Deciding to run a marathon is impressive. It takes courage to commit to even the concept of wanting to run 26.2 miles, but when you add to that all the training needed it becomes clear this is a big deal. So with this mind, setting yourself the goal of just completing the distance – irrespective of the time it takes – should not be sniffed at. Many runners do this, especially for their first marathon because you never know what could happen on race day. In contrast, other runners have times they would love to beat without being too precise, such as running sub 5 hours or sub 4 hours and so on. And a few others know exactly what time they would like to run.
Over the period of a 4 or 5 month training programme these goals may be revised up or down. If training is going well and you run a particularly good half-marathon in the build up this might encourage you to focus on a different time to reflect a greater than expected progress. It is easy to get carried aware here. Any endurance event is never a precise affair, there are plenty of external variables to affect your race no matter how thorough your planning and preparation.
It is important to reassess your goals and target times, but make sure they are appropriate and reflect a modification of your original ambitions rather a wholesale change of strategy.
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