Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Arun Gupta is a technology enthusiast, a passionate runner, and a community guy who works for Sun Microsystems.

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Wednesday August 16, 2006

Marathon training: More mental than physical

Practicing for a marathon, to me, is a more mental exercise than physical. I think physically most of us are capable of completing a marathon but training requires motivation, discipline and perseverance. All of these come are mental rather than physical aspects of human psychology. And of these motivation is the MOST important since others follow.

I love running and have been self motivated so far. I found a running buddy few weeks ago but that's only 2-3 days a week. Mostly it's me running alone on rest of the days and all my long runs, for instance, are alone only. I have approx 8 more weeks of intense training and then the taper down starts. Having run slightly over 400 miles in past 11 weeks, I'm hoping to stay motivated all through out.

This article (Getting the MOST Out of Training) accurately summarizes the importance of mental training for a race. Here is a great quote from the article:

"Far too often runners look at mental and physical training separately and this disconnect is usually most evident during training."

Here are some other articles on staying motivated through the training:

Marathon Motivation (poem)
25 reasons to run
Running motivation tips and techniques - Great quote from the article "Seek motivation first and the desire to run, and run successfully, will surely follow."
10 Guaranteed Ways To Burst With Motivation
Psychology - 4Cs (Concentration, Confidence, Control and Commitment)

George W Bush is the only president to have run a marathon. He completed 1993 Houston Marathon in 3:44:52 for a pace of about 8:36/mile. Now that's another source of inspiration for some

Technorati: Marathon Training Running Motivation

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running | Comments[1]

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Comments:

Hi Arun, Like you I train mostly on my own but I too recently found a running buddy and it has made a major difference to my training. I do most of my shorter runs by myself and the long runs with my buddy and this suits me just fine. It would be too much hassle with our different jobs to meet up midweek but we meet regular as clockwork at 9am every Saturday and hit the roads! Its the best thing that happened to my running. We are both running in the Stockholm Marathon in June 2007 and aiming for 3 hr 30 min. I'm 49 so this is a good time for an old geezer like me. I've started keeping a blog of my training and nutrition and you can take a look at my comments so far at the following URL: http://marathontrainingandnutrition.blogspot.com/ Keep going buddy, Billy

Posted by William Milton on December 02, 2006 at 03:57 AM PST #