Luke Humphrey Running

It’s finally here!

It’s race day! Much like with the taper, now is a time to be rewarded, but is often a time for anxiety. You had a training plan and it got you to the starting line of the race. Now, having a plan for the race will get you through the finish line. Let’s talk about the top areas I see with athletes.

First, the question of following a pace group, or not?

I am always on the fence about this. It’s a situation where a pacer is usually volunteering their time and doing this to help you succeed. You always want to be grateful for that help. However, I have seen so many times where a pacer tries to “put time in the bank” over the first half and fade into the goal time. Or, since it’s sometimes it’s not a pace that the pacer is used to, they have a tough time being consistent with pacing. Given those concerns, a pace group can be an invaluable resource to you.

The key is, to not just blindly follow the group for the first half.

Use your pacing skills that you have acquired through training. Use your GPS and give yourself a buffer of 5-10 seconds either way, per mile. If the group is gone in the first few miles, don’t worry. Trust yourself and follow the plan. They will be back- rather, they’ll be fading and you’ll be maintaining or surging. If you are in between pace groups, start with the slower group and see if you can work up to the faster group over the second half of the race (or really the last 10k). Having this motivation will help keep you in the fight, keep your brain thinking, and keep motivation higher.

Another question I get is if they should warm up, or not?

Ultimately, you don’t want to start any race “cold,” but you also have to be conservative with your fuel sources. After all, you are running 26.2 miles already. In Hansons First Marathon: Stepping up to 26.2 the Hansons way, I go into specific ideas based on time goals, but the following is the basic idea: The faster you are, the more thought you will want to put into the warm up. In general, I would say that you’d want to at least some sort of dynamic warm up. Things like leg swings, bodyweight squats, lunges, and arm swings. Those really looking to compete, I recommend more- up to 10 minutes of jogging, dynamic warm up, and strides. However, practicality will really dictate what you can do. Those waiting around in a corral won’t have the luxury of jogging around for 10 minutes. However, doing bodyweight squats may be an option. In really big races, you might have to use your walk up to the start line as your warmup.

Third, having a fueling plan is crucial.

At this point, you should be really familiar with what you are going to do for fuel. Whether you rely on things like gels, chews, or self supplied fluids versus what the race is going to provide should already be decided. You should have already been practicing with whatever it is you are going to be using. Chances are, the first timer will rely on what the race will provide. When I first started running marathons, races tended to have one gel station and that was late in the race. Now, more and more races are realizing that this is a futile practice and are providing more stations earlier on. This is a great thing!

Waiting until mile 18-20 to take fuel is like trying to use a garden hose to put out a house fire.

Too little too late. Practice with your calorie sources during training and use throughout the race at regular intervals. The moral of the story- start early, stay regular. Plus, I think this gives you something to put some focus on later in the race as everything begins to get tougher.

Lastly, let’s talk about strategy itself.

Originally, I was going to talk about this and then the idea of expecting the race to get tough. However, these go hand in hand, especially as we talk about the second half of the race. I always like the idea of starting big and then working small in a marathon. Otherwise, we tend to scare the heck out of ourselves. So, what do I mean by that? I’ll use myself as an example. Like you, I look at a pace sometimes and wonder how the heck I am going to maintain that the entire way? The idea is simply frightening. So, what I do is back it up to a distance where I know I can run that pace for. We always did the infamous “simulator” workout that would end up being about 16 miles at goal marathon pace, so that would be where I started. I knew I could get to 16 miles. Then I would analyze how I felt on that day. So, maybe I would feel like I could have went another 2-3 miles that day. That would put me at about 19 miles. Then, I would think about how much the taper would add on to that, so I’d say another few miles. That’d put me at about 23-24 miles. Then it was going to come down to how well I executed the race plan, nutrition, and grit.

This leads me to the last part- it is going to get tough.

Expect it to get tough. Accept that it is going to get really hard!

Those last few miles might take a lot of mental fortitude (to quote my college track coach). If you know it is going to happen, but you also know that everyone else is going through the same thing, then it makes it a lot easier to deal with. At that point it’s less about the training you’ve done, but how well you can accept the discomfort and maintain. That’s the point where you might only be thinking about getting to the next stoplight or the next block. Pick a landmark or a group of runners and focus on getting to it. It may be a time where it feels like you have a long ways to go, so focus on how far you’ve run, not how far you still have to do.

Whew, so I don’t want to end this on a downer, but I think it’s super important to put that on the table. One of the reasons you decided to run a marathon was because it was going to be an incredible challenge. Crossing that finish line will provide you with such a sense of accomplishment! You’ll now be a marathoner and that is such an incredible accomplishment! I can’t wait to hear when you join the club! I wish you the best with your training.

Ahh, you’ve made it through the training and now it is time to cash out the fitness account that you’ve been depositing into nearly every day for weeks. This should be a time to be excited, but for many, it’s a time to completely lose your mind!

Many refer to this as the taper FREAK OUT!

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With any of our marathon plans, you’ll see a taper of 10-14 days. By most people’s definition of taper, a better word is probably you peak for 10 to 14 days. I say that because a lot of people argue that we don’t taper. Anyway, when you think about the purpose of a taper, it’s pretty simple, right? We are cutting back from the hard training we have done in order to be completely rested and to rock and roll.

Done right, and you can improve your performance by 2-3%.

Done poorly, and not only will you reap the benefits, you’ll actually lose some fitness! So let’s make sure we do this right!

The biggest mistake I see people make is cutting way too much from their training during the taper.

First..

Think about when we are building your training- what’s the number one thing people tell you? Don’t add too much too soon! Well, the opposite is true when tapering. If you take away too much too soon, it’s detrimental. You’ll probably feel sluggish like you got too much sleep. Now, cutting too much can come in several forms. One is just straight up cutting their weekly mileage. This is the no-brainer, but when we start chopping away mileage, we tend to start cutting out days we are running and the intensity we are doing. If we do this for more than a couple weeks, then not only do we feel sluggish because we are out of routine, we can actually start to detrain! To me, the key to cutting back is smaller percentages in mileage and workout frequency, but maintain your daily intensity.

Second

When we start cutting back mileage and workout frequency, we tend to think that we should automatically feel like a million bucks. When we don’t, we tend to think something is wrong. Personally, I feel like the more we keep our routine (even if we modify what we do on those days), we minimize this. Needless to say, the old phantom aches and pains always seem to show up in the last couple of weeks. You may find yourself wondering why your left big toe all of a suddenly hurts for no apparent reason. Chances are, it’s nothing. I don’t have a scientific reason why this happens but it does. I think it’s one of those things where we are hyper-aware. Think about coming back from an injury and you are in your first few runs back. You are constantly thinking about the injury and if it’s ok. We know it’s healed, but why do we keep feeling it? The same thing here we are just going through every joint and muscle, making sure it’s ready to perform in a few days.

The third biggest concern I see is nutrition.

This is tricky because it’s my experience that a lot of runners aren’t eating enough of the right foods at the right time. Many times, they just aren’t eating enough in general. When you get to the taper, they cut it back even more because they aren’t “training as much” and they really do themselves a disservice. Now should be the time to make sure the muscles have the fuel they need to recover from the months of training and to allow you to perform on race day. The flipside of that is people will sometimes start the carboload a little early and find themselves packing on a few to many pounds over the last two weeks. To me, the best thing to at this time is to eat to what the day calls for. Mainly I am talking about the right amount of calories. Short day = less calories and a long day/SOS = more calories. However, I am also talking about the timing of your calories (especially for SOS), and also the types of calories. Once you get to 3-4 days out, then you can start carboloading, but don’t save it for the day and night before.

The last thing..

I want to talk about self-doubt. This may creep in throughout the course of the training but will be multiplied with the issues we have talked about above. The most common is that a run during the taper doesn’t feel as great as it was expected too and the feeling is that your fitness has suddenly disappeared. Then they start noticing the aches and pains, then they think they’ve put on ten pounds. Pretty soon their mental state has spiraled out of control. We’ve all been there and I’ve done it before, too. What’s worked for me is trying to recognize the negative thought as soon as possible and stop it with a positive thought.

Go back to a tough workout you nailed.

Think about a situation where you could have given up, but you found a way to get the job done. Recognize that what you are going to do is very tough and it is going to hurt, but also recognize that you have put the work needed to accomplish your goal.

The last couple of weeks is time to physically recover from all the training. It’s not a time to let you believe that your fitness has suddenly disappeared and you aren’t going to reach your goal. Keep your routine, while gradually cutting the work back. Eat to your needs until the last 3-4 days. Combat negative thoughts with positive thoughts and keep present with why you are running this race to begin with. Let the taper work for you so that you can reap all the benefits of the months of work you put it in and sacrifices you (and maybe your family) have made.

Check out Hansons First Marathon book for yourself!

When you run a race like a 5k, or even just doing speedwork, the discomfort is very acute. The lungs are burning and the level of discomfort is visceral. It’s not very pleasant, but you are aware of the “lactic burn” as it is commonly referred to. When training for these types of races, we have to space very carefully as to not overdo it, or to not become over trained. Some will even say to develop acidosis. Fair enough, and I would say this is true for 5k and 10k training. Maybe even up to half marathon training, depending on the person. But what about marathon training? Do these rules apply? Does the body react the same way?

The short answer is- it depends!

When I see a lot of newer runners start running and even new marathon runners (that have run shorter races) start to get into heavier training, there is a “whoah!?” kind of point. Is this supposed to feel like this? Am I coming down with an illness? Am I on the verge of being hurt? Learning to differentiate discomfort from training fatigue and becoming sick and/or hurt during marathon training is a skill that can literally make or break you.

You see, what I have found is that marathon training consists of a lot of vagueness and exceptions to the rules. It’s easy, until it isn’t anymore. If you are fresh during the last 6-8 weeks, then you probably aren’t training hard enough.

If you don’t feel like taking a nap as soon as you get up in the morning, you probably aren’t training hard enough.

On the other hand, if you broke your foot from running too much, then you obviously took it too far. Learning to know how it feels to be in that grey zone is where the magic of marathon fitness happens. My marathon mentors, Kevin and Keith Hanson, called it cumulative fatigue. Where you couldn’t pinpoint your tiredness or fatigue to one single workout, rather the culmination of workouts over the course of several weeks.

Cumulative Fatigue:

To me, there are two key components to developing Cumulative Fatigue versus being overcooked. The first is the timing where you are feeling the fatigue. If you are early into your marathon training or have more than 8 weeks to go, and you are feeling burnt out, then you are pushing too hard. Usually when I see this, it means that the person has done their workouts and easy days too hard, too often. A lot of times they have the attitude that if fast is good, then faster is REALLY good. Like I said, marathon training is easy- until it isn’t. There can be other factors involved too. Things like general recovery- hydration, nutrition, sleep, etc. Things we might have been able to get away with with lower levels of running will be exploited as we ramp up the volume.

We can talk about what to do in this case, but I have a previous podcast that covers this for us. You can check out HERE.

Overtraning:

The second thing I look for when discerning from CF and overtraining is performance. If someone is getting overcooked then performance will start trending downwards. It might start off with a poor workout, but will be followed up with a few more in a row, then it’s time to start looking at being past Cumulative Fatigue. When a person is at the stage of developing CF, they may not feel like doing a workout. They not be that motivated to do it, either. However, once they get warmed up and past the first mile, they settle in and realize that everything is just fine.

Now, the question will come up about differentiating soreness vs an injury. When to worry and when to just note that it’s part of training? There’s some quick things to help differentiate:

Soreness:

Both sides of body

In center part of muscle

Appears after a change intensity or volume

Improves after a warm up

Doesn’t affect form

Generalized

Warning sign of injury:

One side of body

Towards a joint

Appears daily

Worsens during a workout

Worsens or remains during day

Affects form

Localized

Knowing the difference is key to management.

The only other thing I would add is that if you feel like you have to take ibuprofen to get through a run, then you are probably already hurt. All the ibuprofen is doing is masking the pain. Without sensing the pain, you are probably only making it worse.

If you pay attention t0 the warning signs, you can take get a jump on it and hopefully prevent it from getting out of control.

A couple days off is a lot better than a few weeks.

 

At the end of the day, just keep an even keel. A bad day isn’t the end of the world and a good day doesn’t mean you are ready to get after that world record (yet). A day off isn’t going to make all you’ve worked hard for disappear. On the other hand, lots of pretty decent days will add up.

It’s like the old question on savings: would you rather take a $1M lump sum or take a penny and double it every day for a month.

My advice- take the penny and double it every day. You won’t notice much difference for the first 25 days, but dang that last few will blow your mind!

That’s it for this week! If you have liked this series, please consider taking a look at my book Hansons First Marathon, or the OG’s Hansons Marathon and Hansons Half Marathon. Thanks for reading and listening!

Now you have a philosophy in place and a plan to follow. Let the fun begin! As you get started, it can seem daunting, especially if you are a newer runner. You may seem like there’s no hope you can run 26.2 miles at a pace faster than you are currently running for 5 miles. That’s a common feeling but don't get down on yourself. This would be a great spot for something cliche like “Every journey begins with a single step.” While true, I think we are beyond that. You need a way to look at this from a practical standpoint. Since I began coaching in 2006, I’ve learned a few things about people and trying to train for a marathon. So, here are the top five things I have learned (that we haven’t discussed already).

Build general endurance before specific endurance

Add days to a week before time to days

Take yourself where you are at, not where you need to be in a few months

Allow the time to adapt to what you are doing

Be wary of old wives tales- Two in particular (10% rule, Have to get in a 20 miler)

Building your general endurance before your specific endurance. While it seems redundant, there is actually a difference. When talking about general endurance, I am referring to just being able to cover the distance without a set pace. When referring to specific endurance, I am referring to running set distance at a set pace. For example, maybe you have gotten to the point where you can cover 10 miles. However, if I told you to do that 10 miles at marathon pace, you might not be able to. Covering the 10 miles is general endurance, but covering it at marathon pace would be specific endurance.

The reason this is important is because our first goal with training is to simply build the amount of distance you can cover in training. This is by day, by week, and by month. The more ground we can get you to cover, the better your GE will be. If we focus on intensity first, or SE, then we limit what we can accomplish over the course of the day, week, and month. You can cover that 5 mile loop at 10 min/Mlb, but not 8 min/mile. We need to lay the foundation of handling easy mileage first, then worry about speed. What does this mean for you? Don’t race your training buddies regularly. Don’t race yourself on the same loop every day. Your goal isn’t to set a new Strava record every time out.

Add days your week before time to your days. Our end goal with marathon training is to get you to run at least 5 days a week. If you are running 3 days per week, then I would want to take  3-5 weeks and add a 4th day, then a 5th day. If you’ve been running 30 minutes on the original 3 days, we’ve still added an hour of running to your week, but we’ve take you from the three to the 5 days. Now, we don’t really have to add any more days the rest of the way and can focus on adding the volume over the rest of the cycle.

Take yourself where you are at now and not where you need to be in a few months. I get this one a lot. A runner will get a training plan, recognize where they are at,but see the mileage and the workouts that they need to be doing in 3 months and panic. This creates a lot of self doubt and can sabotage your training before you even get started. I recommend only focusing on the week or two ahead of you.

Before you know it, you’ll be doing more than you ever thought possible. When things do get tough, look back at where you started and how much you have improved. This can be enough motivation to spur you on.

Allow yourself time to adapt.

On average, it takes about 4-6 weeks to adapt to a new stimulus. What I see with runners, is they push this. Cardiovascular fitness improves pretty quick. You may take a couple weeks off and your first run feels like you’ve taken a year off, but by the end of the week, most of those feelings have subsided. You stop feeling awkward. You feel better even though you are running the same pace. Your body reacted pretty quickly. Now, bones, ligaments, and tendons are a different story.

Here’s a common scenario:

a high school kid runs track in the spring and then says adios to any sort of organized running for the next 8 weeks. When they start cross country in the fall, they answer coach with a “Sure, Coach!” When asked if they ran over the summer. So, Coach puts them in what they assume is a reasonable workload. The kid feels like they are wearing cement shoes the first few days, but starts to come around. Runs are getting easier and they push it a little more. All is good for the next few weeks. Boom! Down they go with shin splints, tendinitis, or the dreaded stress fracture.

Why? Things were starting to feel pretty good? The truth is that the three amigos listed above adapt at a much slower rate. For instance, bone can only be repaired at the rate new cells are made. The average bone cell has a life cycle of 90 days, so I’d breakdown rate exceeds repair rate, then it simply can’t keep up. Breakdown occurs and the inflammation process begins. Allowing yourself some time to adapt is crucial- plus it teaches you patience. Patience is invaluable in the marathon.

Lastly, be wary of old wives tales in running.

The main two I am thinking of is the old 10% rule and that if you want to succeed in the marathon, you have to run a 20 miler. Both of these have been around a long time, but the truth is, that they both try to oversimplify training. They say that this one variable is going to make or break your marathon. In reality, it’s everything that you are doing in training that will contribute to getting hurt, staying healthy, and not hitting the wall in the marathon.

Since I brought them up, let’s look at both of these myths a little closer. The main one is the 10% rule.

This rule is pretty simple- that a person shouldn’t increase their mileage more than 10% per week.

The idea behind it is simple- that we control the rate of loading on the bones and tendons of the legs. This goes back to what we talked about before- that physiologically you’d be fine, but structurally, your body couldn’t keep up with the training load and start to break down. On the other hand, if you are so conservative, you’ll never reach your goal. It will take too long!

Let’s look at a common beginning mileage of 15 miles per week.

That’s 3 miles/5x per week.

So, to get to 30 miles per week by adding 10% per week, it would take you 8 weeks to do that. 2 month of tedious mileage addition! There’s got to be a better way. Here’s what I propose:

For under 15 miles per week, I think you can add up to 30% of your weekly mileage. Using our previous example, that would be 15 + 4.5 miles for a total of 19.5 miles. Let’s just round that up to 20 miles. Now, let’s jump the next week by 20%. So our 20 miles would mean an additional 4 miles could be run. That’s a total of about 24 miles for the week. Then, let’s say we jump by 15% the third week. This means 3.6 miles can be added for a total of about 28.5 miles. Now, the 4th week, let’s say we jump another 10%, or 2.5 miles. This puts us at 30 miles per week. Boom! We cut it in half and will be just fine IF, this is the big caveat, we spend that 4 weeks just focusing on easy running to build our volume. THEN, maybe we stay at that 30 miles per week without many additions. Maybe we add a little longer run in there or one marathon pace workout. The key is that, we focus on the mileage first, get to a point where we have the base to start adding workouts. In the second scenario, by the time 8 weeks rolls around, we now have been at the 30 mile mark for 4-5 weeks and have already added workouts. If we were less aggressive with the mileage, we would have taken 8 weeks just to get to a point where we were comfortable with the mileage.

The keys to this:

Focus on only one aspect to start, or at least make sure you aren’t running intense workouts and increasing your mileage at the same time.

The lower the mileage, the bigger percentage you can initially increase by. As mileage increases, the smaller the percentage your increases should be.

This is for first time increases in mileage. If you have been running 30 miles per week, take a week off (lower mileage), then you don’t need to take 4 or 6 weeks to get back to 30!

Now, as far as 20 milers go, I have been talking about this for years and already have a lot of info out on it. Check out this blog post for a much more detailed discussion.

Currently, LHR has a Facebook group north of 10,000 members. The vast majority of these folks are using, have used, or thinking about using one the HMM plans or a plan I created. Many times runners are asking for advice about how to adjust our plans to fit components of other coaches. Sometimes they are expressing their concerns about using our plans and looking for confirmation in their decision. The biggest concern is the long run, but that’s a topic all its own. For the sake of this discussion, this desire to fit pieces from other plans or worry about the plan they are choosing creates two main coaching concerns.

The first is this piece meal approach to putting a training plan together. Someone might take our plans as a template, but then add a little Hal Higdon, a dash of Jeff Galloway, and a sprinkle of Jack Daniels (or a shot- who knows). Then they’ll say, well I am following Hansons or LHR. The truth is, they aren’t following anyone. All of these coaches built their plans on a system and they work as a whole. What makes our long run work is what you are doing the other days of the week before the long run. What makes the other coaches successful is the structure of their plans. Now, if a person is an experienced marathoner and has tried a number of methods, then they do know what works for them. I am in no position to critique that. The big caveat however, is that works for them. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for you. For your first marathon, I strongly believe you find the philosophy that resonates with you the best and go with that. The next time around, then try another philosophy if you want.

The second concern I get comes from the apprehension about starting a plan. With our plans in particular, folks will focus on one area and say that it’s not a good program, but they don’t see the entirety of the plan. Unfortunately, newbies see that and then start questioning themselves and their decision to follow a program. Luckily, when they ask these questions in the Facebook group, they get plenty of reassurance. More to the point, what I have found with a lot of these runners is that their concerns are with following a plan, but then they also question another plan that they chose. What that tells me is that they are lacking the confidence that they can cover the marathon. It’s less about what plan they choose, but their own self doubt. The worst schedule to the biggest believer will probably be successful. The best plan to a non believer will probably end up a failure. Along these lines, people are quick to offer advice. While given with good intentions, I think is critical for the recipient to take it with a grain of salt. Again, what tweaks were made by one person, may not be the tweaks you need.

At the end of the day, I recommend doing some research. Take a few of the popular philosophies and check them out. Seek out Dr. Google and maybe buy a few books. On my site, there’s podcasts and tons of blog posts to start out for free. Then if you want a book, you can pick it up for $10 on Amazon, or something. You are already going to be entering uncharted territory, so don’t try to forge your own path yet. There’s lots of ways to get to the finish line.

After all of that, I can just tell you are begging to ask- “Luke, what’s your philosophy, then?” If that’s the case, then I am happy to tell you.

My marathon coaching philosophy is built around three areas:

Knowing what and why you are doing something in your training schedule. This makes it easy as a coach to have an athlete buy into a program. It also makes the path to self confidence much smoother.

Train to grow, not to survive the training. I see this so many times where an athlete trains aimlessly (without knowing why or what they are doing). They train so hard that they are ultimately just making it through the plan with nothing left for the race. My goal is to teach you (#1) and this helps you train to compete at peak level, not on fumes.

The 4 pillars of performance

Balance in training.

Touch on all aspects of training from easy jogging to speed development (relative to event) and even supplemental work.

Appropriate intensity for a given day.

By maintaining balance in training, we touch on all paces. There’s no need to “cheat” paces faster than they need to be.

Consistency in training.

A single workout doesn’t make your training segment and one bad day doesn’t take it all away. However, a bunch of pretty decent days will make you incredibly fit. Being inconsistent do to over-training, injury, or illness on a consistent basis means you are always trying to get back to where you were before you can move forward.

If you can adhere to the first three pillars, the fourth will be easy. You’ll handle more mileage in a week, a month, a year. And more mileage allows you to hit all facets of training. Hitting all facets of training for long periods of time will take you to levels of performance you never thought possible.

 

That’s it in a nutshell. To read more about our philosophy, training methods, and training plans for the first time marathoner, please check out my book Hansons First Marathon: Stepping up to 26.2 the Hansons way. For more resources, coaching, and other books, then check out my site, www.lukehumphreyrunning.com

In Part One, we talked about setting your baseline, or starting point. It wasn’t to determine if you can run a marathon, but to really make sure you knew what you were getting yourself into. With all the hoopla out there and everyone telling you that in 6 minutes a day you’ll maximize your fitness, it’s important to separate marketing from truth. Deciding to take on the marathon is a serious decision and knowing what it’s going to take and realistically how long it’s going to take you is a big step in bridging that gap from where you are to the finish line.

With that said, today is about taking another assessment. Again, this isn’t to determine if you can run a marathon, but rather to show you what your strengths and weaknesses might be as a runner. It might seem trivial, but knowing this means to know what things we do in training will make you feel like you can conquer the world and what might make you second guess your decision making. Now, you can’t just put in the items of training that you enjoy (although some would argue with me), but it can help us prepare for it better. It will also help you keep the ship steady when things aren’t feeling great. Understanding the difference between struggling with a workout you weren’t designed to handle well and being overcooked can help tremendously over the course of a training plan. On top of that, being able to see progress in an area that you knew you’d have a tougher time with is a great boost in confidence as you approach race day!

In Chapter One of Hansons First Marathon: Step up to 26.2 the Hanson way, we have a second “quiz” to take. This one will take a look at what your starting strength and weaknesses will be as a marathoner. A lot of these questions will be for those who have been running for a little bit, but do the best you can. Think about other exercise you have done in the past, or sports you played. These will give you sources to provide your best answer. Score each question and tally your numbers.

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What type of training do you prefer?*

Long tempo runs and longer intervals

Short and fast workouts/fartleks/hills

What type of training do you adapt better to?*

Longer work- tempo runs and long runs

Everything in moderation

Fast work- mile to 5k pace work

At which distances are you strongest?*

Far better at longer distances than shorter

Good across the board, but slightly better at longer distances

Good across the board, but slightly better at shorter distances

Far better at shorter distances

How do you typically approach a race?*

I tend to run even paced throughout

I tend to go out harder and fade at end

I have a great kick, but struggle to keep up

What types of runs do you recover better from?*

Long runs and marathon specific runs

Everything about the same

Faster workouts (track, speed, etc)

Submit to see RESULTS

Δ

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Ok, so now what?

Having a score is great but having use for it is even better. How I would use this if I were coaching you is to put the right workouts in the right place,...

“Am I crazy for wanting to run a marathon?”

This was a question recently raised in our Facebook group, LHR Running Community, which currently has over 10,000 members from across the globe. The simple answer is “no” in regards to the physically running of the distance. Where the craziness usually lies is in the planning, or lack thereof. It was this question that really inspired me to write Hansons First Marathon: Stepping up to 26.2 the Hansons Way. You aren’t crazy and you have the ability. You just need a plan and I know how to make one for you.

In Chapter One, Establishing a starting point, we start establishing a baseline. Before we can make a plan, we need you to take a look at yourself so that you know what you are getting yourself into. Now, don’t worry, I am not asking you to dig deep into the depths of your soul, rather just looking at your history of running, exercise, and injury. We ask a series of 5 questions to help you think about where your strengths and weaknesses.

Am I running now?

Have I run a race recently?

What is my goal for the marathon?

How much time can I dedicate to training?

Am I injury prone?

Answering these questions a certain way will not dictate whether or not you can run a marathon. There’s a million ways to get to the same finish line. However, what it will do is force you to take a look at yourself and go into this thing with eyes wide open. For instance, answer question number one with a no, then we need to start with the very basics of running. Learning how to start by doing the right amount at the right intensity, then building on top of that without getting you hurt is going to be critical. It also means that if you are looking at a marathon and it’s only 8 weeks away, that it might not be a good fit for where you are at. You are going to need to allow yourself a lot longer to build to the point where you are ready to tackle the distance. So, every answer you give here helps establish the baseline, a timeline, and a checklist of things you will need to make sure you focus on as you take on this journey.

These questions aren’t meant for just the person who’s never run before or even the new runner. They are meant for anyone looking to take on the marathon distance. This includes the novice/recreational runner all the way to the age group ace who’s looking for a new challenge. The thing is, even those who have raced/run the half marathon distance are just that- hallway there. A 5k runner has only raced 1/8th the distance. Whatever you struggle with at 10, 20, 30 miles per week are going to be really exposed when training to cover 26.2 miles as fast as you can. The things you never even thought about while training for your local festival 5k is going to be a major factor in your ability to be successful at the marathon. This isn’t meant to scare you, rather prepare you. The better prepared you are, the less intimidating it can be.

Where to go from here, depends on where you are at. For the brand new runner, I suggest taking the next three steps:

Make running a habit.

Find a C25k plan that’s 6-10 weeks long. In HFM, I offer up an 8 week plan that takes you from zero to handling 30 minutes of jogging without stopping.

Establishing a starting point.

This is mainly for a time goal or even just establishing some running paces. Run a 5k. Time yourself on a known loop. Whatever you are comfortable with. Use that to establish some sort of basis for training.

Pick a race and start training.

For this group, after completing a C25k type plan, I recommend something 18-20 weeks from where you are currently at.

For the recreational runner, you know a little more about yourself. These questions will help you decide on a plan that’s best suited for you, but it will also help you focus on some detail work. Strength and mobility will probably be something to think about adding. However, adding this may need you need to change your approach to the mileage and/or length of schedule you were planning on using. For most of you folks, an 18 week training plan is plenty of time to be ready.

For the competitor, you may need less time, in terms of weeks, but make sure you can tolerate the volume necessary for your goals. If you are training at a pretty high level for most of the year, 12-18 weeks should be plenty of time to be ready. I would say closer to 12 weeks for higher mileage and coming off a racing segment and closer to 18 weeks for lower mileage.

Take a few minutes to look at these questions. There are other assessments I think are important, but we’ll save those for next time. If you are curious to see this discussion in full, to view our plans for first time marathoners, or just to read more about training, I encourage you to check out my book Hansons First Marathon: Step up to 26.2 the Hansons way. You can also follow me on Instagram @lukehumphreyhmm and our Facebook group LHR Running Community. For information on coaching, custom plans, and instant access training plans, visit www.lukehumphreyrunning.com

I have created a trilogy bundle of all three of my books. Use the code Trilogy at checkout for 30% off the three books. Your purchase from THIS STORE directly supports LHR. Thanks! The code is good through 8/5/2019

“So, what exactly should marathon pace feel like?”

This was recently a question that my athlete, Lisa, posed to me. I sat there and thought about it, but ultimately I only came to the conclusion that this was a great question. My answer is, (insert drum roll) that it depends. Unfortunately, a question like this has a ton of different answers  with caveats. However, I do think it deserves a look into because one of the items I always stress is to learn how paces feel.

While thinking about it, I think there’s four major areas we need to look at.

* Your strengths as a runner

* The timing and length of the workout

* How big of a jump you are trying to make

* What your goal pace is

Strengths as a runner:

Your strengths as a runner will initially play a role in how marathon pace should feel. We have done a few blogs about finding these strengths and how to “score” yourself. We actually start the Hansons First Marathon book on these premises. I won’t dive into those here, but the bottom line is, the makeup you possess as a runner will dictate how marathon pace feels. If you are a speed demon who loves ripping up the track every Tuesday evening with the local run club, then there’s a chance you dread the Thursday tempo. It seems to be harder to run 6 miles at a pace that’s significantly slower than what you were whipping around the track at a couple days earlier. On the other hand, if you are a person who loves going out and putting in miles, marathon pace is probably your place of refuge.

Timing  and length of the workout.

This could mean the timing of the segment, but also the time of year. For instance, people training for an October marathon will begin their training in early to mid June. If they took some down time and then jump into training, they aren’t very acclimated. This certainly isn’t going to make marathon pace feel very easy. Luckily, you aren’t running very long tempos at that point, but it can certainly be a dream killer.

On that note, the first marathon workouts may be tough because it’s pace and duration . We’ll talk about those making big jumps in a second, but for now we are just talking about the distance at that new pace. Initially, that workout might feel like a lung burner because it’s currently out of the realm of possibility to run that pace for an entire marathon. In some cases, it might actually be more like half marathon pace. However, as time goes on, your fitness will improve. Ideally that pace feels more an more comfortable. Your effort is harder because of the increasing distance of the workout and the pace isn’t your primary issue anymore.

How big of a jump are you trying to make?

Along the lines we have already talked about, the amount of improvement you are trying to make will play a big part in how pace feels. If you have someone whose running their 15th marathon, they probably aren’t swinging for the 30 min PR fences. They are just trying to eek out that 0.5% to 2% improvement or maintain that BQ status. On the other hand, if you have a relative newbie whose just now learning about structured training, they might be trying to hit that walk off homer. For these folks, they are talking about doing tempo runs at what they might have been doing speed workouts at last year. This is going to be a major effort, especially early on for them. Mind you, I am not saying they should or shouldn’t be going for it, rather just pointing out that they might be in the “what have I gotten myself into” camp for a while.

What is your goal pace?

Before I get any emails about being elitist, let me be clear, I am not downplaying anyone’s ability. I am simply talking about training. With that disclaimer out of the way, slower runners will have a harder time differentiating tempo runs from easy days, especially early on.

One of the questions I get a lot is in regards to spacing out SOS days and when to do so. Many times it’s because they are a masters runner and they just don’t recover as fast as they used to. Is that necessarily true, though? I myself catching myself claiming so, but it might be in my head. I mean, let’s face it, we simply are way busier than we were in our 20’s. However, this article from Alex Hutchinson provides some interesting insight. The truth is, it’s rarely a simple answer. As Alex talks about, it’s just harder as we age. Physiologically, there may not be any statistical significance in differences, but the reality of things can be quite different- finding time to train, a lack of sleep due to family or work, and just more responsibility in general.

A topic like this with can have a lot of tentacles to it. For instance, I wrote THIS blog post in 2016 that started the conversation, but left a lot of questions. So today, let’s pick it up again and continue. I think the best place to start is with the very basics of training methodology. That means that we have to understand some basic ideas and philosophies.

Stress/Recovery Principle

There are lots of ways to describe the Stress/Recovery principle of training. You may have heard it referred to as the Supercompensation Principle and runners will describe it as the Hard/Easy Principle. Regardless of the title, the premise is the same. Your body likes to be in balance (homeostasis), and when you exercise above what you are used to doing, you break that balance. So, when we exercise at a harder intensity (or longer duration, or combination), it causes the body to be fatigued. The body is really good at adapting to a stressful situation, so it will begin to adapt and prepare itself for the next time it is exposed to that stress. In other words, it supercompensates to the work that it was exposed to. Now, if we recover from that work, we are becoming faster. If we never allow for recovery to hard work, or expose the body to hard work before it is ready, then we don’t see these adaptations and make it really hard for our bodies to adapt. In most cases, we are sick, injured, or burned out in several weeks.

So, in short, for all the hard work you do, you have to recover a certain amount.

This idea can be sound for the 1-2 days right after a workout to the full year of training for different races. We’ll get into that later. For now, hard work has to be followed by recovery of some form and duration.

To close out this discussion of the principle, look at the figure above. While doing hard workouts too close to each other exposes the body to the stress too often, the opposite can be just as bad. If we only do a workout every 4-5 days, then we don’t expose the body to the stress often enough. This will mean long training segments to make marginal gains in fitness. It’s a delicate balance and means that you (and your coach), should learn over time what that balance looks like for you.

So what we just discussed was the most basic of situations. The question becomes how does that look over weeks or months? Luckily, the model can really show us how a week and even a while training cycle may look, depending on how you approach it. Below is great representation the 5 most common scenarios of how a runners training typically goes. This can represent a week or two, all the way up to an entire training segment.

Factors

Tradition says that a single bout of hard work take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours to recover from. Now, that’s a big range- from 1 to 3 days! Of course there’s a number of variables that affect that number. Most of these factors are within your control,

I received an interesting question from an HMM user. Essentially, the athlete asked about staying motivated as they had “passed their prime” and what kind of goals one should set. Personally, I was intrigued to explore this query for my own selfish reasons. As I write this, I still compete at a high level, but the people beating me are now much younger than me. There’s so much to dig deeper into here, so let’s break this up a little.

First off, I wondered about when people really start falling off their best performances. I’ve been coaching runners of varying abilities since 2006 and it seems (purely from observation) that performance didn’t necessarily decline drastically at a certain age. I came across a study by Zavorsky, et al. (2017) entitled “Declines in marathon performance: Sex differences in elite and recreational athletes.“

What the researchers did was look at finishing data for all age groups and gender from the NYC, Chicago, and Boston marathons between the years 2001 and 2016. Not a bad subject pool!

With that many subjects over such a long time, there is no doubt we could get a good makeup of performance as we age. Here’s some quick statistics:

* Fastest age group was 25 to 34 years old (big surprise, right?), with the average male champion being 28 years old and the average woman champ being 30 years old (almost 31).

* From ages 35 to 74, the average female age group winner dropped 2 minutes 33 seconds from the next youngest age group, while the average male dropped about 2:06.

* The median times only began to slow after the age of 50. After that, the rate of decline was similar between men and women.

This is all great, but what exactly does that mean for us?

To me, it means a couple things. The first is that the faster you are when you are younger, the more you will feel the effects of aging. Or, put another way, if you are a lifelong competitive athlete, the more likely you will drop off from your peak younger performance. Now, I say that based on what the the data says from a pure numbers standpoint. I think there is also a lot of reading between the lines that needs to occur. For one, most elite runners who “retire,” really do that. When most are done, they are just done. They don’t keep training as hard as they did. Heck, I know a lot of former competitors who haven’t raced at all since they left the professional scene. So, while the younger age groups will obviously dominate major road races, it does leave the door open for “middle aged” runners to move up the ranks in their age groups. It would be interesting to see how recreational runners in the 25-34 year age groups compared to the 35+ age groups.

Second..

…the median times never really dropped for 35-50 years old. I find this interesting as this is the biggest age range for people who are starting families, careers, are invested in a lot of other areas of life. To me is says that everyone here is probably very limited for time to train and can’t train to what their physiological potential is (we’ll go into this more). Beyond that, times do drop off, but I think this is only partly due to age and more to do with training. In short, if you are beyond that 35 year old age group and can invest into the right training, you can be highly competitive and not see a big drop in time. If you are a newer runner and above 35, then I would be very optimistic that you could improve well into your forties and fifties before reaching a plateau and inevitable decline in performance.

Why would I make a claim like that? Well, take a look at this graph from Jeff Horowitz’ book Ageless Strength: Strong and Fit for a Lifetime.

I get it. Sometimes you want to just run for the fun of it, or do a race with a loved one, or something like running a marathon in every county of every state (is that a ...