With the end of the summer holidays and the arrival of September the running season begins for many of us: running with heat is not always the best of ideas, and many of us dedicate ourselves in summer to prepare our legs for winter races.
If your main objective for this last quarter of the year is to cross the finish line of your first half marathon (it can be an objective in itself or a preparation to face a longer race, like a marathon), we give you the keys that do not you can ignore your training to arrive in perfect conditions to those first 21 kilometers.
Enter the work of force in your routine
The main sin of many runners is to put aside the work of force and focus only on adding and adding kilometers to their workouts. However, having a good muscle tone in our lower train will undoubtedly be a great help when it comes to covering our first medium distance race.
Two days a week of strength exercises, either in the gym with all the material that we have there, either in our house or outdoors with our own body weight, will make you arrive much safer to the day of the race. In this article we explain how your strength training should be to improve your career.
But do not focus only on your lower train
Yes, you train strength, but you only focus on your lower body, focusing all your attention on the legs and buttocks. This is another of the most common mistakes of runners when it comes to training. And it is necessary to pay attention to our average area and our upper train when training.
The training of the core and the strengthening of all the muscles that make up our center or nucleus will benefit us when it comes to maintaining a good posture during that hour and a half or two hours that we will spend running on the day of the race. Working the muscles of the central area and back is essential to maintain correct posture and avoid possible back and neck pain.
Find a training plan that suits you (and be realistic)
At the beginning, when we start training for a half marathon (or for any race) we are fully charged with energy and ready to give everything 100%. “I’m going to put the batteries and I’m going to train every day of the week!”, We usually think at the beginning. But as time goes by we lose motivation and along the way certain obstacles appear like marathon work days, unexpected meetings, catarrhs that make us train worse, unavoidable appointments with friends …
The important thing in this case is to be realistic from the beginning (“Can I really train five days a week without having a bill in my social, work and family life? Or maybe it would be better to reduce it to three or four?”) and look for a training plan that suits us, not us to the plan.
Keep motivation and eliminate excuses
The road to the half marathon is long, and it is possible that on the way we lose some of the motivation with which we started in this adventure. That’s why it ‘s important to be clear about what motivates us to prepare for this career : is it a personal challenge? Do we do it for a good cause? To generate the habit of doing physical exercise every day? To compete with our friends?
Any motivation is valid as long as it is yours: your goal must be yours and yours alone, not anyone else’s. A good idea is to write what is this motivation on a paper (or use an imgen) and place it somewhere where we see it every day, like the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator door or the exit door of your house. Remembering daily what moves you to run those 21 kilometers will be easier to eliminate the excuses that appear along the way.
If you are considering running your first half marathon this season, good cheer! I assure you that the kilometers you travel will be very worthwhile. They deserved it to me!
About2ZF77
