I have completed my 16KM North East Run Marathon with a great success as my personal timing was 1:36:19 which is 1 hour, 36 minutes and 19 seconds based on the finishing board with running tag number 1450. Why do I say that completing the 16KM marathon is a great success to me as I have never run 16KM before at one shot and I have observed and learned quite a lot of things during the run.

I am going to share with you what I have noticed during the run.

1) Always arrived earlier (about half an hour) to get yourself mentally and physically prepared for the run as you may want to visit the washroom or save keep your belonging. Most important is not to miss the warm up exercises before the run as I have noticed some of the runners have leg cramps during the run and have to stop to stretch their legs or some even can’t continue the run due to the cramps.

2) Try to follow your usual own pace and try not to follow other people paces as it will interrupt your whole running momentum. Start the run with your own pace and as you build up your momentum, you can start choosing someone as your target who is about your pace to run with as you will be able to remind yourself to keep moving forward and not slow down yourself due to your mind chatters of asking you to rest.

3) Focus your mind while you are running and observe your mind chatters. There will definitely be times where your mind will tell you to stop running and asking how many more kilometres do I have to run to reach the destination. Always keep postive thoughts and keep on moving forward and tell yourself that you will definitely reach the destination faster if you keep on running. Focus on your run instead of the floor marking or the surroundings as those will distract your running momentum.

Most important of all is keep yourself hydrated before and during the run as water can give us energy to keep on moving forward. One more thing that I noticed after meeting up with my mastermind group one day after the run to review our progress is that I tend to think too much about the small stuff and become paralyse in taking actions to solve a problem. I have read books in this area before and was not awared that I am caught in the analysis paralysis stage. After thinking through it, I realized that I should make use of my running strategy of keep moving forward and stop the mind chatters to take more actions in order to see the results.

Hope this post has bring you some great tips too in your running or even your own personal growth to success.

Cheers
Javier