Half Marathon Running Techniques : The Stride

When you run a half marathon you want your effort to be efficient.  So when you are training you have to learn how to resist fatigue. One of the best ways to make your run more efficient is my concentrating on your stride.

Here are a few things you can do…

1. When you stand and you begin to lean forward you will find that gravity will start to pull you down. So lean forward you begin to fall then put your left or right foot out to prevent you from falling. You should try maintain this lean, do not attempt to take giant strides when you are running your half marathon. Short baby steps like a little piston is the best way to run.

2. Head position - As you achieve the position mentioned above you should maintain your head in the middle and lean it slightly forward too. Keep your eye focus ahead of you and carry your arms comfortably. Most runner tend to swing their arms across when they run. That is not efficient because it pulls you from one side to the other. You want to get to the point where you drive your right arm forward and your left leg at the same time.

3. Hand Position - You can learn how to position your hands by wearing gloves. As you run you want to be able to see each gloved hand with each arm movement. This will help you master the technique of using your arms to drive forward as you run.

In all this do not forget to breath. This is one of the most important things you should do when you are running.  The form described above is the relaxed natural form for running. Do not try to struggle and get to the end to the finish line. Relax your stride and enjoy the moment.

**See the right side bar for the #1 half marathon training plan, the one I use!
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Half Marathon Training Schedule : Long Runs Vs Short Runs

There are two important runs that should be included in your marathon training. The first one of these is what is called the long run, and this should be done at least once every week to ten days, this all depends on your marathon training schedule. You should run up to 20 miles gradually from about 6 miles in a period of 2 months.

You should always rememmber that it takes about three or four weeks for your body to adopt to stress. So you may want to increase the number of miles you do every 3 weeks and increase by maybe two miles. When you run your long run, you are not required to time it, just go out there and run the full goal distance. The very next day after your long run, it is important that you do some really light jogging to help you recover.

The second type of run that is very important is your marathon pace type of run. This run is when you run a maximum of 8 miles but in marathon pace. Even with this you want to gradually work your way to the ideal length. So you could start at 2 miles and increase that every three weeks overtime. Make sure that you are relaxed while doing this marathon pace run, and also drink water as you run. This is done to emulate the actual marathon running that you will be doing.

Those are the two most important runs that you should incoorporate into your training, all the other runs you do are just easy runs meant for your recovery you should not really be concerned with the number of miles that you run for these recovery runs. You can effectively run three to four miles on each of those recovery days. If you have any other questions you can get more marathon training tips at my website.