The marathon requires a special blend of aerobic capacity, mental tenacity, and muscular endurance to carry you 26.2 miles. At over 42k, it’s the longest a race can be without being considered an ultra marathon.
Read an article below to learn more about how you can successfully complete a marathon!
Tweet It’s true: last Sunday, I won the Potomac River Run Marathon in 2:50:27. Before you think that this is super impressive, know that it was a small local race capped at a mere 350 runners. So I didn’t exactly win a major race… Now, race reports can be valuable when they illustrate some key [...]
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Tweet Today, I want to ask for YOUR coaching expertise. Michael emailed me recently about his race at the 2013 Houston Marathon. He is a 57 year old runner and triathlete with a previous PR of 3:55. I wrote him a custom training plan, which resulted in him getting a 12 minute PR without any [...]
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Tweet A lot of runners find it tough to design a well-rounded training plan. Maybe they don’t know enough, so their running becomes boring. Or maybe they have too much information and succumb to the Try Everything, Try Nothing Approach to running. It’s easy to find a training plan and some strength workouts online. But are they [...]
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Tweet Isn’t it funny that some people KNOW what to do with their running – when they’re actually totally wrong? Some runners think sprinting 200′s is a great workout for the marathon. [More bad marathon advice] Or that they got runner’s knee because of cutting their warm-up routine short. There’s a lot of misconceptions in [...]
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Tweet The 2008 New York City Marathon was one of the worst experiences of my life. I was cocky even though my training was sub-par. I under-fueled and ran several tough miles too fast (fine… WAY too fast). After the 20 mile mark, I bonked hard. Every step sent excruciating shock waves of pain through [...]
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Tweet You can imagine the hundreds of emails I get every month from crazy runners. Just recently I saw this gem and had to share: Horrible idea –> “I’m not going to fuel during the marathon and hope adrenaline will get me to the finish line.” — Jason Fitzgerald (@JasonFitz1) November 4, 2012 Sigh… But [...]
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Tweet Imagine that you’re in great shape. You’re really fit. So you want to tackle a marathon. You register and line up on race day… only to hit the wall at mile 20, walk a few miles, and finish much slower than you thought. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? That’s exactly what happened to Rob. After spending 25 [...]
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Tweet A few short times per year, Run Your BQ accepts new runners to join the team and transform their marathon training. Are you going to join us this time? RYBQ is now open - let me tell you about the improved and massively expanded site. We partnered with a professional developer to completely remake the community. The [...]
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Tweet Long runs! Tempo workouts! Mileage! We know these things are instrumental in running a fast marathon – but what else is important? A marathon attempt is daunting: at 26.2 miles, it challenges your body in ways that shorter races can’t even touch. Fueling becomes critical to – you can’t store enough in your body to [...]
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Tweet On September 15 at 8am, I stood on the starting line of an 8k road race in historic West Potomac Park. To my right, planes took off from Reagan National Airport and flew over the Potomac River. To my left, tourists walked to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. 16 minutes later, I was suffering. [...]
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Jason Fitzgerald is a 2:39 marathoner, USATF-certified coach, and author of 101 Simple Ways to be a Better Runner.
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