Running the Boston Marathon can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience or an annual rite of passage for some runners who run Boston every year. In either case, it is a special race with a uniquely challenging course, and knowing how to approach the weekend — from the time you land to the time you hit the starting line — will give you the best chance of maximizing your performance.
Here are 10 insights on how to maximize your Boston Marathon performance based on my experiences running the course and coaching thousands of runners to achieve their personal best efforts on the legendary 26.2-mile course.
Boston is a smallish city that can get a bit overwhelming during Boston Marathon weekend, especially the Back Bay area where the race expo, many shakeout runs, brand pop-up stores, and the finish line are. Planning ahead and knowing how you’ll get to your hotel (no matter if you’re driving, arriving by airplane, or arriving by train) is the first detail. Being organized and making it easy on yourself will help you keep you off your feet as much as possible, but it will also reduce stress and anxiety as pre-race nerves begin to vibrate.
Then you’ll want to plan when you’ll be going to the official race expo to get your bib number, organize your pre-race food and on-course nutritional products you need, and then be prepared to spend a lot of time resting. Try to decide when and where you’ll be doing your shakeout runs, where you’ll be eating meals, but avoid excessive walking around all of the shops and events near the finish line.
Most runners do some kind of easy run on one or both of the final days leading up to a marathon, but how you do those runs is up to you. You don’t have to do much, just enough to get your blood flowing a bit, work up a little sweat, shake out the kinks from your travel, and ease your nerves.
As long as you’re not running more frequently than you usually would, a little shakeout run helps people shake the nerves out, loosen the legs, and helps take up some of the time. Part of the problem with waiting for the race is waiting for the race, so doing shakeout runs can help absorb some of that time and your nervous energy. It can be a simple 15- to 30-minute easy jog, and it can include some mobility work or strides. You don’t have to do that, but if that’s what you normally do, then keep it simple.
In Boston, there are a lot of things that can consume your time. Marathon weekend has become a spectacle because there are so many free, brand-sponsored shakeout runs, athlete panels, product releases, and parties held on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before the race. Those can be fun, but don’t let those events sap your energy or detract from your sleep. (Also, you need to be careful about your running and be hypersensitive to not trip on uneven sidewalks or when stepping off a curb the wrong way, especially when you’re running in big groups that some of those shakeout runs attract.)
Remember, a shakeout run is not the race so resist the temptation to prove your fitness and run fast. I always advise just to run easy, then focus on rest, and don’t do much at all.
When you get to Boston, it’s natural to feel a bit of anxiety and pre-race nervousness building in the days before the race. That’s OK, because it shows your respect for the task at hand, but you can quell that by reviewing all that you’ve done to get there. I call it going through your personal ‘awesomeness journal’ in the days before the race. It’s a process of going back through your mind to review all of the stuff that you’re really proud of in your training and preparation for the race.
We have what some people call a “lizard brain,” which is the negative bias that makes us think the worst of everything when nervousness sets in. It’s a survival mechanism that tells us that everything is terrible when we’re facing something really challenging. In the last couple of weeks, you’re training less and the race is coming, you can really drive yourself crazy. So you need to remember all the good stuff and all of the exciting stuff. Even the simple idea of just being grateful that you’re there and able to do something very special can be very rewarding and calming.
As you head into a marathon weekend, your nutrition and hydration strategy should be on autopilot mode. By then, you know what works for you and how you’re going to execute everything from your pre-race meal the night before the race to your pre-race breakfast, to your on-course fueling plan. Obviously you make adjustments based on how you’re feeling, but for the most part, stick with what has worked in training. I would highly advise not trying anything new and to avoid foods that cause GI distress at all costs.
One of the challenges about Boston is that the race starts midday and the time to eat is when you’re on the bus on the way to Hopkinton and in the athlete’s village in the lead-up to your start time. Based on that, you really have to consider having whatever you’re going to eat with you on Monday morning when you board the bus and have some form of mobile hydration with you. (You also want to be prepared to be warm and dry from the time you get on the bus, to however long you’ll be sitting and waiting at the athlete’s village right up to the time you get to the starting line.)
Everyone talks about the challenge of the Newton Hills on the Boston Marathon course, but it’s the severe downhill sections over the first 6 miles (and the rolling downhills for the first 16 miles) that can be just as challenging in the opposite way. You’re on a two-lane road with a lot of people who are also similarly matched to you. You’ve never run a race with so many people that are your same speed, and the challenge is that everybody has been waiting and eager to get out and run fast.
The start is crazy anyway, and with that downhill, I try to preach to my runners to run at goal marathon pace. Running for the first half of Boston is free speed because you can be on pace or slightly faster, but it feels so easy that you could bank time if you let yourself go. You might pick up 5 seconds here, 10 seconds there, but you shouldn’t be trying to bank 10, 20 or 30 seconds per mile. That is a really good way to have a bad Boston Marathon. It’s easy to do because, even if you’re trying to run under control, people are flying by you and you want to go with them because it feels so easy running faster than goal pace.
I really think the best way to approach the Boston course is to be disciplined and run even splits as much as possible. You need to be super careful early on during the downhills mainly because you don’t want to trash your legs. Your legs are the biggest challenge at Boston, because you are running downhill for 16 miles, then you’ve got this big uphill with that first of the Newton Hills, then you’ve got another big downhill after that. But when the fatigued muscles in your legs get disrupted, you deplete your glycogen storage at a greater rate. Some people are really good downhill runners, but most of us are not. And we get lured into it because we don’t realize what it’s going to be like running for an hour and a half or two hours downhill. We never do that, and that puts an entirely different stress on the body.
Ultimately what success in Boston is all about running under control and saving your legs for later. It’s a big mental challenge early in the race to contain yourself and run conservatively without going faster than goal pace. But, that strategy is consistently the way to a great race.
When it comes to on-course fueling in Boston, you’ve got to be consistent, but you should know that you can use the aid stations as a way to run under control. I’m a big fan of carrying as much as you can (gels, chews, tablets, etc.) and being in control of your own destiny out there. More than likely you will have to deal with the traffic jams at aid stations to get your hydration, but that can help keep you from going too fast and destroying your legs if you plan to slow down and be really regimented through the aid stations.
The key to on-course hydration is not about grabbing and gulping part of a cup of fluid, it’s more about carrying it and sipping from it until you’ve finished it. You really want to take your time to take everything in. That’s a hard thing for runners, but the time you will lose later in the race far exceeds any slowdown that you would spend getting through an aid station and taking your time to consume fluid. If you don’t spend that 30 to 45 seconds at an aid station doing it right, you could lose 5 to 10 minutes later in the race. So it is important that you’re pretty disciplined following your fueling strategy, especially early on.
Getting through the infamous Newton Hills — the notorious stretch of four hills between miles 16 and 21 culminating in the famous Heartbreak Hill — as efficiently and effectively as possible is the next significant challenge on the Boston Marathon course.
One of the big challenges of running Boston is that you run rolling downhill for 16 miles, and marathon pace has never felt easier. But then at mile 16, you start to run uphill and that messes with your brain. You’ve just got to change gears — physically as well as mentally — because it’s going to suddenly feel harder than it seems like it should. You won’t know it until you start that slight incline, and that’s when you might go, “Whoa, where are my legs? I don’t have the legs that I wanted to have.” And, if you’re not careful, that can lead to a whole negative spiral that your race is falling apart and you still have 10 miles to go. That’s a tough place to be, so you have to be ready to react mentally and stay positive.
My advice is always to lean into the hills, use your arms, and be aware of your slight change in your gait and your effort. You don’t have to sprint, and you don’t have to suddenly increase your pace. In fact, you’re probably going to slow down a little bit even though you’re putting more effort into it. I just feel like you accept you’re going to lose some time on the Newton Hills and run them as best you can. The main point is that the Newton Hills require a change from holding back from running too fast to engaging and leaning into getting up and over the hills.
After you get over Heartbreak Hill, it’s a good place to take a little breath, shake out your arms, and get your brain focused on finishing as fast as possible. If you’ve got any energy, you can really fly off the top of that hill, recover that nice leg turnover you ran with earlier, and can get back into running goal pace or even faster on some of those downhills before the last climb to the finish.
As you get to the later stages of the race, your mind can start to fatigue so you have to keep focusing on positive goals and super short targets that could be as simple as running strong to the next mile marker, catching up to the runner in front of you, or running fast to the next aid station. You can make those intermediate targets really small so you don’t have pity parties that will drag you down.
I talk about the last 10K of a marathon as the “make yourself proud” section of the race. That’s where you’re going to really be challenged, but you’ve already done it numerous times in training. You’ve had opportunities to be challenged like that, so every time you start to give in mentally or physically, that’s a good time to remind yourself, “I really want to be proud of myself for pushing here.” And that’s particularly true in Boston. You want to have that dream race, so if you keep reminding yourself that you’ve done the work and you can make yourself proud, it can be very helpful.
You can have a lot of really cool moments toward the end of the Boston Marathon course. In the late miles of the race, you wind up running toward the famous Citgo sign for a while, so that’s one thing to key off of and remind yourself what a huge deal finishing Boston is all about. After that, you’ve got a little more work to do when you go down under the Massachusetts Avenue underpass, then there’s a slight incline before the right turn on Hereford Street and the climb up to Boylston Street. And you might feel like those stretches are really hard, so this is where you’ve got to be on your A-game and pull yourself back if you start to get off-track mentally.
You’ve got to have a few mental tricks or mantras so that you can keep going. One of the best things you can do is just smile and be grateful and look up and look around and appreciate the moment you’re in and what you’re about to accomplish. And, if you need a lift, the crowds of people cheering will give you some support if you let them. Try to capture some of that energy and catapult yourself along the homestretch down Boylston Street to the finish line.
The final approach to the Boston Marathon finish line is the time you should start to enjoy and appreciate what you’ve accomplished. Training for the race, running the race, and finishing the race — no matter your pre-race goal or your final time — is a huge accomplishment that you should embrace and celebrate. Whether you’re sprinting hard to snag a new personal best or you’re jogging it in just to keep moving, you’ve done something amazing that required huge physical, mental, and emotional effort and perseverance.
When you cross the finish line, avoid any immediate analysis of your race, and instead focus on getting your finisher’s medal, getting something to drink, and sharing smiles and high-fives with the runners around you. There will be plenty of time to look at your splits, dissect your race, and make assessments, but it will do a disservice to your race and yourself if you’re too critical immediately afterwards. Finishing a marathon is a big deal, not an everyday experience … so enjoy it. We can talk about the details about how it went and why later. Plus, you don’t know what the future holds, so it’s really important to be grateful for the opportunity you just had and be happy with the experience in that moment.
