...and when I say this, I mean in the last hour or so before the start.
Last year, I was going to do a 1 mi warm-up (finishing 15 to 20 min before the start) but I felt good so just did 1/2 mi.
I'll be running at Newport, OR this coming Saturday - my quandary is that I actually really do need a warm-up this time around as I've been battling a gluteus medius injury/weakness and if I just start with no warm-up I might not be able to get out of the box at race pace.
5-10 minutes super easy and some dynamic stretching/drills usually works for me. It’s alright to start out a little easy (probably preferred actually) as 42.2 is a looooong way.
I did a 10 minute jog for my warm up. I think it came out to about 1.1 miles, so maybe 9 minute pace. I finished it about 10 minutes before the start. My race pace was 6:50, but as the other poster said, we started a tad slow. Just over 7 for the first few hilly miles.
I would do it the exact same way for my next marathon, so long as I don't have to line up in crowded corals or something.
Warm up for a 'thon? You all are crazy. I ran 2:44 a few years ago (that was my one and only 'thon) which is like 6:15 pace. My first mile was like 6:50, then 6:30, then 6:20. The rest were around 6:00 - 6:10 miles the rest of the way.
Why would anyone other than elites need to warm up?
When I was running marathons in the 2:42-2:52 range I warmed up with no more than a few minutes of easy jogging. I never trained beyond the full marathon distance and I had no confidence that my legs had more than 26.2 miles in them.
Whaaaaat? wrote:
Warm up for a 'thon? You all are crazy. I ran 2:44 a few years ago (that was my one and only 'thon) which is like 6:15 pace. My first mile was like 6:50, then 6:30, then 6:20. The rest were around 6:00 - 6:10 miles the rest of the way.
Why would anyone other than elites need to warm up?
If you had warmed up a few minutes, you could have run 620 first mile, 615 second mile and then 600-610. You would have run one minute faster. That one minute for some people could be the difference of getting into Boston or not.
Just common sense...... wrote:
If you had warmed up a few minutes, you could have run 620 first mile, 615 second mile and then 600-610. You would have run one minute faster. That one minute for some people could be the difference of getting into Boston or not.
Yeah, that's pretty much my thinking - I did sort of a practice start yesterday morning (with no warm-up) and was :40 off pace after the first two miles (:32 + :08) before settling in.
I may end up going with about a quarter-mile warm-up (the bet being I'm not fading badly at the end of the race).
I've never done a warm-up beyond stretching. My first mile tends to be a bit slower but never more than 4-5 seconds per mile and that's mostly on purpose. I'm in the camp that thinks that the little bit of extra energy you'll spend hitting race pace out of the gate, without a warm-up, is eclipsed by the extra energy you use running an extra mile plus. I mean, if you simply can't hit race pace without a warm-up you're doing something wrong.
Obilisk18 wrote:
I've never done a warm-up beyond stretching. My first mile tends to be a bit slower but never more than 4-5 seconds per mile and that's mostly on purpose. I'm in the camp that thinks that the little bit of extra energy you'll spend hitting race pace out of the gate, without a warm-up, is eclipsed by the extra energy you use running an extra mile plus. I mean, if you simply can't hit race pace without a warm-up you're doing something wrong.
Reason I can't hit pace right out of the box is I've got issues with my gluteus medius that take a little bit of running to work out. That said, I'm going to most likely walk the half-mile from my hotel to the start and massage that area as I do so (I've been doing that on my last five runs or so and it seems to help). I'm also going not going to run the last three days before the race as well...
Aside from that, I still think at least a short warm-up run makes a lot of sense anyway. On your training runs, do you just immediately start at race pace instead of easing into it?
I never warmed up before a marathon, mostly just eased through the first few miles. Unless you're running 5 minute pace from the gun, you've got time.