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Lead Stories: Friday, December 5, 2008

Negative Splits: Use Them to Perform Better in Your Next Marathon

Posted September 25th, 2006 at 3:25 AM by Jim Fortner

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

race clock.jpg A note from TFS: Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to The Final Sprint. Make sure to also check out “Jim2’s Running Page”, his own personal running and advice site.

Negative splits are the time proven way to best run a marathon. All “experts” and most experienced marathoners that I am aware of recommend targeting negative splits of 2-3%.

The problems with a race plan that is based on positive splits, even small ones, are: (1) faster consumption of glycogen, which means that your body becomes more dependent on fat for fuel earlier in the race; (2) you reach your AT/LT earlier in the race, so a greater portion of the race is spent running anaerobically, i.e., the wall arrives earlier and harder; and (3) it allows for less margin of error in case you miscalculated your ability on race day or any of many other variables bite you in the butt. You wind up running a greater percentage of the race in the less efficient mode, which exacerbates your late race “decline” and can lead to a hard crash.

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