There is something magical about the marathon. I was 22 when I ran my first one – not London, but Luton. My mum drove me to the race, and we passed a sign on the motorway that read ‘Luton 26’. Those 26 miles (42K) seemed to take an age to cover in the car, filling me with fear and doubt about my abilities to run so far. But I did. And, like many runners who believe we are only ever going to do ‘one’, I found myself in the hours, days and weeks afterwards wondering: should I have done X in training? Would Y have made me run quicker? If I’d done Z, maybe I wouldn’t have hit the wall... Before I knew it, I was signing up to another 26.2, and another. You might have experienced something similar.
While approaches may vary, there’s little doubt there’s more to running a good marathon than
