Fitting Two Marathons in One Year

Audio Transcript

Michael: Hey Runners Connect fans. Today, we have a question about training for multiple marathons within a year.

Tiffany: Hi. This is Tiffany from Chicago and I have a question about training for multiple marathons within a year.

I’m about to do the first, my first marathon of 2017 in a few weeks, and my second marathon this year is going to be in October.

Normally, when I train for a marathon, I’m coming off of a fairly small base, so I start pretty much from scratch and train for about 18 weeks.

But going into the second run for the year, I’m not sure that I would need to do that, since I already have a pretty good base from the first one I’ve done this year.

I’m just wondering, how do I adjust that second block of training to compensate for that larger base that I’ve already built.

I appreciate you answering this question. Thanks a lot.

Michael: That’s a tremendous question and it really hits a very important point and that’s that, training is cumulative.

No training plan stands on its own unless it’s your very first time running, your very first time doing a training cycle. You must consider the previous cycle for the current one, so Tiffany I’m glad to hear that you’re doing that.

Now the most important thing, and I’ll touch on this several times throughout this podcast, is that you need to take adequate rest.

We typically prescribe roughly a three-week recovery period, post marathon. For some people, maybe they’re able to recover a little faster and then some people especially beginners, might take a little bit longer than that.

We typically average it out at right about three weeks, that includes rest, then includes perhaps some cross training and just some very light jogging to shake out the legs.

Now with a taper for a marathon, a two or three week taper, and then also a three week recovery period, you might lose some fitness, but you will gain that back pretty quickly.

It takes much longer than most people think to lose fitness.

It takes typically what we found and what most researchers found, is that it takes at least two weeks of absolutely no running to truly lose fitness, so that’s not really a concern.

You might feel a little bit rusty when you start to back up for the second cycle, but you haven’t really lost fitness, you just have to work back into it.

18 weeks is a really solid training block.

You don’t want any one training block to be way too long. Training can become a bit redundant, and you typically want to switch it up a little bit, especially if you have a six to eight month period before your marathon.

Maybe run some shorter races. You could even do a half marathon in there, or you could even do some shorter speed work and some 5ks and 10ks, but also, you can also do less running and maybe a little bit more cross training.

If you have more time, again that’s when you have more than four to five months before your marathon, and that gives you plenty of time to lower the mileage for a little bit of time, do some cross training or just do some different type of stuff, like I said 5ks, 10ks, even a half marathon in there.

Now in your case, 18 weeks would start in May or June, assuming your marathons in October, it’s currently April. Obviously it depends on exactly when in October, but we’ll assume it’s right around then.

You’ve got your marathon coming up and then you’ll have that three week recovery period afterward.

In this case, the next cycle would obviously begin quickly because those three weeks will roll right into May, so you want to take about a three week recovery period.

Then you’re going to have two weeks after that of, mostly easy running strides, some fartlek workouts, and that’s the one that we like to throw in there shortly after the recovery period.

That’s done because fartlek’s are not too terribly difficult, but kind of allow you to work up the mileage of your workouts without necessarily having a lot of intensity, so it’s a nice transition workout.

Then you get into a proper training block.

Biggest thing is you must be 100% recovered from the previous training and the marathon. Obviously, the marathon takes a while to recover from.

It’s 26.2 miles, it’s very tough on your body, and you’re going to be absolutely exhausted for quite a while after.

Of course, you have to recover from the marathon, but you want to make sure you recover from your previous training block as well.

This is especially the case if perhaps you overdid it, maybe you over-trained a little bit, did a little bit too high mileage, perhaps had a lot going on with your life: with work, family and didn’t recover well enough, then that’ll be a big case, where you need to make sure that you’re recovered properly from the previous cycle before you get into it the next one.

Now, you won’t have to build up extremely quickly when you’re in the second block.

You mostly want to take the last two months prior to your marathon, that’s your marathon specific phase.

It might be a little bit longer than that for some very experienced marathoners, but typically, it’s right around two months prior is when you start those quality long runs.

We do the steady long run combos, where we typically keep the long run lower than 20 miles, but have a steady the day before, forward to six miles at steady pace, to simulate getting a lot of volume within a 36 hour period, without the strain of a 22, 24 mile run.

Also, those long marathon specific type workouts, can be fit in those last two months as well.

One of the big ones is the two by six mile workout; it’s a tremendous marathon workout. We typically fit that in somewhere in the last month and a half, or two months prior to the goal race.

The first two months of your cycle will be about building up your mileage in your workouts.

This is just to prepare for the marathon specific phase; that’s one way to think about it.

Each phase is to prepare you for the next one, which all the phases are ultimately preparing you for the race, of course.

Now you mentioned that you normally coming off as small based, that definitely won’t be the case here, because let’s assume you did an 18 week block for your previous marathon as well, then that’s definitely going to carry over.

You don’t start from scratch when you were going right into another cycle; you really aren’t starting from scratch. That fitness from the previous training block in the marathon is going to carry over into this second one as well.

In terms of how to adjust the second block for the first block, the most important, as I’ve mentioned several times, is that you need to recover from the first one.

You cannot train properly until you’ve recovered properly from, both the race and the training leading into the race, which might take some time.

Once you’re recovered, you might be able to build up faster.

The reason I say this is because, you already had a training cycle where you built up your mileage, built up your workouts, so your body’s gotten used to that, presumably.

Assuming you are recovering well, and assuming you took enough time after the marathon to recover, your body is pretty much used to that, so you don’t necessarily have to take the long approach.

Let’s say you were doing 40 miles a week in your previous cycle. You don’t have to say, “Okay, I’m going to start at 15 miles a week, then go up to 18 miles then 21, 24.”

You don’t have to do that because you have muscle memory, you’re already used to doing around 40 miles a week, so you can work up to that without having to go really, really slowly.

To recap, number one, training is cumulative.

You don’t go into a new training cycle completely bare, and you don’t go in starting from scratch.

All your training is cumulative.

The training you did before will absolutely roll over, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel like it when you’re first getting started in the new training cycle.

Second, 18 weeks is a great training block.

That’s right around what I would say, is more or less optimal when we’re talking about a marathon.

Any shorter and you just don’t have the time to fit in all the volume and the long runs and the workouts that are needed for a proper marathon.

Any longer and training can get a bit redundant and that’s when we recommend adding in some tune ups, maybe some shorter 5ks, 10ks or at least a half marathon in there.

Third, you can build up relatively quickly in this second cycle.

You’ve already done a good amount of volume in your previous cycle and you can build up to that same volume relatively quickly.

That’s not to say you want to jump right back in as using the example of 40 miles a week. You don’t want to jump right back into 40 miles a week necessarily, but you don’t have to take the really long, slow approach to building up to that mileage.

Fourth, last but not least as I’ve said probably five times already in this podcast, you want to make sure that you recover.

You have to recover from the previous cycle and from the marathon which again, can take some time.

Again, our typical recommendation is about three weeks of mostly rest, very short, easy jogs, not even aiming for a specific pace.

You want to be very easy, very slow jogs on those days and then maybe some cross training in there too – some biking, some swimming.

Whatever you want to do, you can go on some hikes, and that’s a good way to help your body recover while getting some fun exercise, but basically anything you need to do to properly recover.

You don’t want to focus on your mileage; your weekly mileage during that time doesn’t matter at all. You just want to make sure that you’re fully recovered from the marathon and the previous training cycle.

Okay Runners Connect fans. That’s it for today.

Don’t forget to submit your questions at runnersconnect.net/daily-running-podcast. That’s runnersconnect.net/daily-running-podcast and we’ll feature your question on the show.

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