Top 10 – Things you Should Avoid when Running a Marathon

No matter whether your are experienced marathonist or starting as a rookie, a marathon is always a very special event and finally marks the culmination of a months long preparation.

Of course, some excitement and nervousness is very natural and probably pushing either, your body and soul are focussed and ready to give everything and to their full potential.

Thus, it’s even more annoying if you get yourself into trouble in the last phase of your preparation or, even worse, during the run; trouble that could have been avoided had you been more cautious with some tiny but important details. From our own (painful) experience, here are our Top 10 tips of „Things you Should Avoid when Running a Marathon“:

• Rule Number 1: Don’t change your habits – „Never change a winning team“ (or a running system) – surely applies in every sport
• BNWT (brand new with tags) running shoes especially for the marathon  – a classic fail, but to be spotted frequently right after every marathon fair, i.e. at the starting line
• No/Low Carb-diet close to the race – you’ll be weak and tired and damn slow…believe us 🙂
• excessive alcohol consumption the night before the race – a glass of red wine or a Weizenbeer with lots of carb should do for relaxation!
• rich sauces with your dinner dish, such as sauce bearnaise, sauce hollandaise, „thick brown“ roast sauce…all happened already 🙂
• try to catch up „missing“ training kilometers in the last week(s) before the race – it’ll work without them…
• extremely sharp calculated to the start – no stress! Keep cool & relaxed, until it goes off and keep this feeling going
• new gels or other nutrition – see #1 – wrong timing to test! No matter whether the stuff was cheaper at the marathon fair… 🙂
• Squats the week before the run 🙂
• …as an extra-tipp to avoid in any case: NO icecream the day before – „Icecream makes faster!“ (Quote by whomever!)

Have you experienced such trouble and fails as well and have made your learnings? Then please share with us – in the comments below. Cheers 🙂

Image: (c) freeimages.com/Michaela Kobyakov