Marathon Race Day Strategy

• Warming Up: Warming up is less important for a marathon. The problem with warming up for the marathon is that it also uses up valuable glycogen stores and one of the most critical elements of your race is to preserve your glycogen stores as much as possible so that you are not forced to burn fat earlier than necessary
  
  A 4-5 minute warm-up should do the trick since your marathon pace should be a pace that feels relatively easy. Begin your warm-up by jogging slowly and picking up the pace slightly every 30 seconds until you are at race pace for the final 30 seconds. Then stretch gently including loosening up your shoulders and neck


• Pacing strategy: The best strategy is to run relatively even pacing. The huge advantage of running a negative or even split is that you will be passing many runners in the late stages of the race who did not run as intelligently as you did and that is a fantastic feeling. Interestingly, every world record from the 1500 meters to the marathon has been set running negative splits—running the first half of the race slightly slower than the second half
  
  A kilometre before the finish line, be it a half or full marathon, there is no reason to hold back. Give it whatever you have left. That doesn't mean you should start sprinting. It means you can begin running at tempo pace. Your sprint should begin when you see the finishing line sign just ahead


• Expectations: Don't ruin your marathon experience by making success dependent on a goal set in stone. It's a long race and anything can happen and it often does, even to the professional runners who do nothing but prepare for two marathons per year. It is important to have a goal but it is ludicrous to judge yourself a failure if, on a particular day, you were not at the top of your game and ran a few minutes slower