How To Prepare For A Half Marathon

In this video, I'm going to talk about how to prepare for a half marathon. Now assuming you've done a half marathon before, you don't have to actually run that distance to be able to compete in a half marathon. Generally if you can run ten miles, you can complete the half marathon.

Now, you should be running more and more and more up until about two weeks, maybe ten days before the actual day of the race. After that, you should be tapering off your training, running less and less, not doing nothing at all, but maybe doing like two-mile runs, three-mile runs just to keep your body warm and used to the movement. Other things you need to think about are injuries.

Injuries are the biggest kind of issue for a runner as it's very easy to push yourself too hard and a week before get an injury and it will kind of ruin your day. The day before your race, you want to have an early night, have some food, you're not going to want to eat in the morning. Even if you normally eat breakfast, you'll have the nerves and adrenaline and you won't feel like eating.

Maybe have half a banana if you can stomach it but most people in their first race can't manage anything, so have a big meal at night. Now on the day of the race, usually when the morning starts, it can be quite cold. It's a good idea to warm up the muscle and stretch at the same time.

You can achieve this by doing something called dynamic stretching. Dynamic stretching is very popular amongst athletes but it's not seen that much amongst gym goers. So to stretch the hamstring, rather than doing the static hamstring stretch which could actually be quite dangerous in the cold, you could actually pull something, it's much better to do a dynamic stretch especially like a swing.

Now hold on for balance, slowly, move my leg up and down, you'll notice my leg is quite straight as it comes up. The straighter it is, the more I'm pulling on my hamstring. Now speed up.

Do about 20 or 30 on each side. What this does is warms up the body so my heart rate goes up and it also stretches the back of the leg. It's a much safer way and more appropriate way of stretching just before you start the race.

And that's just a little tip on how to prepare for a half marathon. .