Countdown to marathon day

Race-day success doesn’t happen by chance, so get the details right during the countdown to marathon day and make all that hard training pay off.

With the London Marathon just weeks away, plus lots of European marathons coming up too, now’s the perfect time to start thinking about your final preparations for the big day. It’s time to iron out the details, make final tweaks and rest up before running to marathon glory.

Make sure your kit is fit for purpose

Your long runs make a great test ground for your kit. The last thing you want on race day is to find the stylish gear you’ve picked out isn’t up to the job. An itchy label, uncomfortable bra or tights that chafe can all ruin your hard work, so it’s important to test out your kit well in advance. An 18 or 20 mile run is long enough that you can be confident your choices will perform, but because they’re training runs the pressure is off so it’s not the end of the world if something doesn’t work.

Figure out your fuelling

Long runs are also a great opportunity to nail your race-day fuelling strategy. Nobody wants an upset tummy mid-race so it’s important to practise taking any gels or energy drinks you plan to use well in advance. Testing out different formulas means you can be confident that you’re not going to have an adverse reaction on race day. Likewise, it’s a good idea to play around with your race-day breakfast. You want something that will be kind to your tummy but also provide tons of energy – and taste great!

Taper with discipline

Before you know it the long runs will be done and it’ll be time to taper. It might sound strange, but tapering can be tough. After weeks of running long miles you’d think the rest would be welcome, but for lots of runners tapering can be the hardest part of marathon training. Muscles that were just fine when you were clocking up long miles start to ache, and it’s hard not to feel sluggish when you can’t run off what you’re eating. Plus there’s the temptation to get in a few more miles, especially if you’ve missed runs or spent time injured. Reebok Sports Club’s Henry Howe has a tip for dealing with this: ‘Make a plan and stick to it.’ He explains, ‘Your taper needs to prepare you so you’re as fresh as possible on race day, but so often people start to feel flat – like they’re not doing enough. This is perfectly normal and is to be expected following months of hard work!’

Make your final sessions count

Resting up doesn’t mean you should stop running altogether. ‘The most important sessions during your taper are those where you do a few efforts at race pace,’ says Henry. He suggests warming up for 15 minutes and then performing two 15-minute race-pace efforts with a few minutes’ breather in between, finishing with a cool down. These race-pace intervals are a fantastic confidence booster: ‘As you recover and get sharper, your race pace will feel progressively easier,’ says Henry. And who doesn’t want that?

Get some R’n’R

The taper period is the perfect time to treat yourself, and one of Henry’s top tips is to book yourself in for some R’n’R: ‘A sports massage the week before the race is a nice chance to reward your body,’ he says. ‘These sessions work by temporarily increasing circulation to your muscles to aid waste product clearance, as well as causing some micro trauma to stimulate the body’s inherent healing response. It’s also good to spend an hour with a therapist that has massaged more marathon legs than they care to shake a stick at, as they’ll be able to calm any last-minute nerves.’ If you can’t make it to a massage therapist, try yoga and foam rolling to ease out your muscles before the big day. It’s also important to use this time to get enough sleep and feed your body lots of nourishing food so you’ll have bags of energy to take on those 26.2 miles.