The marathon season is here, are you ready for it? A marathon is a grand festival for runners, with an unparalleled sense of joy, belonging, and ceremony.

The race is joyful but also serious. When the starting gun fires and the timer starts, every step you take and every drop of sweat you shed will be recorded in your race results. Whether you are a fun runner or a serious runner, when we step onto the track, we all aim to perform our best.

A marathon is not about competing with others, but with yourself—aiming to beat your previous best or at least avoid your worst performance.So, how can you achieve a satisfactory race result?

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What conditions are necessary to achieve good results?

1.ScientificDaily Training

Running training is a daily task for runners. Undoubtedly, the key to improving a long-distance runner's ability lies in regular training. If the race is like a final exam, then runners have two semesters of training each year—summer and winter training. The upcoming autumn races are a major test of the summer training results.

If you have formulated a suitable training plan during the hot days and diligently executed each training session, your overall physical performance will gradually improve, equipping you with the strength to run faster and farther, and achieve better results.

2.ProperPre-race Adjustment

If daily training is about building strength, then the pre-race adjustment period is about fine-tuning various aspects like training volume and nutrition intake to ensure you are in peak physical and mental condition for the race.

3.Good RacePerformance

Achieving a good race result is influenced by multiple factors. Facing potential issues like weather, stomach problems, hills, blisters, and cramps, we can prepare by having a plan, staying calm, executing our pacing strategy carefully, and adapting to our physical sensations during the race to fully showcase our abilities.

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So, how should you adjust yourself before the race?

1. Reduce training volume to recover physical condition

Before the race, everything we do is to minimize stress and fatigue, allowing our physical condition to recover to its best, making it possible to achieve a personal best.To improve running ability, we need to train, but training also causes fatigue. The more we train, the more fatigue we accumulate.

Of course, the improvement in running ability is achieved through recovery from fatigue, known as 'supercompensation.' During the training period, due to high training volume, fatigue levels are usually high, and physical condition may not immediately improve significantly.

This is why we need a pre-race adjustment period. In the two to three weeks before the race, we need to reduce training volume and fatigue levels to allow our physical condition to recover to its best.The basic principles of reducing training volume are:The more you train, the more you reduce; reduce training volume but not intensity; don't stop running, maintain the feeling.

2. Maintain muscle and tendon vitality

In daily training, muscle strength training also follows the principle of supercompensation. Therefore, for systematically trained runners, the above reduction principles apply to both running and strength training.

In the pre-race training period, your strength training should focus on muscle-specific endurance. During the adjustment period, reduce the number of sets but maintain intensity. In the race week, switch to elastic training like light jump rope, short sprints, and on-the-spot jumps to maintain muscle tone and tendon elasticity.

If strength training intensity is too high during the adjustment period, it will cause fatigue. But if you stop strength training completely, muscle tone will drop significantly, making you feel weak during the race, which is not ideal.

3. Supplement nutrition and adapt to race fueling

Many studies show that glycogen levels in the body affect endurance performance. Most marathon runners now understand the importance of carb-loading before the race to ensure sufficient energy supply.

There was once a diet method in the running community called 'glycogen supercompensation': eating mostly fats and proteins for the first three days, then mostly carbs for the next three days.

However, new research suggests that extreme methods are unnecessary. During the adjustment period, with reduced training volume and adequate sleep, simply increasing the proportion of carbs in each meal, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and starches, is sufficient to ensure glycogen storage.

During the adjustment period, you need to adapt to pre-race, race day breakfast, and race fueling. This means you should regularly plan your pre-run meals during training to find easily digestible foods that suit you; during long runs on weekends, practice using energy gels according to your race strategy. This way, you won't worry about what to eat or how to fuel during the race.

4. Adjust mindset and boost race confidence

The race tests not only your physical level but also your mindset. Many people don't realize that adjusting your mindset during the pre-race period is crucial.

We need to maintain respect for the race and have a realistic understanding of our running ability, avoiding blind overconfidence that leads to risky pacing strategies. Always remind yourself of the 'safety first' principle.

We also need to have confidence in ourselves, believing that diligent training will pay off. Many excellent runners around me are strict with themselves during training but become anxious about 'reducing volume' during the adjustment period, fearing it will affect their running ability.

At this time, we can look back at our training logs and remind ourselves that hard work pays off. The marathon rewards those who train earnestly. With a firm belief, you can perform better on race day.

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The worst thing before a marathon is cramming last minute

Since all progress comes from daily sweat, there is no possibility of 'extraordinary performance' in a marathon, nor any chance for last-minute cramming.Understanding this is crucial. Many people make the mistake of increasing training volume before the race, hoping that 2-3 weeks of 'serious cramming' will help them perform better.

Does this work? It might have some positive effects (not necessarily physical, maybe just psychological), but the risks outweigh the benefits—irregular overtraining only increases fatigue.

In fact, whether you trained hard or slacked off, your ability and potential race performance are already determined by the end of the training period.

Running more in the last two to three weeks will only add fatigue and won't improve your running ability. Physical, strength, and technical improvements can't be achieved in the short term; they require time to accumulate. Otherwise, everyone would just run before the race, and there would be no need for daily training.

The urgent desire to perform well is understandable, but it's better to channel this urgency into the next training cycle, aiming for better results through systematic training rather than last-minute efforts and desperate racing.

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Conclusion

In summary, a good pre-race adjustment period will leave you feeling energetic, with elastic muscles and tendons, full of energy, and confident. With such a state, you can handle any issues during the race with ease and perform your best.

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