MARATHON COUNTDOWN

Warming Up

Why do I need to warm-up before I run?

There are two main reasons for a warm-up:

1) To gradually prepare muscles and tendons for the specific stress you are about to apply.

2) To gradually lift the heart rate to the level required.

Warming-up is to avoid injury. Easy jogging followed by stretching floods the working muscles with oxygen-rich blood and raises the body temperature. This makes the body more flexible and allows blood vessels to open up, allowing more oxygen-rich blood to flow into the working muscles. If, on top of this you apply some mild stretching, you increase the range of movement, which will help avoid injury. Light exercise like this also releases synovial fluid from small sacs in your joints, allowing lubrication and even wider range of movement.

Increasing your heart rate is an important part of the warm-up. It promotes heat, which warms-up muscles, and it prepares your aerobic system for delivering large amounts of oxygen to the working muscles. Ever sprint down the road to catch a bus, then sit down gasping for breath or dizzy and wonder, “what is going on, I’m meant to be a super-fit runner?” The gasping breath is because your heart had to instantly try to release oxygen for the demands placed on it. So it sends blood at super-speed to the legs, which leaves you gasping for breath because you can’t get enough oxygen to meet that short term demand and dizzy because the heart has suddenly redirected all the blood flow to your legs.

A warm-up gradually moves the blood to the right places without adversely affecting blood flow anywhere else. This is important at the start of a race, where you suddenly dash off at race pace (often faster than is ideal).

So how do I warm-up?

Generally, the faster you run, the more you need to warm-up. This is because, the faster you run the more your muscles and tendons are stretched to their maximum, and the more stress is put on your aerobic system. Sprinters can spend an hour warming-up with jogging, stretching, more stretching and more warming-up, all for a ten second race! Marathoners on the other hand often don’t do any more than a five-minute jog and a few quick stretches.

For normal runs a warm-up might be five minutes of jogging and then some quick stretches. But for a hard session or for the race, try jogging for five minutes, then stopping for a minute to go through some basic stretches. Calf muscles, hamstrings, back, achilles tendons. Then do another five minutes jogging and a few more quick stretches.