How to Run a Faster Marathon

If you are one of the over 300,000 people who completed a marathon last year, congratulations! The marathon requires planning, commitment and hard work in order to cross the finish line. For some, completing a marathon might have been the apex of your athletic life, and having finished it, maybe you vowed never to do something so crazy again. For others, the race may have inspired you to move on to other even longer events, such as a triathalon or an ultra-marathon.

However, after the initial glory and muscle soreness die down, some of us who complete the marathon feel the urge to do it again-only faster the next time around. Our goal is to beat our local competition, or get below that 4 hour mark that we just missed in our first marathon. For those of you who wish to improve upon your 26.2 mile debut, here are 5 key tips:

1) Increase your weekly mileage: Since the marathon is overwhelmingly aerobic, the best thing you can do is increase the amount of miles you run per week. Running more mileage increases mitochondrial growth, increases capillarization, and gives you more "leg strength," all of which help you run longer and faster. If you are a beginner to novice runner, you should increase your mileage by no more than 10% per week. So, for example, if you run 40 miles per week, the next week run 4 more miles total.
2) Do a longer long run: Most novice runners do relatively brief long runs. And for good reason: they are stressful on the body and increase risk of injury. However, as you become more experienced at running for long periods of time, try to increase the distance of your long run to about 20-22 miles minimum, up to the full marathon distance, if you haven't done so already. Do so by adding 1 mile or so to your weekly long run for 2 to 3 weeks, then cut back on the 3rd or 4th week to recover.
3) Do more MP (marathon pace) work: While it seems intuitive when training for the marathon to do moderate length runs at marathon pace, sometimes novice marathoners focus too much on shorter speedwork, thinking that this will condition them to break the tape faster. While speedwork has its place in training (which I'll address in the next tip), conditioning your body to handle the rigors of a relatively intense pace for long periods of time is what the marathon's all about. Marathon pace work can also help determine whether or not a goal time is realistic. For example, if you have run a 4 hour marathon, and want to cut 15 minutes from your time, you should be able to run a 10 mile MP run at 8:35 per mile pace relatively comfortably. Obviously if you are struggling with completing 10 miles at a certain pace you will not be able to hold it for an additional 16.2, even with competition surrounding you and crowds cheering you on.
4) Do the proper speedwork: Interval training for the marathon helps, but running all out 400 meter repeats obviously doesn't translate to the marathon. You should do mile repeats at a moderate intensity (about a minute faster than goal marathon pace, so 7:35 if aiming for a 3:45 marathon), with half-mile jogging rests. Start with two or three of these repeats and work your way up to five or six.
5) Account for the intangibles: Running a successful marathon is, in some ways, is a lifestyle. You need to get eight or nine hours of sleep a night in order for your body to recover from hard workouts. Also, many novices think that running a marathon gives you license to eat whatever you want, and while all those miles do burn calories, if you feed your body properly you will recover from your hard workouts better and become faster. Everyone knows that runners need carbs, and that's true-aim for around 300 g per day. However, protein is also very important, and sometimes runners can get caught up in eating pasta and potatoes and don't get enough dairy products, nuts, or meat. While doing rigorous training for the marathon-50 miles per week or more-you should aim for 90-110 g of protein per week.

Running a marathon requires more careful planning than shorter distances, and you can't control some factors that will affect your race, such as weather. But if you train not only smarter, but harder, you can improve a great deal from your first marathon experience.