Run4PRs

www.run4prs.com Many athletes have the goal to run a BQ or Boston qualifying time. The qualifying times are listed on the Boston website and are progressive based on age. If you are under 35 on race day you need to run a 3:30 or faster if you are a female or a 3:00 or faster if you are a male. These are some quick times especially because you can only qualify in the marathon. Many runners say qualifying for Boston is their long term goal. We are going to do a deep dive on what it takes to get down to those times in the marathon. 

“I don’t like going slow on my easy days”

“I don’t like to do workouts”

“I don’t like long runs”

If you don’t enjoy the process, it’s going to be impossible to get to the outcome you want. 

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We are in the swing of offseason training and the last few podcasts we have talked about the importance of time off and recovery during this time of year after a big build up. However, once we get over those first few weeks off.. What should you be doing in the offseason? How should you reverse your taper? When should you start workouts again? All of these questions and more will be addressed in this episode!

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It can be so tempting to want to power through and continue to run base mileage a few days or even the day after a marathon. There is such a big build up to the marathon that the drastic change from training 7+ hours per week to basically doing nothing can feel weird. We want to be productive. We want to feel like we are working toward something. However, the time after the marathon is a time to be working on our recovery. We cannot peak forever. On social media or even people in our social circles it might seem like we know people who never take time off. Just because someone else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for you to be doing

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Worrying is suffering twice :) We have all been there. We all get nervous on race day to an extent. Some suffer from more race day anxiety than others. We care about your performances. We put a lot of time and energy into our training, and we hope that it all pays off on race day. It is good to care about your running, but we don’t want to be so nervous for a race that it makes us miserable! Today we are going to be chatting about ways to find zen and peace in the days and weeks leading up to race day!The first step is admitting you have a problem! I like to find what my triggers are and things that really make the race day anxiety worse.

www.run4prs.com We always hear about time goals. I want to break 4 hours in the marathon. I think I can run X pace for this race… but what about non-time based goals? Are there other ways to set goals for your races? Is there a benefit to setting non-time based goals? 

Time goals are great for figuring out about what pace you want to run for the race, but what if you have a rocky day. You don’t want to feel like a failure if you don’t hit an arbitrary time goal.

YOU PUT IN SO MUCH WORK & already are a big winner! The training is the hardest part of things. You committed to something and worked hard to get there. Race day is a hard day but it is a cherry on top of the training cycle.

What did NOT go well!

Do you have a marathon coming up? Here is a recast of the 'how you should feel every mile of the marathon'

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Fall races are approaching quickly and people often want to begin talking about goal times for their races. There are websites like findmymarathon.com that have mile by mile breakdown of exactly what pace you should be running for each and every mile of a race based on course elevation. This is great to think about the variations of paces you might hit in a race, but it is important to remember that we are not robots. Unfortunately there isn’t a special formula that will work to know exactly what pace you will or should hit per mile because each mile might feel different to you personally. The weather, wind, mentally, water stops, etc can all impact how you are pacing.

Instead of focusing on mile by mile what pace you should be hitting we have a different approach we want our athletes to use. We are talking about speed limits at certain points during the race. We also want to spend these final weeks really visualizing and mentally preparing for how we want to feel at each mile of the race.

www.run4prs.com As we get closer to fall races, more athletes are getting ready to run their fall races. As we get closer to these races, it is good to talk about one of the most important parts of your training plan: the taper! What exactly is the taper? It’s not exactly a time to kick back and relax/do nothing. The taper is going to give you a chance to peak for your race at the right time. If you do too short of a taper, you run the risk of feeling heavy legs on race day. If you do too long or extreme of a taper, you might feel out of the swing of things when the gun goes off on race day. We will be tapering by reducing the volume but keeping in some intensity so that your legs still have the bounce in them. During the taper, you may feel worse because your body is in recovery mode. This might cause athletes to freak out mentally, but don’t worry! This is all apart of the process.

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Whenever we get into marathon training season we start to see a lot of questions roll in about long runs. Often people focus a lot on that long run because when we do the actual marathon event, it is a LONG RUN! However, we often see people overemphasis this long run and it can cause athletes to compromise the rest of their training. The question we want to be asking ourselves as we gear up for the marathon is always: am I training… or am I testing? It can be tempting to hammer out 20 miles at marathon pace, but what is the purpose of that run? Is it what is best for our overall fitness? Or are we simply hoping to see where our fitness is at or boost confidence for race day?

The rationale is that after 2.5-3 hours, metabolic adaptations reach a point of diminishing returns.

Every training decision is a balance of risk vs reward-

-Individual factors also affect recovery from long runs:

Adequate preparation -but not excessive – is key in the marathon. Periodize your training to prioritize race readiness

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Many times we find training plans online or we do workouts that feel good/that we are good at, but is that the most productive way to be training? We are all about taking a deeper dive into the purpose behind workouts and uncovering the best way to actually reach your goals. Too often athletes get stuck feeling burnt out or frustrated thinking that they ‘peaked’ with their running/fitness but they are just not training in a way that allows them to progress. We need two very important things to progress: Stress and rest. When we have an imbalance or inadequacy of either of these, we will not see the progress we are hoping for.