Committing to run 42 kilometres (or 26.2 miles) isn’t for the faint of heart. Endless days of pounding the pavement while training your body to endure such tough demands can take a massive toll on your body – even more so if you’re running competitively. When you’re putting your body through the rigours, taking care of it as much as possible isn’t a luxury – it’s crucial to preventing injury and fatigue.
Enter Cronometer, the nutrition app that works as hard as you.
Using Cronometer To Train For A Marathon
Cronometer goes beyond the nutrition label; giving you accurate and comprehensive data you can count on to achieve your best results.
How do you harness the power of all that data to get elevated results for your marathon? We interviewed Cronometer staff, Robbie, for all the insider tips and tricks he used to train for his marathon.
Custom Biometrics
Robbie created two custom run biometrics; “Planned Run” and “Run”. At the beginning of the week he lays out a schedule – both for the days and the distances he hopes to accomplish in that week. Then he logs what he actually runs – this helps to determine if he is keeping to his schedule and meeting his goals.
Upgrade to Cronometer Gold to unlock the ability to create Custom Biometrics.
Notes & Snapshots
They say pictures are worth 1,000 words and Robbie agrees this feature adds another dimension to his training. Everyday Robbie trains he photographs the conditions outside; we live in an area with extreme weather patterns and things like 2 fresh feet of snow can hamper results. By noting the conditions Robbie adds additional perspective to his trends.
Sleep Tracking
Rest and recovery are equally as important to your training as physically logging the miles. Adequate sleep plays a huge role in your body’s ability to recover from the onslaught of activity.
Robbie’s activity tracker exports sleep data directly into Cronometer every morning when he wakes up (if you don’t wear a tracker you can enter it manually too!). Over time he can then determine how much rest he needs to perform optimally.
For more information on tracking your sleep with Cronometer, read this blog.
Nutrition Tracking
Cronometer has tools to help you track virtually anything and everything but where we really shine is the quality of our nutrition data. With a huge emphasis on micronutrients (and accurate nutrient profiles!) you can learn the correlation between your energy levels and vitamin and mineral intake.
Are your legs cramping? Being deficient in magnesium could be the culprit. Are you constantly fatigued? Perhaps you need to pay attention to your electrolyte levels. Harness the power of all the data to better learn your body.
Beyond the benefits of micronutrient tracking Robbie is getting back to the basics by simply monitoring his caloric intake. By tracking how many calories he’s burning Robbie is able to eat accordingly. Long run days require more calorie consumption to maintain his weight; shorter run days require less.
Activity Tracking
One of Robbie’s secret weapons is pairing an activity tracker with Cronometer. His Fitbit data automatically syncs with the app and gives him realtime stats on calories burned, sleep and heart rate. By using this tracker he knows exactly how many calories he’s burning which goes hand in hand with tracking his nutrition.
If you want more details about marathon training please visit the Marathon Training Academy – a great resource for runners!
