1. Fueling 

During marathon-paced efforts, your muscles run primarily on glycogen—the stored form of carbohydrate. The faster you go, the faster you burn through it, and your stores are limited. When glycogen runs low and your body shifts to burning more fat, energy production slows, and if you push past that point you may bonk, or hit the wall.

This is why gut training has become a real part of marathon prep. Runners consuming 120g of carbohydrate per hour use about 2.6% less oxygen at the same pace compared to those taking in 60g/hour, meaning the same speed feels metabolically cheaper. Because carbohydrates produce energy faster than fat, keeping carb availability high keeps you running more efficiently for longer. 

Unfortunately, 120g of carbs per hour is a lot for your body to process while running hard, and GI distress (nausea, cramps, fullness) is common. Practicing high-carb intake during long runs helps build tolerance, and using gels with blends of glucose and fructose can improve absorption since they use different intestinal transporters and can be processed simultaneously.

There’s a reason pasta is a favourite pre-race dinner! Glycogen is stored in your liver and muscles, and those stores are finite. Carb loading in the 24-48 hours before a race is a well-supported strategy for making sure your glycogen stores are topped up ahead of race day.

Post-run nutrition matters too. Combining 20–40g of high-quality protein with carbohydrates after a hard session supports muscle protein synthesis and helps replenish glycogen more effectively. Canada's fourth-fastest marathoner, Thomas Nobbs, has credited increasing his protein intake with reducing injuries and improving recovery—a reminder that big performance improvements often comes from recovering better, not just training harder.

Want to learn more about how the elites prepare for race day?

We partnered with Thomas Nobbs to create a 5K to half marathon sports nutrition and training guide, and with 4x Canadian Marathon Champion and 2:13 marathoner Rob Watson on our marathon sports nutrition and training guide.

2. Recovery

Fortunately, taking rest days and prioritizing recovery is no longer seen as a weakness, but as part of the training process. That means fueling your workouts properly, incorporating rest or active recovery days, and treating sleep as a non-negotiable.

Sleep is where much of the adaptive work from training actually happens. During deep sleep, your body releases growth hormone, which repairs micro-damages caused by high-impact running and replenishes energy stores. Research in recreational runners has also highlighted sleep's role in injury prevention, and notes that when sleep is restricted, strategic napping for 20–90 minutes can help restore performance and support recovery in the short term.

Beyond sleep, tools like cryotherapy, massage, and anti-inflammatory support like tart cherry juice, can also play a supporting role in recovery between hard sessions. More on building an effective recovery routine here.

3. Data

These days, many of us have wearables on our wrists, and while some metrics are more useful as trend data than real-time feedback—heart rate, sleep tracking, and training load tend to tell you more when you zoom out—having real-time information on your pace during training and racing can help you make better decisions in the moment. 

Pace alerts can act as a quick check on race-day adrenaline in a way that feeling alone often can't. Many modern watches also allow you to input course elevation profiles for micro-pacing adjustments, which is a simple tool for running by effort, not just pace, over varied terrain.

Beyond wearables, lactate threshold testing is becoming increasingly accessible and provides more accurate, personalized training zones than formulas like “220 minus your age.” Knowing where your threshold sits means you're training with the intended stimulus.  

4. Zone 2 Training

Not every run should be the same. Polarized training, where most sessions are at an easy, conversational pace while a smaller percentage are run as true workouts, produces the greatest improvements in VO2max, time to exhaustion, and peak performance compared to threshold training, HIIT alone, or high-volume easy training alone. Easy days should feel easy. Hard days should actually be hard.

Mileage also matters. The pros stack up the miles week after week because high-volume, easy running is what improves fat and glucose utilization and builds the aerobic foundation needed to sustain effort in longer races. The key is that when volume becomes the dominant variable and hard sessions disappear, well-trained athletes tend to plateau. Both volume and intensity have their place.

While most runners just want to run, cross-training can be useful for maintaining aerobic fitness during off-seasons or when injury limits running. However, while cycling can maintain the cardiovascular engine providing that intensity is matched, running-specific tissues and neuromuscular patterns adapt to running stress specifically. This is why athletes ramping up volume rapidly can feel aerobically fine but get injured quickly. Running economy, or how efficiently your body uses energy while running is also something cycling doesn't train.

Running-specific strength training enhances maximum and explosive strength and running economy, and develops muscles, connective tissue, and joint stability that running alone doesn't fully address. Better stability and strength typically translates to improved movement efficiency, reduced injury risk, and more consistent training over time.

5. Shoes

It's hard to look at the 2026 London Marathon podium and not notice the shoes. Both Sawe and Kejelcha ran in the 97g Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, and the startline was a sea of carbon-plated footwear. 

That's unsurprising: carbon-plated running shoes are associated with roughly a 2–3% reduction in metabolic demand, meaning less oxygen consumed and less energy spent at the same pace. At the elite level, that margin is enormous. But the carbon plate itself may not be the primary driver. Adding a carbon plate doesn't guarantee a metabolic benefit and may even increase energetic cost when shoe stiffness exceeds the optimal range, and changing bending stiffness alone doesn't reliably improve running economy. The plate likely functions primarily as structural support for the advanced foam underneath it, meaning the foam technology, and how the two work together, is actually where we’re seeing things change.

There are also some biomechanical considerations worth noting. Higher loading in carbon-plated shoes is associated with greater metatarsal stress, and most of the existing research has been conducted on elite or well-trained runners. Studies on novice runners show the picture looks quite different compared to experienced athletes, which is one reason training in super shoes before your race matters. It gives your calves, Achilles tendons, and metatarsals time to adapt to the different loading patterns before you rely on them for 26.2 miles.

That said, there's a legitimate psychological layer here. How you feel going into a race shapes how you execute it, and confidence and emotional state are real performance variables. If a certain pair of shoes makes you feel more prepared, that's not nothing.