How to Train for a Marathon – a Beginners guide.

How to Train for a Marathon – a Beginners guide.

Ok, so it’s new year and you decide you want to loose a few pounds ,get fit and train for a marathon. The New Year hangover has gone, you have a new pair of running shoes and are all set to go….all you need is some advice from someone who has been there before…

1. Forget it. Find something less demanding to do, like dodging the traffic on the M40, sword swallowing or building models of American Presidents from matchsticks. Almost anything you can possibly thing of is easier than marathron training.

2. Begin to ignore all of your friends. When the training kicks in you won’t have time for anything aside from running, eating, washing sweaty gym kit and planning the next run so you might as well start now.

3. Learn the talk. Start every conversation with the miles you ran that day, the time you did it and, if possible, how heroic you looked in your lycra. Look disdainfully at non-runners and turn every conversation around to personal bests, carb-loading and the taste of gels.

4. Throw away every cookery book you own. You will be permanently hungry and meal times will be a struggle to throw enough calories down your throat to power the next day’s run. You will eat on quinoa, pasta and chicken breasts.

5. Throw away almost all your clothes in the wardrobe as almost nothing will soon fit you and also because 80% of the time you will be in running gear anyway. Under no circumstances should you purchase clothes half way through the training or the local charity shop will soon become your best friend.

6. Give up work. It’s hard to hold down a full time job when you are running 40 miles a week, plus weights, plus cross-training plus kettle bell workouts. If you don’t give up work become practised in telling anyone that keeping healthy makes you a much more effective worker even though you only come in the office because you stashed a pack of gels in your bottom draw.

7. Choose a training partner you passionately hate. After countless hours out running, early mornings, cold, wet afternoons no matter who you train with will become the devil incarnate so best cut this step out and start to hate your training partner from day one.

If you follow these simple rules I can more or less guarantee that you will soon be out there, running 20 miles, feeling like the world was created for your own, personal enjoyment and feeling fitter, healthier and happier than you ever though possible.