Sports psychology for marathon training

With most marathon training programs spanning many months, the training road is a long one as you slowly and steadily increase your fitness for the big day. Making the training journey more achievable is all about breaking it down, as Dr Renee Appaneal, Senior Psychologist at the Australian Institute of Sport explains.

“Breaking it down into short term steps, breaking it down into feasible, realistic small chunks… that way it is more manageable and you get more reinforcement on a regular basis that you’re making good progress. That’s what you need to sustain your effort and motivation – short term wins and reinforcement that you can do it,” Dr Appaneal says.

While a good training program and access to coaching information will already follow the step-by-step strategy, make sure you tackle the distance mentally in the same way so you can be ready for race day.

We caught up with Dr Appaneal at the 2XU X:Level Training Camp, held at the AIS.