How to survive a Marafun, Part 1 - Listen to your body
This is a blog. It is not medical advice. It is a man who has been taking running too seriously or not seriously enough, for over a decade, putting forward some rational and emotional arguments for how best to look after your body when preparing for a marathon (or Marafun, as I hope it’s fun!)
Why?
I love running
I love thinking about running
As a Physiotherapist I meet a lot of people who need help when they are preparing for a marathon
I’m planning to run Manchester Marafun in April 2026
RULE 1 - Listen to your body
Most of us didn’t start running to run a marafun. We just made progress and started to believe we could. I think this is important to remember. What is your origin story? As big exciting goals come into play we can sometimes get excited and risk sacrificing our health in the quest for glory! Of course sometimes injuries just happen but it’s important to listen to your body to prevent overtraining.
I either read it somewhere or was told this or both - “The training plan is a plan, it is not a schedule”
It might say 19 mile run this Saturday. But this Saturday might come around and not be the Saturday for that 19 mile run. As well crafted as your training plan is there are sometimes that you will need to adapt it. The planned mileage/kilometres, duration, reps etc. give us some lovely numbers to strive for but the human body is not a calculator. One time you will punch all these numbers in, turn it upside down and it will say “boobless” (sorry for that joke, but I hope it helps the message). So the point that I am labouring over here is that somedays you might not manage your plan and that is okay! We are not professional athletes life happens (if you are a professional athlete reading this, then “Hi I’m Charles”).
If you can’t manage the prescribed run in your plan on one occasion - this actually sounds like you’re smashing the plan, good work!
If you can’t manage the prescribed run in your plan two to three times - is this a bad week? are you poorly?have you got an injury? It might be good for you to back off!
If you can’t manage the prescribed run in your plan on a regular basis - your training plan might be a bit advanced for where you currently are in life. Not to worry, some people can’t run for a bus. Let’s have a rethink, maybe reframe our goals? Look to see if there are any signs of progress in our training and make that our new focus? If we can’t see any positives maybe it’s time to ask for help? It’s our hobby after all, it would be a shame if it was all doom and gloom.
“But how do I listen to my body Charles? Sure it makes some odd noises when I get out of a low chair but it doesn’t always talk to me… What about no pain, no gain?”
It’s true that running can hurt sometimes. But when pain is a regular theme of running, confidence is shaky, motivation is harder and progress is hard to come by.
There are some things that can help support listening to our body, something other than the subjective “how do I feel today?” Here are a few things I like to think about;
Resting Heart Rate - wear your modern GPS watch 24 hours a day, like a total nerd and it will give you a resting heart rate score. You could also take it manually when you wake up. After a while you will begin to know what your resting heart rate tends is give or take 2-3 beats. If you feel flat, poorly, sore and your resting heart rate is up 10% or more maybe something is up? Resting Heart Rate is a score of how your body is working at rest. If your body is working harder at rest then that is a good indication that you are not recovering. This could be a good time to ease off.
Track but don’t chase weekly volume/mileage - Have you been doing lots more than before? A spike in the workload can tire you out, knowing how much you normally run when you're healthy and whether you’ve gone way over that can be useful. We often find a sweet spot where we feel we are progressing and enjoying our running. Chase too many miles and we might feel a shell of a human, that our responsibilities in life are slipping, that our GPS watch is our only friend and we talk to it!
The 1/3’s rule - 1/3rd of the time you will feel great, 1/3rd of the time you will feel normal and 1/3rd of the time you will feel tired/less good. If how you feel is pretty balanced between these three then your training sounds pretty balanced - challenging/normal/easy. Again it’s not a hard and fast rule. It’s just permission to feel tired sometimes because marathon training is hard. But if every run feels like a slog then listen to that feeling because it sounds more like overtraining than good training.
Currently I’m having to listen to my body because of illness. I haven’t ran for two weeks and would have been building up my mileage to get ready to start marafun training. But by resting when poorly I should recover better and restart training from a better place than if I tried today. Plus the doctor said I shouldn’t. Still how I make this return should make a good blog, so I will see you then.
A New Years Day - failure to launch. Helps to know the tide times if you want to pop across to Exmouth to meet your Coaster’s friends. However it was one lovely view and a good paddle once the tide came in
