Luke Humphrey Running

Being in the right plan can make all the difference in the world. If you are familiar with the plans in the books, then you know that there can be a big difference between what others use as a beginner plan and what the HMM beginner plan looks like. These differences has led to the creation of a number of different plans based on the original Beginner and Advanced plans. These plans have helped filled the gaps to meet more people where they are at in their marathon experience. All of these plans have led to a common question, "How do I know what plan I should be in?" I explore those plans in this podcast. I have also attached a presentation so you can have a visual.

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Today's question comes from Phil, from our LHR Community on Facebook. Right now, he's not really following a plan and is curious to how fast he should be running since he doesn't have the structure guiding him right now. Here are my thoughts regarding that and a couple of options for you.

 

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Yes, it is an age-old argument and the two sides will debate until they are hoarse. This argument is of course, do runners need supplements? If they don’t, how come? If so, why and which ones? It’s certainly a rabbit hole to go down and I have been on both sides of the argument. I certainly understand that we should strive for real food and am not necessarily a fan of getting food from a pill/ However, on the other side of the coin, runners are beating their body up with training and if we don’t get perfect nutrition in every day, then maybe a little help is warranted. Certainly, when you look at the definition of supplement, which is, “something that completes or enhances something else when added to it,” then it makes sense why someone would think that supplementation makes sense.

The main argument I see against supplementation is the idea that we should strive to eat a well-balanced diet and that will cover our needs. It’s interesting because I have heard dieticians (who are usually working with sedentary or recreationally active people) loathe the idea of any type of supplement. Then I have seen nutritionists who work with hard training athletes say that if you want to succeed, you have to be on some sort of supplement. For a long time I was in the first camp but have gradually shifted my position to the latter. Let me explain why.

The 3 E’s:

Essential Nutrition for Survival and Basic Health:

This is what is Recommended Dietary Allowances are built off, but these are government based standards and not meant for achieving optimal health. These standards are based on the average nutrient intake of an entire population. These guidelines make the assumption that everyone is already eating a healthy diet and that all nutritional needs are the same. In essence, it’s the bare minimum.

Essential Nutrition for Optimal Health:

This is the next step and means higher amounts of vitamins and minerals. It also means the inclusion of “non-essential” nutrients (but not unimportant). Things like antioxidants are required in higher doses to fight off our environmental stresses and help us recover. The quantities of these are needed in higher doses than the RDA (or DRI) states for basic survival.

Essential Nutrition for Athletic Performance:

The final level, where athletes are required to perform at a peak level, recover from training and outside stress, and maintain superior health. So, while I may not expect a person training for their first 5k in this category, I certainly would put someone who’s training consistently year-round for high-level competitions.

Some examples

Vitamin

Men DRI

Women DRI

Tolerable UL

PDI

Vitamin C

90 mg

75 mg

2000 mg

500-3000 mg

Vitamin D

15 mcg-600 IU

15 mcg-600 IU

100-mcg-4000 IU

400-4000 IU

B6

1.7 mg

1.5 mg

100 mg

10-100 mg

Folate

400 mcg

400 mcg

1000 mcg

400-1200 mcg

B12

2.4 mcg

2.4 mcg

Not Established

12-200 mcg

I chose these because they are common vitamins that are important to runners. As you can see, there is a big discrepancy between the essential amount needed for survival and what may be required for optimal performance. The same is true for minerals.

Mineral

Men DRI

Women DRI

Tolerable UL

PDI

Calcium

1300 mg

1300 mg

2500 mg

1200-2600 mg

Magnesium

420 mg

320 mg

350 mg

400-800 mg

Phosphorus

1250 mg

1250 mg

4000 mg

1k-4k mg

Selenium

55 mcg

55 mcg

400 mcg

100-400 mcg

Zinc

11 mg

8 mg

40 mg

15-60 mg

 

The question becomes then if an athlete is training hard and eating the appropriate amount of calories, are they getting the nutrients in the amounts needed for the performance? I think that if things are perfect, then maybe. However, the vast majority of people I work with are not living the perfect life (who is?) and it’s tough to say what they are getting. Plus, we know that individuals vary. We also know that the nutrient food can vary widely, and we know that nutrient content in food has decreased over the decades- check out this piece from the Scientific American. 

So, while I think supplementation gets a bad rap, I don’t think just popping a horse pill multivitamin is the way to go, either. I think that you have to know if you are low in anything and you need to know what’s in the diet you are eating.

Expensive, but worth it

Unfortunately, the first prong of this can be expensive, but it might be money well spent. If you have a solid insurance plan, you may be able to get out of this cheaper.

It wouldn’t hurt to get some blood work done.

A vitamin, mineral, testosterone (for men), and iron/ferritin tests are done. It’s not going to be cheap though (if paying out of pocket). There’s some great athlete oriented at-home tests like Inside Tracker. I also looked at AnyLabTestNow.com, simply because there is one by my office. You don’t need a prescription and you just make an appointment. However, in both circumstances, to get vitamin and mineral tests done, you are looking at a few hundred bucks. I do think that InsideTracker has a multiple session discounts though. I like that because you’d want to follow up tests every few months. This may not be 100% required, but I like having data and I like having information.

This is especially true if I haven’t felt great, haven’t recovered, and training has been stale for some time.

It’s easy to blame the training because that’s what we have to judge results, but that could be a symptom of the underlying problems.

Time Consuming

The second prong to this approach is less expensive, but it can be time-consuming. Overall, I am not a huge fan of counting calories, mainly for the reasons we talked about with variances. However, when trying to establish baselines, it’s key. I recommend going premium for a bit with a tracker (a quick search showed that there are dozens). It seems like you have to go premo for most to give you micronutrient data.

I think it’s important to track at least a few days to a good week.

That way you can track your nutrient intake for a scope of runs from easy to workouts, to long runs. The first couple days you might adjust to match what you think you should be eating, but over time, we tend to just eat normally, so several days are good to give us averages of intakes. We can take our averages and see where are doing well and where they aren’t. Couple that with any trouble spots our testing shows, we can really get a sense of what is going on. If you want to get some guidance, doing a nutrition consultation with a coach can be a big benefit. They can show you where you might be lagging, options to getting on track, and what supplements to consider.

Decide

If you make the decision that you want to try supplementation, there’s a couple of routes you can go to. One is working with a nutrition coach and making decisions as a team. The other is self supplement through multivitamins or specific vitamins. If you do the latter, you’ll want to make sure that these are the third party verified. Look for a label from the USP or the NSF on the packaging. These are the two most trusted. Secondly, mega-dosing is rarely justified and can be dangerous. Keeping intake under the PDI of intake is key to keeping yourself safe, but it doesn’t hurt to be working with a doctor and/or nutrition coach for monitoring.

Today’s discussion didn’t even get into things like metabolites or botanicals. This includes things like caffeine, L-carnitine, creatine, glucosamine and chondroitin, and nitrates. These will have to be for another day. Today’s topic was all about vitamins and minerals and why the idea of supplementation shouldn’t be scoffed at for athletes. When we look at what government guidelines are providing, we realize that a lot of people need more than the bare minimum.

Athletes may need a lot more!

And in an in-perfect world, perfect nutrition is a dream for many folks. Quality supplementation can bridge the gap between basic essential nutrition and maximal performance.

If you’d like a nutrition consultation, you can check out LHR options HERE

The topic of detraining has come up a lot, lately. At the time of writing this, we are under a stay at home shelter and our spring marathons have been cut short. A lot of folks feel like their hard fought gainZ are lost forever. However, I feel like there is a fair amount of confusion regarding what detraining is and what variations we typically encounter with training. So, today, let’s discuss what is really going on and if those feelings of having to start over are really warranted.

First, there’s full fledged detraining.

This is stopping training all together or reducing so much that a training stimulus is not elicited. This is what you’ll see a lot of blog posts and articles reference and when we talk about “use it or lose it” we are referring to this. The end result of detraining is loss of fitness over a period of time.

The second is the taper.

This is interesting because some folks buy into a very long taper and can actually dip into detraining if they reduce it for long enough time. That’s a discussion beyond today, but an interesting thought to expand on.

The purpose of the taper is to improve performance through rest.

I would define it as a calculated reduction in training through volume, frequency, and intensity, to maximize race performance through realizing the improvements made in previous training.

Third, we have the maintenance.

This would fall between complete detraining and taper. It may or may not be planned, as it may be done to try and mitigate downtime for injury, or, in our case, there’s no race to train for! With maintenance, the training stimulus is high enough to stop the downward trend of fitness loss (or at least slow it). However, it’s not high enough to promote further fitness development. I like to describe it as treading water.

The last one, to me is early rebuilding mode.

Some would refer this to reverse tapering, but I tend to stay away from that term. That would suggest that I am going to taper for may race, run the race, then follow my taper plan in reverse to get back to full training. However, I wouldn’t do that to my athletes! I couldn’t imagine giving an athlete a 10 mile tempo 10 days after their marathon! Early rebuilding, for me, would be the time post downtime (due to injury, illness, planned time off, or race) that takes us from reduced fitness to normal training volume and intensities. How I would approach this would vary on individual circumstances. This is one we will have to talk about later, too.

For now, let’s focus on detraining and maintenance.

During this time of forced shutdown, people have gone from peak training to forced downtime. Like I mentioned, there’s a lot of worry about “starting over” or at least losing a significant amount of fitness. The general consensus is that with a short amount of time off, performance will actually improve performance, but go past a few days and performance will start to decline. Specifically:

After 2+ weeks, VO2max decreases. I’ve seen a lot of numbers, but generally, 5-20% depending on time off.Ventilation increases 10-14% within a few days. This would make exercise feel harder after a short amount of time.Lactate Threshold starts to decrease after a few days off.Capillarization decreases to pre training levels within 4 weeks.Mitochondrial enzymes decrease 25-45% for up to 12 weeks.

There are others, but the point is made. If you go full stop on training, you will begin to lose fitness. In terms of performance, what would that mean? After 3 weeks off, your times will slow 3-5%.

What’s that look like on the clock?

40 minute 10k: 1:15-2:00 slower (Ouftda!)1:45 half marathon: 3:00-5:15 slower (Yikes)4 hour marathon: 7-12 minutes slower (Ouch!)

So that is pretty scary to think about!

However, remember that it is completely shut down.

If we are able to not train as hard or as often, but still getting out there, what’s the damage? If we reduce training, we can maintain our physiological gains and maybe even maintain a very high level of performance over a much longer period of time. On top of that, give our body a much needed break from our heaviest of training.

I looked at three articles regarding reduced training in distance runners. Now, to be fair, these studies were all pretty small in subjects and they were with younger runners. So, take it as you may! With the three studies, there was a period of normal training period followed by a 2-4 weeks block of reduced training. Peak mileage varied, but reductions were 50% to 70% in volume Frequency was also reduced. Intensity varied.

The results were pretty similar.

What was found is that there was a maintenance of primary measures. VO2max, running economy, and lactate threshold all held steady. From a physiological standpoint, we see no changes. However, in two of the studies, performance via 5k times were unchanged. In another, one was slower after the reduced training. However, it is important to note that body fat increased in these subjects from 10.4% to 11.8%. If you were to weigh 150 pounds, that’s an increase of over 2 pounds of body fat. It might not seem that much, but if the adage of 2 seconds per extra pound, that’s 4 seconds per mile, at least.

More importantly, it gives us a clue to our own training reduction.

Physiologically, we may be holding steady, but our weight can certainly fluctuate in a time of reduced training- not that I am speaking from personal experience, or anything! It just goes to show how much nutrition will play a role in all we do!

I did look at a fourth article that was similar to the other three but looked at testosterone, cortisol, and creatine kinase. With testosterone, runners were on the low side during regular training and unfortunately, the levels didn’t improve after the three week reduced volume. I don’t find this as a surprise because rebuilding testosterone (naturally) is a long term process- months of diligence. Cortisol, which is a good marker of stress levels, was also high during the regular training block, but also didn’t change significantly with reduced training.

With testosterone and cortisol, this is just a good reminder that we have to control for these long term and that we have to look at nutritional supplementation if we are going to go big ripper in training.

Lastly, creatine kinase was also high during training (expected), but this did drop significantly during reduced training. Hooray! CK is a measure of muscular damage, so this shows us that we can maintain fitness while allowing our body to recover. Anyway, just something I found interesting while looking through research.

Ok, now the question remains- what is the best way to maintain our fitness?

Glad you asked. There’s three things we can do.

The first two are reducing volume and frequency.

This may come from reducing the frequency to reduce the volume and get a twofer. Or, you can simply reduce the volume of your runs. Personally, I like reducing by 25-35% of my volume. I typically keep the same number of days, just reduce the volume. I will reduce the days if the person wants to cross train instead of an easy day.

Now the third variable is intensity.

This actually needs to stay the same or even increase! This means that easy days remain within your easy range, but more importantly, you shouldn’t abandon doing workouts completely.

Now, instead of doing two SOS and a long run per week, you may cut to one SOS and a long run.

The long runs should be reduced in volume, but if you run these in your moderate to long run range- keep em there. For a weekly SOS day, you can skip the marathon tempo every week. Depending on the break length, I usually just rotate different workouts. However, faster workouts show more promise in maintaining the physiological levels. So, this means keeping LT, 5k/10k repeats, and even mile pace repeats in the rotation. This works out well, because the volume of these are less and fit in better with the reduced volume.

Here’s what a sample for weeks might look like:

Week #MondayTuesdayWedsThursFridaySaturdaySunday1EasyOff10k RepsEasyOffLongEasy2EasyOff5k RepsEasyOffCutdownEasy3EasyOffLTEasyOffLongEasy4EasyOffMile repsEasyOffMPEasy

Super simple maintenance plan. LT= lactate threshold MP= marathon pace. 

You could honestly repeat this for a couple months, be fully recovered from hard training, maintain the vast majority of your fitness, and then pick up a new training segment for any race distance. The big point of all this, is don’t be scared of scaling back your training. Done the right way, you’ll come out of this a better runner for the long term.

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It’s no doubt that being “mentally tough” is something that can improve your performance, but the way I hear runners discuss, it feels like it is something that you either have or you don’t. Personally, I found it a fluid ingredient to my personal performance. I was mentally tough in my outstanding performances, but was mentally weak in most of my bad performances. What does being mentally tough really entail? Is it a trait or is it learned? Those two things are what I want to explore today.

What I have learned is that being mentally tough may not necessarily be about the amount of discomfort you can force yourself to endure, but maybe more about where you direct your focus. I have talked about this in race strategy discussions before- that early on, I don’t want to focus on too much because the more dialed in I had to be early on, the longer I had to maintain that high level of focus. For me, that wasn’t sustainable and I would often fade. Now, while I think my idea was solid in theory, my wording might have been off. I’ll explain more, later. The point is, that I was never any more, or less, mentally tough in good races than bad, but my focus was probably not set on the right cues. The idea is Limited Channel Capacity, or the ability to hold a limited amount of information at one time. Try to hold on to too much, or the wrong things, then there’s no room for what is relevant to the task and we lose performance.

When we look at those we consider mentally tough, they tend to show the following qualities. One, they have the ability to focus on their own performance, despite any outside personal issues. Look at some of the all time greats in sports and how messed up their personal lives were. They possessed the ability to flip that switch and not think about those things while in their sporting activity. Now, in your own case, that might simply mean leaving what happened at the office, well, at the office instead of bringing it to the track workout. If it’s taking up space in your head during the workout, we tend to miss the physical and internal cues of how the workout is going and it can often be a sup par event.

Maintain Focus

Secondly, they have the ability to maintain focus on their own performance after both success and failure. I have seen so many times that people overestimate their potential after one good race. I have also seen as many people completely disregard their ability after one performance.

At the end of the day, it’s a step, or a learning opportunity towards the ultimate goal.

Moving Forward

Third, the ability to recover from the unexpected, uncontrollable, and unusual events. This is good for right now. As we read of new race cancellations every day, I see both sides of the spectrum. I see people pull back and assess and then I see people who seem to be in complete despair while going right to the worst case scenario. How we decide to handle adverse situations says a lot about our mental toughness.

Ignore the noise

Fourth, they have the ability to ignore typical distractions in the performance environment. So, this might mean blocking out the dude who’s breathing like a locomotive engine instead of getting annoyed by it and letting it take up real estate in your head.

Focus on YOU

Fifth, they have the ability to focus on their own performance instead of being concerned with opponents performance.  This is a big one, and I see so often with people who train in groups. I also figuratively lived and died by this with my own teammates.

The common theme here is making sure you are focusing or concentrating on the relevant things to your performance. With that, there are four practical aspects  of concentration. The first is selective attention. During a run a relevant cue to focus on would be your stride, effort, and breathing. Something irrelevant is thinking about where you are going to eat afterwards or the houses along the course. Second, being able to focus during the event or workout. Here it might be having a rough workout and instead of just moving on, allowing it to set the trend of progressively bad workouts and then missing the goal. Third, what is called situational awareness, or taking the cues in your environment and making decisions based on that. In a race, this might be turning the corner and right into a headwind.

How do you handle this?

Fourth, the ability to shift your focus on the demands. You have different types of attentional focus like broad/narrow, external/internal, and even a combination of broad external or narrow internal. If you are running a marathon, then what you focus on at the start of the race should be shifting as the race goes on. Now, the list of things may not change but the priority of these things may change.

For runners, the last area of attentional focus may be better described as associative and dissociative properties. Association is monitoring bodily functions and feelings. Dissociation is dissociating from pain and boredom, usually via music, that is usually prevalent during long distance racing or even beginners running their first 5k (it’s all relevant). The interesting thing is that dissociation is pretty common for those who are more beginners and recreational because it can make the event more pleasant and can actually decrease fatigue and monotony. On the other hand, faster runners tend to associate with themselves so that they can monitor where they are at. The association to the discomfort allows them to push harder despite the discomfort because they already know it's coming and they’ve already dealt with it in the past.

The above paragraph is what I was referring to when I discussed ‘zoning out' until it was time to buckle down. Like I said, my wording was probably off, but I believe in my idea. Over my competitive career, I have found that you can’t be in that associative mindset all the time. It’s just not sustainable without burnout. For example, if I approached the easy day the day following a tough workout, then it would only be a matter of time before I was hurt. When I say intensity, I am not talking about running intensity, but mental intensity. I can’t be like “YES! A 10 mile run! GET SOME!” However, we have to get in that mindset for a 10 mile tempo. The same is true for the marathon itself. Early on, we may be in more of a dissociative mindset, just generally taking information. However, as the race goes on, we narrow our focus to more associative measures and disregard more outside information. To be that narrow focused for 2-5 hours can be mentally draining, especially when you take dropping blood sugar into account!

Don't get distracted!

The last area I wanted to talk about was some of the issues we have with attention because we get distracted easily, especially when tired. There’s really two area of distractions- internal distractions. In this case we tend to think about past events or future events. I think we all relate to these. Past events would maybe go back to a time where you were in the same position (say the 20 mile mark of a marathon) and things went rough in a hurry. Even though you might be a different runner than you were then, by going back to that place we take away from focusing on the right now. The second is thinking about future events. These are “what if” type statements. For example, “what if I get 25 miles and I completely run out of gas?” “What if my side starts hurting?” “What if I cramp?” These all project the future and take away from the right now and the focus that is currently required for the task at hand.

The flipside is external distractions, in the form of visual and audio. A great example of both the visual and audio is Wellesley College at about the 12 mile mark of Boston. It’s in a spot where you grow from being pretty quiet to just a solid roar of screaming women with all kinds of crazy signs that are not fit for family discussion. The first time I ran Boston, I was blown away. I wasn’t expecting it and it just completely got my adrenaline going.

You instantly go from focusing on yourself in relative quiet to a roughly half mile noise tunnel and kaleidoscope.

It makes you do things you may normally not do- like high five and fist pump. While a great pick me up, it shifts your focus away from things that may not really benefit you a few miles up, when you hit the Newton Hills.

What can you do to improve your concentration?

The biggest way is self talk. I don’t recall where I saw it, but I recall seeing a stat that was to the effect of ⅔ of our internal talk was negative self talk. Yikes! We all have done it. We’ve all been critical of a decision made on the fly. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do anything to improve our performance. On the other hand, Instructional self talk and motivational self talk can improve our performance. The basis of these are self explanatory as motivational focuses on motivation for increasing effort and energy. Instruction focuses on technical aspects of the skill (running). Now, instructional self talk seemed to be better at increasing performance while motivational self talk seemed to work better for exercise adherence. So, while the data wasn’t really looking at experience, I immediately wonder if more novice runners go to motivational places where more experienced go with instructional? Considering the trends in association and dissociation, it wouldn’t be a far leap.

The 6 rules for self talk:

Keep it short and sweet (mantra)

Use the first person and present tense

Construct positive phrases

Say your phrases with meaning and attention

Speak kindly to yourself

Repeat phrases often

The second is routine.

We all have morning routines, right? We try to get our kids into a routine. Why? Because it becomes a habit. It becomes automatic. My theory is this- that if we create something habit, we don’t have to overthink it. It’s on our list of cues, but it’s not overemphasized. In other words, what’s in our routine is not overwhelming our Limite

With all the questions regarding maintenance plans to reduce the impact of having races cancelled and then filling the void until you need to start training for your fall races, although Boston technically will still be summer. How weird was that to write? Let’s lay out some timelines and the courses of action possible.

However, before that, I would say that scheduling any race before mid-May at this point will probably be in vein. I just have a gut feeling that this will be the earliest that races resume, but I even think that first part of June. I think the sooner it heats up, the faster this thing dies off and life returns to normal. Ok, so with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s hit it!

4 weeks: 3/16 to 4/12: Rest and Recovery

7-10 days OFF. Now if you made it through a training block and raced in whatever fashion, then this means no running. It doesn’t mean no exercise though. I think walking, leisure biking, light yoga is all great things and may actually help speed recovery.

Then, I usually prescribe 30 minutes a day or every other day. The next 10 days.

The 4th week is usually 5 days/week of 30-60 minutes of easy running.

If people start strides, I usually do that in the late stages of the third week.

The point is regeneration and recovering from all the hard work that has been done.

In this case, it just might be a good time to hit the reset button.

Now, this doesn’t have to fit in perfectly, you can add, subtract, adjust how to fit your needs.

Now, let’s look at timelines:

For Boston:

18 weeks out is May 11th. So, if planning on following one of the classic plans, this would be a start date for you. But that means from right now. From 3/15/20 to then that is 9 weeks total, then subtract your rest period. From Mid April that’s 5 weeks. In either case that’s not a lot of time. It’s not really enough time to get ready to run any kind of races. I would suggest just following a base plan of 6 weeks and adjusting to fit the timeline. Personally, I’d probably just cut the last week off. Build your volume to 75-80% of peak volume. Start with lower intensity workouts, and then put some speed in towards the end. Goal is general fitness. 

London:

If training for London, then 18 weeks out is 6/1/20, which leaves you 11 weeks from now, or 7 weeks from a 4 week recovery period. Still not a ton of time and I think you’d be better off just doing a base building plan as described above. I would rather see it spaced out, rather than cramming a mini-segment in. I would hate to start a new segment that means more to you with some aches and pains that weren’t necessary.

Now, for most of you, an 18 week schedule after just doing a half or full marathon training block, and then a base building block is a long time. I would not be opposed to shortening that marathon segment up to 14 weeks and that will be plenty of time to recapture that fitness. So, in this case, the start date would be June 8 for Boston and June 29 for London. This would give you ample time to run a dedicated speed segment of 8-12 weeks (can adjust for in between weeks). This allows you to really work on some dedicated speed, some gears you don’t hit with marathon training, and an opportunity to get those racing flats out a few times.

Just make sure to leave yourself 5-7 days of light running and a couple days off before starting the marathon segment again!

What about other fall marathons or half marathons?

The same ideas discussed above will work for other races. The biggest thing to do is take your race date and back up the desired number of weeks. Just remember that the longer you want to make your marathon buildup, the less time you’ll have between recovery now and the start of that segment.

The shortest amount of time I suggest for a speed segment is 8 weeks.

The longest would be 12-14, but 14 is really pushing it.

What if I am planning on running both Boston or London, along with the fall marathon I am already signed up for?

Here is where things get tricky. First, I think you have to consider when your latest marathon will take place and how many weeks between that and either Boston or London. The length of time between those two will really dictate what your options are. If you are running anything in October, along with London (yuck) or Boston, then that’s a really tough turnaround. I personally think that you choose one or the other to really race. Both have pros and cons. I think we know that September to early/mid October can still be really hot.

Heat and Boston’s course has never really fared well. London is flat and fast, so you might get away with it.

It might be a race week decision, too! I usually tell people that the best chance for success is the first one, but this may be a unique situation. Now, if later, say a Boston and New York combo, you’d have like 7-8 weeks, which might not be a bad option. I actually ran Indianapolis in mid November and Houston in mid January with Houston being slightly faster (even though I was about 10 pounds heavier and really not that motivated). I just think the shorter the window, the less likely it is to run both really well.

My best advice would be to pick one race, base my training around that and either use the first race as a long run or the second race as a victory lap (depending on what you choose).

If you pick the first race, go all in on that and back your training start date from that race. Just use the time between the first and second to get your legs back under you. If you pick the second race as the A race, then use that as your guide for a training start date and then the first race will have to be considered a hard workout, or big long run. Just make sure that if this is the case, then there is a few extra days recovery time after the first marathon. You also really have to be on point with all recovery options- sleep, fueling, hydration, cryo, boots, whatever you have access too- pull out all the stops that following week.

I know this is not a perfect situation but it can still be a successful situation.

With the right mindset, the right planning, and a positive attitude, it can all be conquered! Best of luck on your training.

What I laid out here can be adjusted to fit whatever your present situation is and whatever your fall racing plans are.

If you are interested in plans I have created, please check out the plans I have updated, including recovery, base, Boston marathon, half and full marathon plans. 

These plans are instant access via Final Surge. They can be customized to fit your needs by easy drag and drop to fit your specific schedules. They are built on Final Surge’s custom workout builder which allows you to be able to sync to many GPS (take all the guesswork out of what your workout should be). You can apply these plans by your specific start or end date and will be able to have all workouts at your specific paces. From now until the end of March, these plans will be 50% off so you can map out much of your 2020. You also have lifetime access to these plans to reapply in the future.

Luke Humphrey Running Training Plans

If your race has been canceled, but still want to take advantage of your fitness, I have set up a virtual race to help you add some finality to the segment. You can check out all the details in the link below. 

Virtual Race

October 7-13

Another solid week. Took a few days extra, but mileage was still high. Thursday was a big long run with the guys, where we got rolling. Hit a lot of 5:20-5:30 pace during the last 10 miles. Watch died, but 20.4 miles in 2:00:21- 5:54 pace.

Sunday was a nice 4x2 miles

October 14-21

Been pretty darn consistent with mileage. This week was more of the the same. Did 10x800 with Morgan on Wednesday at the track. Averaged sub 2:30 for 10 of them. Didn’t feel too bad.

Finished the week up with my simulator- aka the Detroit Free Press half marathon.

Felt pretty solid. Went out conservative. (that split is not right). Handled the Ambassador Bridge and the tunnel well. Those are miles 4 and 7. Really settled into a groove and was moving up the whole way. This was a pretty big confidence boost.

October 21-27

Last big long run! Recovered well from Simulator and ripped sub 6 pace for the majority of the run.

Finished the week off with a big 2x6 Miles

Was a tough, wet, breezy morning. We got it in though! Glad to hit this one. Another confidence boost.

October 28-November 3 (Start of taper)

Start of the taper, so was really just about being consistent with work and scaling back volume. Tried to keep intensity the same. Nothing special. A 16 mile long run at a pretty comfortable pace. Finished the week with a 3x2 mile @ MP. Did this one by myself and got it in. I definitely overlooked it though! Was probably tougher than it needed to be.

November 4-10 (Race Week!)

Alright, so nothing special. Leading to the day before the race, I felt great. No complaints about anything. I thought I handled everything well and I was on point. Going into the race, we knew it was going to be cold and it was going to be windy. We were right. It was 28 degrees at the start. The wind was out of the south at about 8-10 mph and increasing throughout the morning. Chilly!

Start

I felt ok, but seemed a little chaotic. The field was huge between the women and men, both half and full. There was a lot of folks wanting to be on the front of the line. But, the race started and all was well. I was a little behind the 2:19 group (probably about 10 seconds) at the mile. There were a few people around me, so all was well. I wasn’t rushed at all. I didn’t feel overly comfortable, but that’s common. I just tried to relax and chip away to the group.

We weaved through downtown and I did gradually reach the group. I am not sure on splits because my Garmin was beeping way before, but after the first mile I do think it was close, but I did end up being about .3 mile long. So, essentially when I caught the group, I just focused on staying with the group.

By about mile 5..

I was in the back of the 2:19 group, right where I wanted to be. Again, not super comfortable- it felt a little harder than I was hoping, but being in the group was where I needed to be. At 10k, we had our first bottle, I grabbed mine as the pack scattered to the 10 tables. We regrouped and settled back in. I began sipping my fluids and it was freezing cold. My bottle held 10 oz and I’d say over the next half mile, I probably got 4-6 ounces in. I also had a gel taped to the side. However, I had two pair of gloves on and getting it off was impossible. So, I tried to focus on the bottle, but something got wanky and my stomach started turning sour. So. I put as much down as I could and had to toss it. This was the start of my problems.

From about 7 through halfway,...

it’s a near straight shot and it was with the wind. I just tried to settle in the back and not panic. My stomach was tightening up and my second bottle at 20,k was only a few sips before I thought I was going to barf. So, knowing it was gonna get rough, I just buckled up and hoped/prayed that I could just get pulled along. We came through 10 miles in 52:40 and then halfway at 1:09:15 (ish), so we were right where we needed to be. At halfway, there was a good 40 people in the 2:19 group.

At halfway, you turn and come back to the city. Unfortunately, the wind is in your face for the vast majority of that time. By now, my stomach was pretty tight and it was causing my back (which is my achilles heel) began tightening up to. Still we pushed on, but the group was starting to break up. At 16 miles, you turn right, by the governer’s mansion. It’ the hilliest part of the race. Not really that bad, but rolling for the next few miles. This is where I started falling back. The math started running in my head and was trying to calculate what I had to maintain, in order to break 2:19. I had about 45 seconds to lose, but it went pretty quick.

The pack gradually pulled away and I saw 2:19 slip away.

I hit 20 miles ..

in a touch over 1:48 and new I needed to be about 1:46 to have a chance. Admittedly, this deflated me. I was bummed, and started having a conversation with myself. Do I push on and sell my soul to run 2:22-3, or live to fight another day? Well, what a moot point, because I wasn’t really able to fight anyway. Ha! I saw Kevin, Keith, and Mike around 22 and they tried to encourage me, but we all knew the 2:19 train was long gone!

As I pulled onto the main drag,...

it’s nearly a straight shot to the finish line and you meet back up with the half marathon. There was a lot of cheering for me as I ran by and I am very appreciative. I definitely was able to pick up the pace a little bit. Rolling in, I was cold, my hands were starting to hurt, and my back was tight. But, we made it. In a way, it was liberating, because I had run 6 marathons in 2.5 years trying to chase the time. This was it. The decision was made for me. It honestly felt like I finally recognized that my service is not running fast marathon, but showing others how to do it themselves… I am a coach now, and Once a Runner.

Now that it’s been a few days, I have thought about some things. In occupational running, there isn’t really a retirement, rather, you just quit running. I don’t plan on quitting running. I don’t even plan on avoiding races. I have goals and I always need a challenge. Plus, once you turn 40, it’s like a whole new career! I just don’t feel a need to chase times anymore.

My training was great.

I wouldn’t change what I did at all. I added strides again. I was very consistent with that. Now, I need to assess what other detail I need to improve. My nutrition was so much better. The best it's ever been. I feel good. I feel like I can train hard and stay healthy. I do want to do some faster stuff and hopefully, this summer I can race some shorter races. I think that would help me a ton. The stomach thing was a freak thing. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the temp? Either way, I just wasn’t able to get the fuel in. That cost me, big time.

So, you live, you learn, and you push forward. I truly appreciate the messages I have received, but please, don’t feel sorry for me. My life is good! Plus, getting all the successful race reports more than makes up for my own disappointment!

This past weekend’s marathon mayhem (The first sub 2 hour marathoner and a new world record in the women’s marathon) provided a perfect opportunity to answer a question some posed to me some time ago-

“How to avoid the late marathon fade?”

Now many of you are saying “Nutrition!” While that might be part of it, the reader was really referring to a smaller loss of time later in the race, which may or may not be directly related to proper fueling. What’s interesting is that you can feel however you want about the sub 2 hour spectacle, the shoes, and doping (I forgot the Al Sal ban!) but along with all that, there’s been a lot of research into how much all the little details add up in order to eek out that last bit of performance. It has led to new revelations and expansions into what really happens in fatigue.

In a July Outside Magazine article titled The real reason marathoners hit the wall, Alex Hutchinson provides some great insight from research regarding critical pace. This article was written after the first sub 2 hour attempt and what researchers had looked at.leading up to the attempt. Ultimately, they found two areas of interest- critical pace and anaerobic capacity.

Now, what is critical pace?

That’s a great question. At its simplest definition, it is really the point that separates really hard work from not as hard work. How is that for muddy water? Now, in 1991, Joyner proposed that

“Running economy then appears to interact with VO2max and blood lactate threshold to determine the actual running speed at lactate threshold, which is generally a speed similar to (or slightly slower than) that sustained by individual runners in the marathon.”

Interestingly, he then proposed that a 1:57:58 marathon is possible by a runner with a VO2max of 84 ml/kg/min and a lactate threshold of 85%- both of which are similar to Eluid Kipchoge. So, for this, you are essentially looking at the pace you can run at your lactate threshold as what your marathon pace may be- if you are an elite.  Now there’s a few tests one can do to determine your CP, but coach Tinman Schwartz has determined that it’s roughly the pace you can hold for 30 minutes. So, so for many of you, that’s somewhere between 5k and 10k pace.

The other aspect being looked at was the idea of anaerobic capacity. How Mr. Hutchinson describes this is that look at it as a tank full of work you can do above your CP. The further above your CP you work, the faster the tank depletes. So, what that appears to mean (for elite runners) is that marathon pace is a percentage CP, anaerobic capacity, and the pace you can run that at.

Now, for the research at hand- the runners CP was tested using a 3 minute sprint when they were fresh, and then after 20, 40, 80, 120 minutes of running below CP. What they found was that at 120 minutes of sub CP running, CP actually started to decline and did so by about 9%. As for anaerobic capacity, that declined steadily from 40 minutes by 10%, down to a 23% reduction at two hours. What’s interesting here is that elite marathoners can run within 4% of their CP for the marathon. What this means is that even if a pace feels comfortable at the start of the race, it may very well reach a sudden point where it no longer does.

How nutrition plays a part

By taking in 60g of Carbohydrate (via Maurteen) per hour, the reduction of CP was minimized. Carbohydrate did not affect anaerobic capacity. As this depletes, you may slow down very minimally, or you may be forced to stop in your tracks.

What this means for the mortal runner

As mentioned, elite athletes can run a pace within 4% of CP, or the pace a person can hold for 30 minutes. It’s safe to say that recreational runners are going to be much less than that. I haven’t seen anything concrete, but I find it that around aerobic threshold (where you first begin to see a major deflect in blood lactate, is a safe bet. The more trained you are, the closer you get to being able to hold a faster pace, reflective of LT.

What it also means is that the slower you are, the easier it’s going to be to cross into the danger zone and start depleting your anaerobic capacity. It’s all a fluid threshold because what is your CP at the start of the race may decline by halfway. The bottom line, any amount you go beyond what you are capable early on will be that amount plus some when you reach the back third of the race. For more highly trained runners, you will “bleed the tank” overtime and your slow down will be much less pronounced.

In terms of nutrition, we know that anaerobic capacity is dependent on glycogen stores already in the muscle, even though it appears that ingested CHO during the event doesn’t alter the capacity. However, we saw that carbohydrate intake during the marathon will reduce the decline of CP significantly.

How do we improve CP and or anaerobic capacity?

Improve running economy.

This can be done a number of ways. Can be done through losing (fat) weight, improved strength and mobility, better fuel utilization, improving form, and strides.

Training at CP-

as coach Schwartz has described, CP will affect primarily your intermediate muscle fibers. If you train with a lot of speed, then you’ll make them look more like fast twitch fibers. If you train them more like 10k/half marathon, you’ll get them to look a lot more like slow twitch marathon fibers.

Don’t neglect carbohydrates in replenishing glycogen stores

and take in 30-60g of CHO per hour during the event. Implement strategies to preserve glycogen stores during the event.

Be careful with your pacing.

Even if you feel comfortable and you think today’s the day, wait for the second half to be aggressive.

This is an extremely limited look into even the smallest of marathon fades, but it can explain a lot of what happens to runners, even when they get the vast majority of the details right. There’s other factors to look at, but believe me, it’s a rabbit hole. One thing at a time!

Monday 9/16 and 9/17

Two days of 12 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. Did get strides in on Monday!

Wednesday 9/18

Long 24 miles in 2:22:40 (5:57/mile) Now, before people go, “but, but, but!” I am running well over 100 miles per week, and I’m running for under 2.5 hours, so that’s well within reason. This was pretty nie from a simulation standpoint as I definitely got that “wobbly leg” that you get those last few miles of the marathon.

Thursday-Saturday

10 miles, 10 and 4 Double, and 12 pretty dang easy. Running 24 will put you up on mileage, so took advantage of the situation with not doing some doubles. Did get strength, core, strides in during the three days.

Sunday: 4-3-2-1

This was a test as we went to the Tigers game and had a lot of junk food. Got home pretty late too, but the kid had fun! I did adjust because it was super swampy.

18 total for the day.

112 for the week. 

Monday 9/23

12 and 4 easy. Nothing to get worked up over!

Tuesday 9/24

Taking a different approach and doing some faster stuff. A few years ago, this would have basically been 10k pace, but now it’s probably more like 5k-8k pace. I just haven’t done anything very fast in such a long time that I feel like some interjections of fast work can do me some good. Did 4 sets of 4x200 meters. So 200 meters in 34-35 seconds with 200 jogs. Did 400 meter jogs after every 4th one. Each set got progressively  harder, but never out of control.

Did a shakeout 4 miler in the afternoon because of lower workout volume.

Wednesday 9/25

Easy 12 and 4. Nice and easy.

Thursday 9/26

The Greenfield Elementary fun run was this morning, so I had to run at 12:30. 8 was all I could manage. Decided to cut my losses.

Friday

3x3 Miles with Mike Morgan! Worked out well to team up. The whole team was out there, so good stuff. Mike wanted to go 5:30-20-10 and we were pretty close. The 5:30’s were a touch quick, but nothing out of control. Averaged about 5:18 pace for the workout.

Did a shakeout 4 in the afternoon. Trying to make a little bit up from the missed mileage on Thursday.

Saturday

Easy 12 and 4. Easy Peasy.

Sunday

Hanson’s Running Shop 16 miler at Lake Orion and Mile wanted to do a long run. 20 miles on the dirt roads and hills. He said he wanted to take it easy but we still ran 6:19 pace for it!

110 Miles for the week!

Monday through Wednesday (9/30-10/2)

Nothing crazy here, except two things. One, I was planning on taking three days easy in a row this week because I crammed a lot into last week. I know that if I get overzealous and just keep that train rolling, that it never ends well. Two, it worked out really well that I did that because my right plantar had been a little troublesome the last couple weeks. On Tuesday, I was running from the house. Some guy blew through the cross walk and I had to side step really quick. I felt like a tear in the spot it had been hurting. Of course, I was as far out on my run as I could be so I couldn’t just stop. It hurt for a couple minutes and then kinda subsided. Went home and iced like crazy and waited. On Wednesday it was sore, but not unbearable.

Thursday 10/3: 5x1.5 Miles

Mike Morgan is starting to get back to hard training. And has been dipping his toe into some workouts. He was looking at doing 5x1.5 Miles and we talked about paces and what not. He was looking at 5:10’s which is an in between pace. So, just kinda said we’d feel it out and see how it went. Newbie, Larry Char, joined in too. Started out about 5:10 pace, but it felt pretty good to me so I started creeping the pace down. Larry wanted to show us old guys that he was a big boy now, so he rolled too. Mike held on for dear life. Got down to 5:00 pace on the last couple.

Friday and Saturday: More easy running.

Sunday: 3x3 miles with Mike. 5:15-5:18 was the plan and we pretty much nailed it. Mile jogs were sub 7, which made me happy, but probably not Mike!

Ended the week with 108 miles. 

That’s 6 straight weeks at about 110 miles/week and 10 weeks at over 100 miles per week. My average weekly mileage is now higher than what my highest one week was this spring before Toledo.

Takeaways this week: I probably tried to change or add too much this segment to get everything to stick. I still do core and light strength regularly, but I haven’t done the heavy lifting or plyos as much as I wanted too. This goes to what I tell my athletes and that is finding easy wins at first and making small changes that will stick. For me that’s strides and my nutrition is the best it has been in years.

Getting into the heart of a plan makes finding time tough. You are tired and sore, and motivation can get tough. When you get to this point, just focus on getting out the door. Don’t mind if that first mile is slow. You’ll warm up, you’ll find your rhythm, and you’ll start to find your way. Now is not a time to compare how you felt when you were fresh, because you were, well… fresh!

9/2/2019

AM: 10 miles easy. Last run from the cottage. See ya next summer, Hubbard Lake! (Hopefully, for most of the summer)

No afternoon run. After cleaning the cottage and driving home, I’m whooped!

9/3/19

Strength Day! Upped it up to an 8x1mile @ MP-10 with 2:30 jog today. All under 5:10 and usually was under 2:30 for the jog recovery. I’ll take that!

17 Miles for the day. Did some light foam rolling in the evening.

9/4/19

10 miles in the morning with the guys. Lots of new faces on that team, except for Mike. They certainly let it rip though. 6:20’s coming back in

Appointments in the afternoon and curriculum night at the school. No PM room. One hour of Rolfing with Dawn. I can’t believe I pay for this!

9/5/19

Nothing crazy. 12 and 4. Did strides in the PM run and little bit of strength afterwards. The temps have dropped and paces naturally have too.

9/6/19

MP Day!

5x2 Miles at MP. Still just kind of feeling it out with pace. Settled in at 5:15 ish. Recovery jogs were solid. I am recognizing that the recovery is making a big difference in these. Will explain later.

19 for the morning.

9/7/19

AM: 13 and change.

PM 4 and change. PM run was real slow!

9/8/19

Another 14 and 4. Did do strides during the PM run. Weren’t very fast, but squeezed in after church lunch and going to in laws. Woof!

108 Miles for the week. A couple solid workouts. Wished I could have gotten another PM run in, but such is life!

9/9/19

Feeling the last several days. Here’s another lesson we’ll discuss at the end. Was supposed to do a workout. I actually had a 3x3 mile at MP on my schedule, but switched it up to an 18 miler. I hit at 6:16 per mile pace (getting progressively faster the first to second loop. Staying pretty steady on the last loop. A good opportunity to still get something bigger in, but not dig myself into a hole. I can recover quickly from a long run, so it helped bridge the gap between harder workouts.

18 miles

9/10/19

11 and 4 easy, averaging about 7 minute pace for each. Allowing the recovery to set in. Did do 6x12 second strides on the second run.

9/11/19

12 and 4 easy. Nothing to write home about. Feeling tired, but not overwhelmed.

9/12/19

10x3:00 Hard. I’ll just let you read my log in Strava for the commentary. Good effort though. Under 5 minute pace, so 30 minutes worth of sub 5 work. Warm and humid again.

About 15.5 miles for the morning.

9/13/19

12 miles slow. Really warm and humid again.

No PM run- took my brother in law to his eye doctor appointment at U of M. Got home and we were in a severe thunderstorm warning. Stayed home and ate pizza instead! Whole family went to bed early.

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9/14/19

Later AM run because Nikki has her workouts on Saturdays. Didn’t get out til about 10 am. At least last night's thunderstorms blew in a cold front. Gorgeous morning for 12 easy (6:57/mile).

9/15/19

MP Day!

Went to Stony since Nikki takes Sundays off and I can leave the house early. Did 3-4-3 at marathon pace. Was honestly thinking that if I could just keep at 5:20’s that would be solid. Ended up averaging 5:15’s. One about 5:20 and a few about 5:12. Recovery jogs were much faster than in the past. I am typically about 8 minute pace and ended up being under 7 minute pace. Cool down was quicker too, but I am really running by effort.

17 for the morning.

110 Miles for the week, which is the most for me since probably 2018. Really finding my groove with life, work, training balance. Not my best week for strength training, but did get some basic work in.

My Two-Week Takeaways:

Recovery time is a simple variable that can be altered a number of ways. We can refer to it as a single run, time between workouts, time between segments, and time between repeats. The latter is what I want to focus on. A simple rule is that the harder the repeat (faster the pace) the more recovery time. So, a 400 meter repeat may be a 400 meter jog, but it might take 100-150% of the time. Example, you may run a 400 meter repeat in 2:00, but your recovery jog might be 3:00- even though you ran another 400 meter. So it’s not necessarily the distance we are looking at for recovery, rather the amount of recovery time. Now, if a 5k rep allows for a 100% recovery time, then a marathon rep should be significantly less. Take for example, my 8x1. I ran hard for roughly 5 minutes and recovered for 50% of that time. Then, this past Sunday I did 3-4-3 and took under 7 minute jogs- roughly 30-40% recovery time. My aha moment is that I have been keeping the recovery distances about the same but keeping the paces a little more steady. What I have noticed is that my repeat times are down a few seconds per mile, but my recovery paces are faster. To me, it has shown more where my true current fitness is, rather than the repeat times alone.

The second takeaway is learning how to adjust without sacrificing. The 18 miler was a perfect example. I modified the planned days to allow me to recover, yet this still was the biggest mileage week I have had in months. I began the week feeling like a wreck and ended the week on a very high note. How? I simply did a workout I knew I could do with less relative effort first. This essentially gave me a few more days of easier running before I came back with two significant workouts later in the week. So, by being flexible, I only “sacrificed” the days I originally had penciled in, but still gained all the workouts that where planned for the week. Recovery doesn’t have to mean missing workouts, but rather rearranging to fit your strengths and weaknesses. So many times we just want to plow through and mark days as completed when they were originally scheduled. Doesn’t have to be that way!

Want to follow my training? Hit me up on Strava!