For those of you who are beginning to plan for your fall racing seasons and are looking at various marathon options, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Training Partners
Coordinate with your regular training partners and pick races that will allow you to do most of your training with them. The high volume training that is required to prepare for a marathon can be a grind, so it’s always best to have your running buddies with you. Your chances of race day success will be greatly increased if you’ve got good training partners to keep you accountable and share the training burden with you.
Weather
The later in the fall season that you plan to run your marathon, the greater the chances that you’re going to get favorable weather conditions on race day. There’s nothing more frustrating than training 3-4 months to get ready for a marathon, and then you end up racing on a day when there is no chance to run fast due to warm weather conditions, and that is frequently what happens with September and October marathons. The other advantage to running a late fall race is that you can do your training in somewhat cooler weather conditions than you would if you were preparing for an early season race. A lot of runners get themselves into trouble and dig themselves into very big fatigue holes while doing marathon training in late summer heat and humidity, so it’s a good idea to plan to do your highest volume training in cooler conditions.
Enjoying the Fan Hub? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter to get great content like this straight to your inbox!
Course Selection
Pick a reasonably fast course. If you’re going to go to the trouble of running a marathon, run one on a course that gives you an opportunity to run fast. Racing on “challenging” courses can sound like a good idea, but in actual practice it can be disappointing to not come away from a race with a fast time to show for all of the training that you did in preparation for your race.
