What Makes the Perfect Marathon Training Schedule?

This year is the one, you've decided to run a marathon and achieve one of your long term goals. You're ready, willing and able, but what do you do next? At this point most people would look for a marathon training schedule. You can download them for free from most running or charity websites and generally they'll give you a bunch of numbers, either distances or times that you need to run for each day.

Marathon Training Schedule

 The biggest problem with this giveaway marathon training schedule is that you'll learn absolutely nothing about running a marathon and this puts you at serious risk of long term injury let alone ever being able to run one. Any marathon training schedule worth reading shouldn't just be a list of times of miles for you to run each week and should include all of the following: -

    * Nutritional advice including menus, snacks and foods that will help boost energy levels allowing you to run further and faster.

    * Upto date marathon training techniques, not simply a list of miles or times to run each day. Modern marathon training techniques have progressed significantly. Overusing the same muscles and joints using outdated training techniques places too much stress on the body.

    * Strategically placed rest days that account for the intensity of the previous days training.

But above all, an effective training schedule should teach you exactly how your body changes from the start of your training right up to race day. This way you'll understand exactly when and how to change you’re training to boost your progress, quickly spot the signs of over training and sidestep debilitating injuries.

If you'd like to run a marathon, you need to understand how your body adapts and changes throughout the course of your training, choose a marathon training schedule that educates, not simply a free sheet of numbers that you've downloaded from a training website. You won't achieve your goal of running a marathon this way.