Advice From Australia’s Top Marathoner

He says you have to go out of your comfort zone if you want to succeed.

Jeff Hunt is one of Australia’s best marathoners. What’s one secret behind his success?

Determination.

“One of my main strengths is my determination to just keep going,” he says. At the Delhi Commonwealth games last year, he felt like quitting.  “[With] a couple of kilometers to go, I could almost not move,” he recalls.

Hunt is a proponent of gradualism. “The easiest way is to start running a couple of kilometres here or there and slowly build it up because, if you build it up too fast, you end up getting injured and then you just hate the sport,” he says.

Hunt also suggests beginning runners conduct 20-minute warm downs at the end of a workout. He notes they can be difficult, “because you’re completely stuffed.”

And another of his training suggestions shouldn’t come as a surprise to marathoners: It’s going to be hard. He says “that “being cruel to your body is sometimes what it takes.”

For More: ABC.net