Sports On The Blog

After all the training, marathon day is finally here! You look out the window to see what the weather looks like, and check the local temperature. Will you meet your marathon goal? Or will you be struggling into the finish…?

A well thought-out race strategy will help you run the best marathon you can. There are many things that can affect you during this long event. If you have thought about them previously then you will be make the right adjustments during the run and complete a successful marathon.

The main factors that will affect your performance during the race are:

* Your marathon goal
* Your pacing
* Your conditioning and fitness level
* The weather
* The marathon course

Your marathon goal
An over-optimistic target time and race pace is the primary cause of marathoners running into problems such as leg cramps, hitting the wall and running out of energy well before the end of the race.

One of the most important things you can do at the start of the race is take into account the main factors that can affect your performance and modify your target time if necessary. For example if the weather is extreme, especially too hot, you would do well to add 10 – 15 minutes to your goal. I usually add 30 seconds to my pace, which equates to 13 minutes extra.

This is a hard choice to make after all your training, but it’s better to be realistic up front than to ‘crash’ at the 18 mile mark and limp into the finish line.

Your Pacing
It’s usually better to start out at a slower pace than your intended race pace. Don’t expect to run the complete race at exactly the same pace – it just doesn’t happen that way.
“But if I go slower at the beginning” you say, “I’ll never meet my goal”. Wrong! The common belief that you will slow down in the second half is only true because you went out too fast in the first half!

So, if it’s a warm day, or a challenging course, take those first few miles easy (30 seconds to one minute slower than your “intended” pace), and see how things work out.
If the weather is hot, you definitely need to go slower for the first few miles. Your body will adjust to the conditions, and you will be able to gradually pick up the pace.

Your conditioning and fitness level
If you haven’t done enough training then you are probably going to have a tough time, unless you take it really easy. On the other hand if you have done too much hard training you could also get tired long before mile 26. This is difficult to judge at the start of a race, but you should look back over your training anyway. Did you run a 20 miler less than three weeks prior to the marathon for example?

Have you caught a cold recently? I normally monitor my pulse rate on a regular basis during training. If this is elevated on race day, it’s a sign that your body might be fighting an infection. Remember if you are not feeling 100% fit, you should modify your target finish time.

The weather
The weather can have a huge impact on your race. It is most important that you start out slower to compensate for adverse weather until you are used to the conditions. Then you can gradually pick up the pace. If you are running into a headwind, you will be using more energy than normal, and will tire too soon if you keep pushing the pace early on.

The Marathon Course
It helps a lot if you are familiar with the marathon course, either because you have run it before or you have driven it. Many marathons boast of a ‘flat’ course but when you’re at mile 18 even a slight incline can feel like a mountain if you are struggling. If the course is known for having some challenging spots like Heartbreak Hill at Boston, my advice is to ease up before you get there so you have some energy in reserve.

Conclusion
There is a lot more to running the marathon than just completing the 26 miles. This is a long endurance event that can wear down even the best-trained athletes. If you follow the pointers above, you’ll increase your chances of finishing the race without too much difficulty.

Mike Stapenhurst, 2007
Download a Free copy of Mike’s marathon report ‘Marathon Strategies’ Mike is the co-developer of personalized training log books for athletes. You can get a customized running log at Mike’s website Personal Running Logs He publishes a website on marathon training at The Marathon Website.

For us younger folks, Brazil soccer is great because that’s how it’s meant to be…we take that as a natural order of things, having grown up with the Brazilian soccer team’s successes in the World Cups of the 1990s.

But the myth of Brazilian soccer was born a lot earlier, in times when soccer started to become a worldwide “plague” and there are a lot of people who attribute this internalization of soccer to the Brazilian team of the 50s, a team that was lead to success by one of the most preeminent figures in sports, the famous soccer player Pele.

Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pele climbed a steep mountain from living his youth in a poor Brazilian family, to becoming one of the most beloved figures in the modern history of sports. His father was a footballer himself, playing for Fluminense in the Brazilian league and it was only natural that young Pele would follow his father’s footsteps in the game.

He wasn’t always known as Pele though. Rumor has it that this nickname was given to him in primary school, as he kept misspelling the name of one of his favorite players at that time, Vasco Da Gama’s goalkeeper Bile.

His schoolmates gave him this new nickname and mostly made fun of him, so he obviously disliked it; so much that he punched the fellow classmate that coined the nicknamed. However, in time, he gradually became used to it and even started liking it and it wasn’t long before everyone knew the soccer wonderkid as Pele.

Living in poverty, he couldn’t afford soccer equipment, nor a soccer ball. He shined shoes for an extra coin that would help him and his friends stitch up a newspaper-filled sock to use as a football. He formed a team with his neighbors from the Sete de Setembro street and even participated in a youth tournament, where the team earned the nickname “the shoeless ones” because none of the kids could afford to waste their walking shoes (if any) on playing soccer.

A few years later, each member of the team worked hard for the extra money to get a proper pair of shoes and renamed their team to Ameriquinha. Participating in numerous youth tournaments with Ameriquinha, Pele made a name for himself at a tender age for his prowess in front of goal, becoming top scorer in almost all of these tournaments.

At the tender age of 15, he caught the eyes of one of the biggest teams in Brazil, FC Santos, who offered him a contract and by 16 he was already a member of the senior squad. He spent almost his entire career at Santos, since European transfers weren’t that popular back, although the final 2 years of his career were spent at New York Cosmos, before Pele finally hanged his boots.

Pele made his debut in the Brazilian soccer team in the same year he debuted at Santos’ senior squad, when he was just 16 years old. Amazingly, he was taken on to the 1958 World Cup squad, at age 17, becoming the youngest player in the competition. He even scored a crucial goal in the quarterfinals against Wales, a goal which took Brazil past that stage and into the semis.

But Pele was saving the best for the final: meeting Sweden, he scored a magnificent goal, lobbing the ball past a defender and volleying it into the net, eventually winning the final for Brazil. After the match ended, the effort and the joy bundled up and the 17-year old Pele couldn’t take it, passing out on the field and needing medical attention.

As a soccer player, Pele attended 3 more World Cups, between 1962 and 1970, winning the first and latter. He was the first player ever to score in 4 different World Cups and in 1970 he achieved a unique performance that boosted him to the heights of international soccer: he scored 1,000 official goals for club and country.

Although many dispute this record or try to bring it down, saying that soccer wasn’t as defensive or tactical back than as it is today (which is partially true), his merit of being a major stand pole on the international soccer stage between the mid 50s all the way to the late 70s should not be undermined. Named best soccer player in the World and athlete of the 20th century, Pele now acts as an ambassador for soccer and fair play.

Niv Orlian is the author and the owner of a Soccer Fans website that provides information on various topics related to soccer such as famous soccer players. Pele, My Life and the Beautiful Game

Article Source: http://www.totallyawesomearticles.co