Coopah How To: Manage ‘Maranoia’ During Marathon Training.

If you have run a marathon before, you may be familiar with the term ‘maranoia’, which is essentially a play on words to explain the feelings you may encounter during your training and on the lead up to race day; anxiety, self doubt, paranoia that something is going to go wrong, especially the closer we get to the main event.

And whilst this may sound scary, I just want to assure you this is completely normal to have all of these feelings. So if you do feel like this, firstly you are not alone, and secondly, there are things you can do to help keep that ‘maranoia’ at bay.

REFRAME YOUR FEELINGS

I remember before my first London Marathon, in the months leading up to the event if anyone even mentioned the word marathon around me, I felt like I was going to be sick. I got butterflies every time I thought about it, and the closer I got to race day, it was all I could really think about and it consumed pretty much every part of my life.

Now I have a few more marathons under my belt, I don’t let it consume me quite as much. But, do I still get nervous? You bet I do. Why? Because I care.

And that is essentially what I want you to remember. You are feeling nervous because it is something you care about. And if we didn’t care, then we probably wouldn’t bother putting ourselves through this.

Maybe its your first marathon, or perhaps you are aiming for a PB (personal best), or have set yourself a big fundraising goal. Whatever your reason for running, the underlying reason for everyone will be because you care about something, and running this marathon is going to help you achieve whatever that may be. So next time you feel nervous, just remind yourself that this is a good thing. It is because you care, it is because you are excited and I also promise you that once you get to that start line, those nerves will turn into adrenaline.

How Coopah Can Help: Sometimes we all just need that extra bit of support and someone to tell us everything is going to be okay. Which is why with Coopah you get 24/7 support from our team of coaches, who are not only on hand to help with any questions you have around the app or your plan, but also there to just support you throughout your training in general too.

Download the app and use the code ‘STARTNOW’ to claim your exclusive 3 month offer.

ONE RUN AT A TIME

Over my years as a both a runner, and a coach, there is one run that seems to cause the most anxiety when marathon training - the long run.

Now I am going to take a guess, when you started your plan, did you skip straight to where your longest run was and then have a mini panic about it? If you are silently nodding along, then again trust me, you are not alone. But I am also here to tell you that you do not need to be worrying about runs you have planned 2, 3, 4, even 6 weeks into the future.

In fact, I want you to take a step back completely and instead just focus on this week, or even better, just the next run on your plan. This is far less overwhelming and allows you to just focus on where you are currently at in that moment, rather than trying to second guess how you are going to feel in another 4 weeks time.

Of course, it can be really useful to be able to see your plan and be able to plan ahead, but I would really just try not to focus on the details of each run until you get there as this is when training can start to feel really overwhelming and scary.

How Coopah Can Help: With Coopah, we allow you to view your plan either day by day, or a weekly view, so you are easily able to see whats coming up, but without feeling overwhelmed and seeing your entire plan in one go - but, if you do want to plan ahead and see whats coming up you can view each week up until event day.

Download the app and use the code ‘STARTNOW’ to claim your exclusive 3 month offer.

DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

I am just going to be blunt. Missing one or even a handful of runs over your training block is not going to have a huge impact on your marathon. There, I said it.

Yes of course, I would always advise you to follow a training plan and stick to it as best you can. But do I expect you to complete every single run and never miss a workout? Absolutely not. And trust me, if you give yourself permission to not be perfect, it can take away so much anxiety and pressure around marathon training.

I have been there. In the past I have been so set on making sure I completed every single run I would make sure that nothing got in the way of my training, and in the end all that happened was I burnt myself out and ended up dreading every single run, which was not fun.

Now, I am pleased to say I have a much better relationship with marathon training - of course there still needs to be some sort of balancing act to fit everything in alongside working full time and being a mum, but I have also become a lot better at just accepting that sometimes I cannot do it all, and I don’t feel guilty if I sometimes need to skip a workout. I also know that realistically missing a handful of runs over 16 weeks, is really not going to make much of a difference.

All we can do is try our best and for 99.9% of us we are not professional athletes, we are juggling marathon training alongside normal life and that can be hard. So although it sounds really simple, just reminding yourself of that can make a huge difference and really help to make marathon training seem that bit less overwhelming.

How Coopah Can Help: Coopah has been designed with flexibility in mind - you are able to move your workouts around so they can fit with your schedule, and if you need to you can even reduce the amount of workouts you have per week if you know you are going to struggle to fit everything in.

Download the app and use the code ‘STARTNOW’ to claim your exclusive 3 month offer.

If you have been finding yourself getting nervous recently, then I hope you have found these tips useful. And as we get closer to event day I am going to be sharing more advice around how you can mentally prepare for the marathon, as you may have realised by now it is as much of a mental challenge as a physical one.

Coach Jordan x