First, some numbers to convince you that I am qualified to write on the topic of poor-quality marathon training:
– I began to commit all of my athletic energies to running in 2021.
– Since then, I have signed up to approximately four full-marathons and a scattering of half-marathons in Colorado.
– Of those race registrations, I have showed up to the starting line of approximately half of them.
– My first marathon, I won. My second, I was recovering from injury and somehow crawled over the line for a top ten finish, but that second-half was not pretty.
– I did not avail of the remaining registrations due to injury. Injuries. Ailments both numerous and diverse in nature.
My point is, I am a prime example of an amateur athlete who has not yet fulfilled their potential as a trail full/half-marathon runner, because the only consistent element of my training to date has been my injury rate. My intention for this article is to offer you my full portfolio of anti-suggestions. What follows is a variety of ways to f**k up your training.
1. Run on injuries
When you feel a twinge on run, stop. Just stop, immediately. Call a friend to pick you up. Walk to the nearest road if you’re on a trail and don’t live in Switzerland where you can avail of the helicopter-taxi. Do your due diligence of paranoid googling to diagnose what it might be or visit your PT. Start your rolling/stretching/exercise routines. Don’t run the next day, or the day after that. When it feels okay, go on a short jog to test it out. If that feels good, go on a slightly longer run the next day. If that feels good, you’re probably in the clear, but pay attention to the twinge point and be ready to step back again if necessary. If you keep running on minor strain, you will quickly turn it into a major strain, and could transform a one week recovery into a 6 month ordeal.
2. Stick to your weekly mileage goal no matter what
It’s not all about the mileage. It’s about finishing the hard workouts at your goal paces, recovering from those by sleeping and eating well, and filling up the rest of your work capacity (but no more than that) with easy (not “easy”, see 4.) miles.
3. Drop the strength & conditioning workouts in favour of more running
You work 08:00 to 18:00, you have obligations, you have friends and family to spend time with. You think you can’t justify spending some of your precious workout time crab walking with resistance bands and counting second after agonising second while you plank. Don’t drop the strength workout, drop the extra run. Try to get two 45 minute sessions in per week, but really, just do whatever you can. If that means 20 calf-raises every other day, that’s better than nothing. To that point, don’t worry about optimising your strength routine. The best routing is the one you do. Choose a few simple exercises that you feel confident you can do without having to refer to an instruction manual every time, choose a weight and number of reps that don’t make you sweat with dread before you even start. Do something routinely to move the muscles and joints that get neglected and abused by running. You can’t do this by running more.
4. Push yourself to run faster whenever you feel good
You’ve been at a desk all day and you have some pent-up energy you need to release. So when it’s time for your recovery run you let loose. Or, you join the local brewery run crew and don’t want to get dropped so you hold the pace of the front group. Or, you’re just a bit too attached to the pace metric on your watch and hate to see a slow number. There are many ways to ruin a perfectly good easy run. If you can’t breathe through your nose the entire time, you’re not doing it right. The purpose of easy runs are to reach your weekly mileage goal with minimal training load. You haven’t done the workout right if it felt hard.
5. When your physio says “do 3×30 reps every second day”, they really mean “do them when you feel like it (read: never)”
I am not a religious person, but I convince myself to have faith in physiotherapy exercise. Start them as soon as the early signs of injury present, and do them consistently. I have experiences a wide variety of tendinitis, and in no case did it resolve while I moaned, groaned, felt sorry for myself and threw all adherence to physiotherapy out of the window. Once you have an injury, physiotherapy is your new training.
6. Finishing hard workouts is simply a mental game
Nope. You need to sleep well the night before. Plan your week to take down time the night before hard workouts. You need to be sufficiently fuelled. Eat a bar pre-workout and bring a bottle of sugar water and a gel with you. You need to have rested sufficiently since your last workout. Be ready for hard workouts, support yourself during hard workouts, and focus on recovery after hard workouts.
7. Choose your goal peak mileage to be an amount that feels just about achievable
Just because you did run 110 miles that one week doesn’t mean you should. Just because you’re feeling good at a higher mileage doesn’t mean you can handle more. Don’t get greedy. Take the number you want to run and reduce it by 75%. You can progress to more miles if and when your body is ready for it. If you overdo it, get injured, and can’t run at all, your overall yearly mileage will be significantly less than it would have been if you had aimed to run less and not injured yourself as a result. Choose a goal peak mileage you are absolutely certain you can run consistently. See Jack Daniels’ training books for information on determining your weekly mileage goals as a function of your peak mileage over the course of your training cycle.
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