Altering Marathon Training After Injury

Audio Transcript

Claire: Hi everyone. This is Coach Claire and welcome to the Runners Connect, Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.

Today we have a very interesting question from Christina.

Christina: Hi! My name’s Christina, I’m in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada and I have a marathon training question.

I was recently to start a 20 week marathon training program, but unfortunately the week before, I was in a car accident.

No major injuries, but I was told to take it easy for a few weeks due to muscle soreness.

My question is, when I’m ready to start back into training, how do I best approach this? Do I start at the very beginning, just shortening my training closer to the marathon?

If the training program was having me increase my long distance runs by say, a mile each week, do I double that up to two miles each week till I’m cut up to where I was supposed to be?

Or do I skip those first few weeks and just dive in right where I’m supposed to be or was scheduled to be, if I hadn’t taken that time off? Or I guess another option is, do I scrap off that training program and try to find one that works with my new timeline?

Any help you could give me would be much appreciated as I’m not ready to give up on this marathon and hoping to still run it so thank you.

Claire: Thanks for reaching out Christina.

First of all, I am glad to hear that you are okay from your accident. I can only imagine how scary that must have been and thankfully it sounds like your injuries are minor.

Without knowing your training history, age and running experience, it’s difficult for me to give you an easy answer to your question, so I’m going to go through a few scenarios and hopefully you will find out what works for you.

If you are an intermediate runner or a new runner that’s in relatively good shape, a 20 week training program or five months is typically enough time to be fully prepared for the marathon distance.

An experienced runner may only build up for 12 or 16 weeks and then there are those marathon maniacs that run a marathon every month.

Let’s assume that you’re not one of those, then how do you know what plan is right for you? Well, the beauty of a 20 week training program is that it’s forgiving.

If you happen to have other things going on in your life besides just running and I hope you do, the 20 week plan allows enough flexibility to move a few runs around, adjust if you get sick or injured, or even if you get hurt like in your case Christina.

No matter what your experience or fitness, jumping right back into a pre-written and adjustable plan after an extended break is not a smart idea.

All good running plans allow for a build-up or a progression of your fitness. It’s not only building up your mileage at a slow and steady pace, but it should be working the different physiological systems of your body with the speed work, long runs and a generous helping of easy runs.

Simply skipping ahead on a pre-set plan is not what the coach who wrote the plan had in mind, and it’s a recipe for injury and being completely over your head.

The same goes for piling on extra mileage for the sake of catching up.

The 20 week plan that you’ve picked out allowed for a reasonable accumulation of mileage, so trying to hurry up that process is probably not a great idea.

What I’m hoping for you Christina is that you can still keep up some aerobics fitness while you heal from the accident.

If you can jog, or walk, or swim, or bike, or, swim, or aqua jog during your recovery, that will go a long way to keeping up your aerobic fitness.

The marathon is almost a completely aerobic event, so the bigger your aerobic engine is, the better you will handle the training and ultimately the race.

Let’s say you are a complete beginner, and like so many people, decided to set a big goal for yourself and train for a marathon.

Maybe you started running or maybe you have run a few 5 Ks or a half and figured that signing up for a marathon is a fantastic bucket list item that you are ready to conquer.

I know exactly what that’s like because that’s sort of the way I started.

I trained on my own for a half and after that race, I decided I was all in for the marathon. No 5Ks, no 10Ks, no fun run where they throw coloured chalk at you.

I was going to train for the marathon and that was that.

I searched for a marathon training plan online and waited through my options. That experience alone should have been enough to deter me from doing it.

I basically threw a dart at the wall and picked one. Half way through my training I knew it wasn’t the right training plan for me, so I switched to something else.

I ran that first marathon and I did okay, but I knew I needed a lot more help if I wanted to improve.

Now not every runner needs a coach to run a marathon.

I ran a marathon with an online plan and I did fine, but I turned to Runners Connect coaching when I wanted to improve.

If you’re not interested or ready for a coach, how do you find the right online plan for you?

The first way is to have realistic expectations. There is no perfect drive through plan that’s going to work for everybody who pays for it.

You will have to modify any existing plan on your own, to fit your needs no matter what your experience or fitness level.

When something unexpected happens like this accident, you will have to adapt the plan to fit what’s going on in your life.

How do you do that? How do you adapt a 20 week plan to a 16 week plan or 12 week plan or however long you need?

The truth is, without seeing the plan and knowing your fitness age and experience, I can’t tell you through this podcast how to make that work exactly.

If you can find a different plan that will work with the fitness level that you have when you are ready to begin training again, that is much easier than trying to modify something else on your own.

Other factors to consider is how much, if any, fitness you will lose while you are recuperating.

If you can’t train at all for a month, then that will be a much different starting point than if you were able to run easy and strength train, or aqua jog during your recovery.

If all of this still seems confusing and you need more individualized advice, I would highly recommend checking out Runners Connect coaching.

We would love to help you achieve your goals and help you train for the marathon, with a custom training plan that works just for you with coach support on every workout, and not to mention an amazing community of athletes, of every age and ability cheering you on.

I hope that helped, Christina and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

If you enjoyed this episode and have not gone and left a review on iTunes, please go do that for us as that would make a big difference in how many episodes that we can keep bringing to runners like you.

Have a great run today.

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