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Running a Marathon: A Beginners Guide to Preparing Your Body

With marathon season fast approaching, it’s essential to ensure your body is primed for the challenge ahead.

As experts in physiotherapy and sports rehabilitation, we’re here to guide you through the crucial steps of preparing your body for marathon success.

Let’s dive into how you can optimise these areas to reach your peak performance on race day:

Find your ideal training program

First and foremost, it is crucial to embark on your marathon preparation journey by identifying the training plan that aligns most effectively with your individual needs and aspirations. Whether you aim to enhance your endurance, improve your speed, or refine your technique, finding a plan that caters to your unique objectives is essential for maximising your potential.

Be Prepared

Before starting your training make sure you have the right equipment. Being comfortable is really important and investing in sportswear and a pair of running shoes that are the correct fit for your gait is a sure way to make you as comfortable as possible while also reducing the risk of injury.

We offer Gait Analysis by our specialist Podiatrist who can assess your unique gait to determine the perfect running shoes to support your training regime. By identifying any potential imbalances or weaknesses in your gait, we’ll help you mitigate the risk of injury, allowing you to train more effectively and reach your marathon goals. Don’t let discomfort or ill-fitting shoes derail your progress.

In addition to proper gear, maintaining hydration and a balanced diet is crucial to elevate energy levels and ward off demotivation. Consuming a post-run meal can efficiently replenish muscle glycogen, accelerating recovery and enhancing performance.

While exercise may initially lead to discomfort, it’s all part of the journey. To support your progress, keep supportive measures readily available. Consider having over-the-counter painkillers, pain relief gel, and ice packs on hand to alleviate muscle soreness, reduce inflammation, and provide a soothing cooldown for your ligaments. These aids enable quick recovery, keeping you motivated and on track towards your marathon goals.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Like with anything it’s important to practice and run through your methods by starting small and building up your running speed, distance and movement day by day to make sure your body is ready and at its peak performance level preparing you to be in the best possible position for race day.

Switching it up to walk, jog or even rest for that day is important to give your body time to adjust and heal from the activity days previously and build up momentum. This is called interval training and by starting with a moderate run and building up day by day this prepares and gets your body used to activity.

Remember slow and steady wins the race and in this case, you should be the Tortoise and not the Hare. It may seem exciting to get in head on but the last thing you want is an injury before the race even begins. It’s best to take things slow first and figure out what works for your body.

Warm-ups, Stretches & Cool Downs

As the saying goes it’s a marathon, not a sprint (although you should warm up for those too)

Warming up and stretching will help to lower the soreness in your muscles and significantly reduce the chance of injury when your muscles are adequately warmed up, the movements, stretches, and strain you put on them during your workout are less severe.

Cooling down is vital to help control your blood flow. It lets your heart rate and blood pressure slowly recover back to its normal state before exercising.

Take muscle recovery seriously

Last but certainly not least, you should be taking muscle recovery seriously. It takes time for your body to get used to and recover from activity.

A key factor in muscle recovery is rest and massaging those tired muscles to release stress and break down tightness. This helps to regenerate your muscles, making them stronger by preventing the build-up of lactic acid and stimulating the lymph nodes.

Areas to focus on for massaging are usually the glutes, hamstrings, hips and quads. However, it is important to also not neglect your upper body and your back.

The best way to fully massage your muscles is by having a sports massage or deep tissue massage treatment. These treatments focus completely on your ligaments and help to get the blood circulating through the body.

Here at iPersonal Physiotherapy, we offer two types of massage treatments consisting of 1 on 1 therapy provided by our chartered physiotherapists for either 30 minutes or 1 hour dedicated to getting you ready for your next challenge or recovering from the last one.

We can even provide you with a massage ball to use at home which is designed to loosen any of those tight knots and alleviate tension. Applying targeted pressure to trigger points, effectively releases tightness, providing rapid relief from discomfort.

Are you about to enter your first big race or looking for advice in your next challenge? Contact us to see how we can help you on your journey today!

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