You may well start out on your marathon relaxed and ready to take on the world but as the race progresses you are likely to tire and start to tense up.

Running with tension in your muscles is a bad use of energy and each stride will be less effective than it should be.  Consequently you will tire more with every stride.

You need to ensure you can run relaxed and “eat up the miles”.

How can you reduce this tension?

Relax

Start at the very top of your body and hold your head high (point the top of your head to the sky and look to the horizon) but make sure your shoulders are relaxed and continue this relaxation through your arms.

Relax your face

An important thing here is to concentrate on your facial expression.  If you screw your face up with tension this tension will be reflected through your body, you need to keep your face relaxed.

There are two things you need to do here, concentrate on relaxing your face muscles out of the tension induced tight expression and create a little smile.  Believe it or not (and you should try this on your longer training runs) the relaxation of your face muscles will affect your running stride and it too will become more relaxed.

Smile!

In addition, the smile on your face will bring a spring back in to your stride, as to smile you will automatically think of good things and at this stage of your training and race it is probably your visualisation of you crossing the finish line which will lift your spirits and your stride and pace.

 

There's a Lot More Where That Came From…

This article is a condensed snippet taken from Nick Mitchell’s information-packed manual How to Run a Marathon. Your essential manual to enable you to run a successful marathon includes training schedules, advice on everything you can think of and lots you probably haven’t even thought of! You need this manual if you want to cross the marathon finish line with energy to spare, in a personal best finishing time and with a big smile on your face. More details here: VirtualHealthClub.com/marathon