How To Warm Up For A Marathon

Audio Transcript

Tina Muir: Today, we have a question from Roger, who would like to know about warming up for a marathon. Roger said that for most races, he does between 15 to 20 minutes warm up, followed by stretching and strides for about 45 minutes before the start. He knows that with the corrals and not wanting to burn glycogen, it probably isn’t a good idea so he asks, “What should I do?”

Your warm up, Roger, sounds pretty similar to what I would do in other races, so I think my advice will help you.

A marathon, as we know, is pretty long. The warm up isn’t needed as much as it is with the other races, because you want to conserve your energy and you’ve got another 26 miles to warm your body up, especially as you’re running the same speed that you are with other races; you can kind of work into it. I would recommend doing a very slow jog for around 10 minutes if you can.

The start areas are very congested and it can be very difficult to get any jog in there because there are so many people. You can try and do that if there is room, even if it’s just 100 meters. I had to do that at a London marathon. There is a tiny little area that I could warm up in, but I just went back and forth, back and forth. You can try to do so for about 10 minutes, but it should be the slowest run you’ve done of the entire training segment.

For me, as a sub six minute per mile pace I run for my marathon, on that day I will run about one mile in that 10 minutes. I hope that tells you how much slower I’m talking about here. You want to keep it really slow. I’m not saying a 10 minute pace is slow. I’m saying compared to your usual pace, you want to significantly slow down.

You want to make sure that you wear a lot of layers. If it’s cold and you do that 10 minutes, you should just about be getting warm because you have packed on a lot of layers. You want to keep those comfortable warm clothes on for as long as you possibly can.

For anyone listening, I recommend you wear a lot of throwaway clothes on the race day, if you are racing a marathon. That will keep you feeling nice and warm. Obviously, you don’t want to have 50 layers on, that you have to remove at the start line. In this case, you want to have a few thicker layers to keep you nice and warm, that you can dispose off.

You want to keep them on until the last possible minute, and throw them off right on the line or even a few minutes into the race if it’s really congested.

When it comes to stretching, you want to be very careful with this because you’re not going to be as warmed up as you usually are for other races. Maybe some gentle stretching, but be very careful. If anything feels tight, don’t bounce it or overdo it.

When you talked about strides, I recommend not more than two to three, because you’re not going to be using that top end speed that strides are. If they help you to feel confident and comfortable, you can do a few at the start, but obviously, that will depend on the congestion and how many people are around.

Let’s talk about timing. I would say go a little bit closer to the start time than you usually would; around 40 minutes. For most races, you have to get to that starting line area a lot earlier because of the congestion in the corral.

If you arrive around 40 minutes before, that will give you plenty of time to do that warm up, as well as go to the bathroom. That will also give you time to get your final clothing changes and everything else, like changing your shoes or whatever you need to do and then get on the start line.

Don’t panic if you get to the start line a bit earlier, and you’re kind of standing there. Your body will know what it’s doing once it gets going.

If you’re not comfortable with a 10-minute jog, and you don’t have any desire to do a jog before the marathon, make sure you are walking around, keeping your legs loose and keeping those warm layers on for as long as possible.

You can use those first few miles as your warm up and that is absolutely fine, but if you are going to do that, make sure that you go nice and slow in those first few miles.

You don’t want to jump straight to your race pace if you haven’t done any kind of running before that. You want to go a little bit slower and intend on making up that extra time for those first few miles in the last miles. If you don’t want to warm up, that is absolutely fine. Keep moving around and be a little more conservative at the start.

I hope that answered your question Roger. Thank you so much for everyone listening today. If you have your questions, make sure you go to RunnersConnect.net/daily and you can ask your questions and hopefully if I get it, I look forward to answering it for you. Thanks so much and have a great week.