First marathon... maybe

[Celt]

Has any one got any advice for running the london marathon which will be the first run I will have done. I play football 3 times a week, twice a week 5's and once 11's. So im not massively unfit. Although could do with losing abit of weight. Sort of why im doing it. And finished college and no job at the minute so plenty of time to practice.

I found this http://www.kilomathon.com/index.php which im guessing will be a good place to start.

cheers

Edited by Celt on Thursday 25th June 14:32

[ewenm]

Have a browse through The Running Thread.

The main problem you'll have is endurance - football is excellent for short sharp efforts but not so good at getting you used to the continuous effort of endurance running.

My usual advice is to go along to your local athletics club and chat to them - training in groups is much easier than trying to do it all on your own. You can find your local club from the UK Athletics website.

[Gargamel]

Good Luck, I ran it this year, although I have been over the distance before

go to www.runnersworld.co.uk and look through the marathon section, it is a veritable mine of information.

But basically, start slowly at the end of the summer, by christmas you should be able to comfortably run for 1 hour or around 10-11k in one session.

Aim to run three times a week, one fast session - about 3 miles, one marathon pace run of about 6 miles and one Long SLOW run of about 10miles
Then after christmas keep running, adding no more than 10% mileage each week and taking each forth week as a step back (cut your mileage by a third) before starting again from the week before.

Practise eating and drinking on your long slow run, so that you know how your body will react to iso drinks or energy snacks on the day.