Run to Win

When a race course is certified by the RRCA or USATF, it’s measured by the shortest route a person can run and remain on the course.

When most people race, they run the most convenient route through the course that they can, which isn’t necessarily the shortest. Ignoring the inherent inaccuracies of handheld GPS devices, you might actually run as far as 27 miles during a marathon as the mile markers come further and further past where your watch tells you it should be.

If you want to run a faster time, it only makes sense that you should try to race along the shortest route possible. The way that you do that is to run the tangents.

What is a tangent?

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I enjoy running marathons, and plan on running at least one in every state. I have picked up a few tips and tricks along the way as I find out what works for me and what does not. This series of articles originally began as some random tips off of the top of my head that I knew my friends would read before their first marathon. Why should they make the same sorts of mistakes that I have, when a little foreknowledge could make it easier for them?

Well, through a random happenstance, the first two articles wound up being 9 bullet points each. I decided to carry that theme through for no particular reason, and so I now have nine articles about getting ready for a marathon that all have a list of nine items. Technically, this round up of all of the articles also has 9 bullet points, since I am listing each one.

The articles are listed below in the order that they were published in. This is not necessarily the best order in terms of what to tackle in a chronological sense, but they are all worth looking at so I left them in their original order.

1. What to bring to the starting line
2. What to pack in your post-race bag
3. What to do the week before your race
4. What to do the morning of your race
5. What to do during your race
6. What to do after your race
7. What to do to stay safe
8. Marathon strategies
9. Choosing a marathon

Last week I wrote about how to prepare for, run, and recover from your marathon. This week I would like to write a few articles that focuses a little more upon decisions that you need to make about your marathon.

One decision that you need to make is what sort of strategy you are going to use to attack your race. Deciding how to run your race will determine how you train for your marathon. There is also the small matter of following your strategy and not adopting a different strategy on race day. You will find that your results will not always be what you expected when you train to run your marathon using one strategy but then change that strategy on race day.

So without further introduction, here are 9 ways to run a marathon:
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You have prepared for your race, you have arrived on the starting line, and now the gun is about to go off. You have prepared yourself to start the race, and now you have to make sure that you have prepared yourself to finish.

Here are the considerations you need to pay attention to during your race:
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There are two weeks remaining before the New York City marathon. My training this year has been really strange. I was on a roll early in the summer, only to be sidetracked by plantar fascitis. I did not manage to get myself back into the shape that I wanted to be in, but I did get myself into the shape that I am usually in at this point in the season. My final month of marathon training has been derailed by a nagging cough that I just can not shake, but I still fully expect to go out and run exactly what I expected at the beginning of the season when the marathon rolls around.

The trick is to not get discouraged, I think. One of my teammates that I ran with this morning is coaching a woman that is running in New York City as well, and like runners she is a bit of a head case. How she feels about her running and level of fitness is directly related to how well her last workout went. You could have the best training runs of your life and then not perform on race day. Similarly, you can have a lot of doubts and not know where you will be and run a personal best. However, if you go into a race thinking that you are ready and with a solid game plan, then you are more often than not going to do better than if you are in a poor mood and have no idea what you are going to accomplish.

Two more weeks until my marathon, and only one more week until the Marine Corps Marathon. Good luck to anybody who is planning to run that race.