MAKE THE LAST SIX MILES THE BEST SIX MILES OF YOUR MARATHON
The last six miles of a marathon is where your personal best times are won and lost. Fraser Clyne suggests some ideas on how to cope better with the tail end of the race.
It’s a bit like the fisherman telling you about the size of the one that got away. When your mates return from a marathon many of them will have a story to tell about how well they were doing until 18, 19, 20 miles, before it all fell apart. “I was on for 2hrs 45min at 20 miles but ended up doing 3hrs….” ……………”if only I had kept it going I would have got a personal best time”…………”if it hadn’t been for the last five miles I would have done really well.” These are all too familiar tales. It’s as if they had forgotten that the marathon is a race of 26 miles 385 yards, not 18, 19, 20 miles or anything else.
I cannot claim to be innocent of these experiences and stories myself. I recall a number of occasions when I was heading for a decent time only for it all to go haywire in the closing stages. At the 1989 Houston marathon, for instance, I went through halfway in 65min 5secs, on schedule for a finishing time of a little over 2hrs 10mins. At 18 miles I was slowing a little, but still maintaining a 2hr 11min pace, but by 23 miles I’d slipped to 2hrs 13min pace and ended up with 2hr 16min 10secs. Those last three miles were among the most painful I experienced. In part this was down to poor pace judgement. I had run too quickly in the opening stages and paid a heavy penalty later on. And this is a common reason for many of us struggling in the latter stages of a marathon. The other reason, however, is due to there being something fundamentally missing from our training plans.
It’s good for marathon runners to adopt a mindset whereby you should aim for your best six miles of running to come in the final six miles of the race, not the first six. It’s easy to train for the first six miles, much harder to prepare for the final six miles. After all, if we are training for a marathon, we will regularly run for six miles or further, but we won’t often, if at all, ever run 26 miles. And we certainly won’t run 26 miles in training at our marathon race pace….otherwise we would be racing! So, those last six miles are always going to be tough because it’s the part of the race we have prepared least well for, and have least experience of doing. It’s a bit of a dilemma. So, how do you prepare your body for something it rarely experiences?
We have to find ways of replicating how it feels over those later stages of the marathon and train our bodies to adapt and cope with that situation. One way is to load certain periods of your training programme with sessions which help you deal with cumulative fatigue. So, you can’t run 26 miles at your race pace in one session, but you can split it up over a few days to get a similar effect. Let’s say you run 40- 50 miles in a week. On occasion you might try running 10 miles on a Friday at your marathon pace, then 16 on Sunday at marathon pace. That’s more than half your weekly mileage over three days. The Friday run will feel quite hard, but should be manageable and will leave you feeling tired, but not exhausted. When you come to run the 16 miles on Sunday you should have recovered sufficiently to be able to again run it at marathon pace, but you will probably still feel a little tired from your Friday run, so the final six miles will seem more like the final six miles of a 26 mile run than the final six miles of a 16 mile run. You may even progress to doing the 10 mile and 16 mile runs on consecutive days. Or, another session I tried occasionally, is to do 13 miles on the Saturday and the same again on the Sunday, both at your marathon pace. However, a word of caution. These types of sessions should form part of a well-structured training plan and you should discuss them with your coach, personal trainer or other helpers and advisors at your running club before deciding when, or indeed if, you should try them. A few runners I have worked with have enjoyed successful results with this type of training.
Another useful habit to get into on your long runs, which again may help you cope better with the later stages of a marathon, is to gradually wind up the pace as you go along. So, if you are running for 16 miles, you might start off by doing the first five or six miles at slower than marathon pace, the middle five miles at, or around marathon pace, before finishing off with four or five miles faster than your marathon pace. Again, this should be a manageable session once you have a good few months of background training under your belt, and it’s one which should help you adapt to handling the closing stages of your marathon, particularly if it comes at the end of a week where your other training sessions have been of moderate intensity.
There’s also an element of psychology in handling those last few punishing miles of the race. You need to mentally go a bit harder and a bit stronger, visualise yourself reaching the finishing line, collecting that hard -earned medal, enjoying the cheers and encouragement of the crowds and the admiration of your waiting friends and family members. Keep reminding yourself why you are doing the race, think of all the hours of training you have put in and reaffirm that you can do this. You can handle it. The distance isn’t going to beat you. Take it one mile at a time if needs be, even one step at a time. Every step is taking you closer and closer to achieving your goal. Think of how great it will feel to complete the challenge and of all the tales you’ll be able to tell and share with others. All of these and more, will motivate you to keep pushing on.
Fraser Clyne is a former international marathon runner with a best time of 2 hours 11 minutes 50 seconds. Five times Scottish marathon champion, he competed in the 1986 Commonwealth Games marathon, finishing 10th.He has competed all over the world in 3K, 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon races. He has run 22 sub-2 hour 20 minute marathons and is a sports journalist.