Winter is Halfway Over — Getting Ready to Train for a Spring Marathon or Half Marathon

Based in Teaneck, New Jersey, Jennifer Heiner served as a retail director at a New Jersey running company, and has been an avid runner who has competed in six marathons. Jennifer Heiner volunteers with the New York Road Runners as well as NYCRUNS and has helped organized numerous group training runs focused on preparing runners for the New York City Marathon, among other races.

The New York City Marathon began 50 years ago, and is the world’s largest marathon. The race is also the main event of the New York Road Runners (NYRR) organization, a premier community running entity. Held each year in November, the event draws more than 50,000 professional and amateur runners from more than 125 countries. The 26.2-mile running route passes through five of New York’s neighborhoods, including Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan. Over 10,000 volunteers and a million spectators watch the marathon’s runners compete from New York’s streets, while millions more watch the event on television. The New York City Marathon is a part of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, a group of major marathons that take place in New York, Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, and Chicago.

Right now, however, with winter coming to a close, runners are ramping up their training for their spring goal races of half and full marathons. The Hospital for Special Surgery, the country’s #1 Orthopedic hospital located in NYC, has put together an article with some basic tips on training for your first big race.

How to Start Training for a Marathon or Half Marathon (hss.edu)

“‘A lot goes into training your body and mind to do a marathon beyond just running,’ says Brett Toresdahl, MD, a sports medicine physician and Research Director for the HSS Primary Sports Medicine Service.

Here, Dr. Toresdahl shares tips for getting your training off on the right foot.

Start moving before your training plan kicks off

Going from zero to 13.1 or 26.2 isn’t impossible, but it’s better to start slowly well in advance of a race to give yourself a head start. “If you don’t have a fitness base before you start training, the odds of you getting to the race injury free are not in your favor,” Dr. Toresdahl says. “You want to start from as healthy as you can be at the start of training, with running a consistent part of your exercise routine.”

If you’re new to running, consider run-walk intervals to ease into longer distances and durations. “Run-walk intervals can be effective to gradually expose your body to the higher impact of running,” Dr. Toresdahl says. “This gives your body a chance to recover a bit and also allows you to maintain better form, rather than running until you can’t anymore. If you’ve reached the point where you can’t go any further and you need to walk, your form has already broken down. That’s when injury can happen.”

Ideally, before you kick off the actual training portion of your planning, you’d be running between three and four times a week, with long run distances ranging between five and seven miles — something comfortable and consistent, Dr. Toresdahl says.”