Running Articles
From A to Finish!

There are various running articles that discuss different aspects of a marathon. While I do know what it takes to cross the finish line, I believe it’s important to offer up other articles about running from other marathoners. A collaborative effort!

My goal with this page is to provide you with running related articles from other first-time marathoners as well as runners who have crossed the finish line multiple times. There are a lot of journal articles on marathon running and I hope to bring you the very best, including running injury articles, running training articles, cold weather running article, and just your regular general running articles.

Articles on Running – Marathon Tips
Blogger and Zen Master extraordinaire Leo Babauta recaps his second marathon and provides the 10 things he learned from his second marathon. I believe this running article provides great advice for the first-time marathoner.

Here are my favorite tips:

4. Be relaxed and have fun. For most of us, a marathon is an experience, not a race. We’re not racing against the other runners — we’re joining them in a life-changing event. If you go out with the attitude that the marathon should be something to enjoy, you’ll have a much better experience. At one point, running past the choppy ocean waters with the colorful early morning light surrounding us, I said loudly, “What a great time to be alive!” I smiled and cheered on my fellow runners. I had a blast.

9. Have a reason to keep going at the end. In the final 5K, there were many moments when I felt like quitting. I thought how nice it would be to just walk for a while. It was hot, and each mile seemed to take an eternity. But I thought of you guys, I thought of my wife, and my kids (who were there at the end to cheer me on), and my mom and sister who were also there. I thought of how proud I would be to finish strong. I thought of how much training I had put into this, and thought about how I would regret not giving it my all. If I didn’t have good reasons to keep going, I would have stopped.

10. The long run is your marathon training — speed work doesn’t matter (much). My training for this marathon consisted almost entirely of my long runs on Sundays. I also ran during the week, but my mileage wasn’t very high and I did almost no speed work. I did some intervals on the track a few times, but not much. It was almost all the weekly long run, and it turns out that that was enough. Sure, I probably could have run a little faster if I had done more mileage and more speed work, but I don’t think it was necessary. Next time, I will probably do more mileage and start training earlier (I just started in January), but I don’t think I’ll do speed work.

Full article in the running article directory.

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