Preventing Mid-Race Dead Legs

Audio Transcript

Coach Dylan: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast. Today will be answering a question from Marcus.

Marcus: Hi. I am getting ready to run the Chicago marathon and I made some changes within my training this year using more building up my legs, my quads. [inaudible 00:00:38-42] Is there anything else that I should be worried about or concerned about? Thanks

Dylan: Marcus has a fantastic question about dead legs and sored tired quads late in the race of a marathon. How can we help this?

Thank you for submitting your question and actually, a lot of people have this issue when running the marathon.

I can attest that my very first marathon which was at the California International Marathon last December, didn’t go as well as I had planned.

Unfortunately, I had neglected to follow my race plan and I didn’t do enough strength training as you did in I pushed those downhill sections of the race too hard.

For any of those of you who have run in full some more Sacramento, you know that there’s a lot of rolling hills and my strategy was roll the down hills, catch back up on the ups, roll the downhills, and that did not work out.

It worked out for about 22 miles. Very similar to a lot of your guys experiences. But what I neglected was that running downhill really takes a lot out of your quads and I was just letting loose.

I was just rolling, and I felt good and it was my first marathon. I was rolling on as high, I was just ready to do it. I thought my first one was going to be awesome and was going to be epic.

Well I paid the price. I went out too hard, I didn’t listen to my coaches, I didn’t think to take in all the nutritional needs that I wanted and what happened was once those down hills stopped around mile 22, I felt like I was running in sand.

It made for very tough four miles and a tough recovery coming back from the marathon.

Now Marcus, I understand that you didn’t have this problem necessarily. You came into the race with a good amount of strength training to prepare yourself for the pounding of the marathon.

While you did your lunges and you did some strength work and your hip extensions, those are all great exercises.

That’s to ensure that over the course of that long period of time, those 2,3,4, however many hours that we’re on the course, our bodies are able to effectively combat that fatigue that we are trying to delay.

Looking at your take on this and your experience, I’d have to ask you one question. How was your nutrition during the race?

It could have gone really well, but what I’ve noticed is that when we miss those early miles of taking those gels, carbohydrate, beverage, or our water, we pay for it later.

The goal here is to focus early and often.

If we can get our nutritional supplements in, then ideally, we’ll be able to maintain energy and enough lubrication to our muscles later in the race, when things start to get extremely tough.

This is not all circumstances.

A lot of times when we become dehydrated or we’re lacking enough electrolytes, we tend to have the areas in which our muscles work the most (so our large major mover muscles such as our quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and our glutes) those are the muscles that go first.

Those are the muscles that take most of the pounding. They require a lot of energy and they give us a lot of energy back in return, in terms of our running.

Those are the muscles that are usually the first to go when it comes to feeling that fatigue, overall amount of pain, and cramping in that area.

This is important especially if you’re a heavy sweater or even if you’re running somewhere that is not as humid and you’re still losing water or even if it’s hot or cold, you still need to hydrate.

Hydration is the easiest thing to do to ensure that your racing goes as smoothly as possible. Maybe you won’t hit your goal time or maybe you do. You should still focus on your hydration, it’s the easiest thing we can.

We can always put that into our races to ensure that we check that box, that’s not where we went wrong.

It’s been a week or so after the Chicago Marathon and I think that you should reevaluate your nutritional plan and how well you did from mile to mile over the course of 26 miles.

If you found yourself not fueling very well early on, that could have been a contributor. Maybe it’s not the entire or the largest factor contributing to cramping in your legs, but it could certainly play a role.

I would look over that and see what you could do next time and how you would make that better for yourself.

Now in terms of your weight training regimen.

We’ve talked a lot about weight training this week and a lot about mobility, efficiency, economy, and how your muscles benefit from weight training, and how we can use that for marathon training.

A lot of us used to come from mindsets where they will just run as much as we can. We’ll run some hills and will become strong and run good marathons.

For some people that might be true and that could work a lot, and that’s work for a lot of the old greats.

That’s a good strategy for some people but for most us, we need to have maintenance work inside the gym, home, or wherever we can really get enough of that all-encompassing workouts to allow us to recover better, run faster, and run faster longer.

How do we do this? I think all the work that you did adds up and allowed your training to be healthier and you got to line happy and healthy.

I think that we can take that a step further doing heavier squats or dead lifts or other kind of explosive activities that will allow your body to create a resiliency, more mitochondria, create more energy, to allow you to be able to recover faster, stronger, and be more forceful on the run.

It’s important that we work our way up to this. I don’t recommend anybody to go in unguided into the gym or at home and put a 45-pound bar on your back and stack a couple plates on there.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that over the course of a marathon, I think that we should start slow, doing bodyweight exercises. Those are great and are going to keep us healthy.

I think if we can add some weight over time, we can create more of a resistance to this overlying fatigue that is there in the marathon.

Our body is constantly fighting to stay stronger for longer. I think what you can focus on now is just making sure that you have a nice progression.

Over time, you can add more weights and get stronger.

I would take advantage of all the resources we could provide. If you can find an awesome strength coach or people who [00:08:23] with, take advantage of that because ideally you want to finish a marathon when your legs feel fresh.

We’ve looked over nutrition and over our weight training technique, and our weights running regimen. Now you’re asking, “Well I’ve done all that, what else can I do?

I think a lot of it goes into racing strategy as well. A lot of us have lawfully goals and that’s OK to shoot high sometimes. Sometimes we got a reel it in and understand that we need to be patient.

The marathon is an extremely long event and if we overcook that first 10K, it’s going to be very hard to finish that last 10k as fast as you like. So, on your next marathon, (and this is for everybody who is listening), I would recommend positives.

There are always positives to take away from every race and there’s always ways in which we can prove. Nobody’s race will ever go completely perfect; it’s just not going to happen.

There’s always something or some mistake or decision that we made prior, during, or it’s not going to be ideal and we understand that, but we can grow as individuals and make sure that the next one is going to be good.

After that we can just continue making progressions. That’s what running is about. It’s about finding what works and what doesn’t and then developing that into a solid race plan to be as successful as possible.

Then again, I’m going to refer you to how we view the marathon and what’s actually been proven in terms of pacing.

You’ve got to look at your training and understand realistically and talk to us as coaches and say hey where am I at? What do you think I can run and what is a smart goal to start off my race and how should I approach this race?

Well I think you go into the race and instead of overcooking those first 10K, you run slightly slower than goal pace for about a half a marathon.

If we’re on pace or just a little bit slow through the halfway point and we’re feeling good, we can make those adjustments and pick it up through those middle miles and really close it out hard.

The goal is to finish the marathon on two feet and feeling really good and strong and knowing that we gave it everything we had, and we executed our race plan to a tee.

I would much rather have a race where I started off a little slow, conservative, patient in those early miles and I enjoyed it and I soaked it in and I felt good, and I finished strong and felt awesome.

I knew that next time I can push a little harder and go a little faster and next time my goal is going to be this instead of that, rather than yes, I had a good race for 18,20 or 22 miles and then I blew up.

I think that for your next race Marcus, we kind of try to reshape our mindset and rethink our goals. Maybe for your next marathon, your goal is to just relax early on and make sure that you check all your boxes early on the race nutritional etc.

Make sure you do your weight training; keep on doing that. I think you’re doing a phenomenal job there.

Please don’t take that as my suggestions earlier as you know that you weren’t doing things incorrectly. I was just giving a suggestion that we could always make improvements.

I think you have a nice base on you in terms of your weight training. Now we can make another step forward.

Thank you so much Marcus for your questions today and for taking the time out of your day to help others and help yourself. Thanks guys.

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