Why your second marathon may be harder than your first.

You did it! First marathon completed! Maybe you’re happy with how you did, maybe not. But now you’re planning the next race. 

You think this time around it will be easier. The hard truth is that your second marathon can be a lot more difficult than your first.

Why is that?

First, you know what they say “Ignorance is Bliss”. The first marathon you run is an entirely new experience and you didn’t really know what to expect. Each long run may have been the furthest you had ever run, you learned how to fuel for a long race (hopefully), and part of the journey was just figuring out if you could do it.

There’s more pressure. Now you know you can do it and you definitely got a PR on your first marathon. So how do you improve on that? Likely, you’re trying to run your second even faster. 

That means identifying the areas for improvement. From the training perspective, do you need to tailor your training differently? Maybe adding more miles or additional speedwork. Perhaps it’s the fueling both during your training and the actual race that could give you a boost. It could even be all the other things surrounding training like rest and recovery, strength training, or mobility. It’s possible you don’t even know what to work on or how to get faster.

Your second marathon can be scary because you’re pushing yourself in a different way, asking more things of your body and mind, and continuing to build expectations. It’s starting more and more to push the limits to find all of the things that you are truly capable of.

And you’ve only done it once before. If you catch the marathon bug and sign up for more races in the future, you get more experience under your belt, You get more comfortable assessing your abilities; knowing your paces; understanding the process. But for the second one, it’s still somewhat uncharted territory; The space between total ignorance and real knowledge, but with the desire to push harder.

THAT is why the second marathon you run is so challenging.  

And I warn you, after that second race, you may be completely hooked.