yourself the following questions. You may be making a mistake.
All of us popular athletes have felt more than once that we are not able to progress in our marks as we think we should. We train hard, but the marks do not come in the same way. We must have a coach who can design a training that fits our type of runner and our real capabilities, each runner is a world and the training that works for another does not work for me.
Making a proper programming focused on the medium term we will achieve our goals at the finish line when we compete, if not, we will fall again and again in the same mistakes and we will not see the time where we want.
How to know if your plan is working
If we do not hire a coach, it is very difficult to be able to program an efficient routine with which we are able to achieve our goals. In any case and if you see that you are not managing to beat your marks, you should review some parameters of your training plan and ask yourself the following questions if you run marathons:
- Perhaps your training cycles should be longer. An experienced runner can prepare for a marathon with an 8-week specific training; but 16-week cycles are normal.
- Check if your target paces correspond to the number of marathons you have run. The marathon is a very tough event that pushes a runner’s endurance to the limit. In your first three or four marathons, your only goal should be to finish them with a good feeling. Forget about the time and run by sensations, always controlling your pace so as not to enter the fatigue zone and generate lactate before reaching kilometer 30.
- Of all the types of training for a marathon, the most important and the one that should never be skipped is the long run, which should be done once a week. According to the opinion of many experts, a popular runner should not train more than 26 kilometers in his. But it is true that many of these runners need to convince themselves that they can easily reach 30 kilometers in a long run. In any case, we do not recommend going over this number of kilometers and, above all, never do it with two weeks to go before the race.
In addition, if you are having trouble improving your times in 10K or half marathon events, there are a number of clues when we are running that can help us correct our training and be able to improve our records. Here are some of these signs and how to correct them.
Alarm signal 1
‘I am unable to maintain the speed and pace I have been training for’.
Causes: Incorrect training will penalize your performance. Solutions: Good training planning is essential for you to meet your expectations. If you are training for the marathon with marathon-specific training, you cannot expect that in the intermediate 10K preparation races, you will perform as if you had trained only for this distance. In marathon training, you are developing and training the slower twitch muscle fibers, which makes it difficult to effectively engage the faster fibers in your legs. To improve your 10K records, between week -6 and -2, introduce set training. Perform sets of 500, 1000 and 2000 meters.
Alarm signal 2
‘My legs feel heavy and prevent me from running at the desired pace’.
Causes: Almost all of us marathon or half marathon runners have had this feeling at one time or another in the last few kilometers of a race. It is usually because we have run at a higher pace than we should. Solutions: To solve this problem and minimize it in the last kilometers of the race we either lower the pace to be able to reach the end with more strength, or we correct our training to be able to enter the finish line with a wide stride.
What should we correct in training?
Normally a marathon runner gets to the finish line with good lungs. It is usually the legs that fail, and always due to lack of strength. To avoid this problem we should include weights in our training, so that the lower body muscles are stronger and can maintain the effort during the 42 kilometers, as well as introducing long series and runs at a brisk pace, equivalent to that of a half marathon.
