Tips for every runner with Olympian and record-holder Catherina McKiernan

Real Health with Karl Henry

It’s the 40th anniversary of the Dublin Marathon and is the biggest one yet. So, if you’re one of the 22,500 runners taking part – or if you’re just into any kind of running – on this week’s Real Health, I wanted to bring you some race tips and advice from one of Ireland’s greatest ever runners, Catherina McKiernan.
Catherina has been an Olympian, European cross-country champion, four-time, World cross-country silver medallist, and is still the national marathon record holder with her victory in Amsterdam in 1998 in a time of 2 hours 22mins and 23 seconds. Who better to give you the tools needed to perform your best?
Incredibly, Catherina didn’t start running competitively until her final year of secondary school when she won the national cross country schools title and then realised she had a talent to go further.
Catherina has lots of great tips from rest, tapering your training, to the importance of relaxing your muscles during the race and visualisation and I’m sure you’ll find plenty in the interview to help improve your running.
“Know what you’re capable of doing,” she tells me. “Stick with the pacers and don’t go off too fast. When you do feel tired, have a plan in place so the mind doesn’t overpower you. Feed it positive thoughts all the time. There will be parts when you’re going to feel tired and accept it when it happens.”
Let me know how you get on if you are running in the Dublin Marathon - I’m @KarlHenryPT on Instagram and Twitter and [e-mail].
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