Sean Croon will be a marathon veteran in this weekend’s Scotiabank
Toronto Waterfront Marathon. The New Zealand Native has run eight of the
42 kilometre runs, in addition to completing several triathlons and two
Ironman competitions.
He shares his knowledge by coaching
marathon newbies at the Commerce Course Running Room. With the weekend
race coming up, we asked him for his top tips for participants.
1. Start slow.
“Keep to the pace that you have
trained for. Lots of people go way too fast and break. When you’re at
the starting gates and you’ve got thousands of people pouring out around
you, it’s hard to go the pace that you should be going. Then you get to
about 20 km and you run out of putt.”
2. Don’t forget to hydrate.
How much should you be drinking? “Its
different for different people. You should be looking at 500 to 700 mL
per hour. It depends how much you sweat, how hot the day is and how big
you are.”
3. Wear familiar clothes.
“Don’t go out and buy that fantastic
shirt that you saw and wear it for the first time on race day. You don’t
know if it’s going to rub on you or chafe or you’re going to sweat and
it will be uncomfortable.”
4. Eat the right stuff, often.
“If you are having gels, you probably
want to have one every 30 to 45 minutes. When you’re doing a marathon
your body actually uses up all of the fuel quite quickly. You can’t
store enough in your body to do a (full) marathon.”
5. Wash your face at your last stop.
“When you do your first marathon,
you’ve got all your friends and family waiting. You’ve been out there
for four or five hours there’s a lot of things on your face you might
not want to be showing off to everybody. So your last drink stop, splash
water on your face. You’ll look good as you cross the finish line.”
