Running Back-to-Back Marathons

Audio Transcript

Coach Sinead: Hey everyone, Coach Sinead here with you for today’s episode of the Runners Connect podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me today, I hope you’re off to a great day so far, and that you enjoy this podcast, and take a little bit with you that helps you with your own running.

Today, we have a pretty interesting question from Scott on how to run back-to-back marathons.

Scott: Hi all. My name is Scott and I am from New Hampshire. Love your show and I’ve learned a lot.

I am a masters runner and a marathoner. I’ve completed 19 marathons and I just started running a marathon every 7 to 9 weeks for my quest for a 50-50.

My question to you is, I would like to run a back-to-back marathon in one weekend, covering two states.

Currently I reach 50 to 60 miles a week, with a short training cycle because of recovery and tapering.

I am wondering how I can build my muscle strength without injury, to be able to handle two marathons over one weekend.

I look forward to your response, and keep up the great show.

Coach Sinead: First of all Scott, I just want to say I am really impressed.

That is quite a feat to do 50 and 50, and it sounds like you’re well on your way to completing it.

But doing back-to-back marathons is certainly nothing to sneeze at, it’s quite a hard endeavor.

With the right training modifications, however, you can certainly prepare yourself to accomplish this.

I am going to talk about a few things you can do to change up your training, in preparation for two marathons in 48 hours.

The first thing I will say is that your training leading up to the races isn’t really going to change much in preparation for doing two races.

The same physiological principles you apply.

You’re really trying to focus on improving your ability to burn fat efficiently as fuel, and also improve your aerobic threshold.

So a lot of the same workouts will apply.

The only thing that you are going to change in preparation for this is you want to increase your mileage slightly.

The reasoning behind this is pretty straightforward.

The more you’re able to train, the more likely you are to succeed at doing two marathons in 48 hours.

Simply speaking, the higher your training volume, the easier it will be to run and recover from the first marathon, and then successfully complete the second marathon.

The way you want to increase your mileage is gradual.

Scott, you said that you do about 50 to 60 miles per week on average, so your highest week of mileage is probably around 60?

What you are going to want to do is increase that by 10% for a few weeks.

You’ll go from 60 to 66, and then you’ll increase that number by 10% to get 73 the next week.

Then after that, you will actually come down 10%. So you’ll go from a 73 mile week down to a 66 mile week.

What this does is that it allows your body to catch back up with you.

It ensures that you’re never exceeding your stress threshold and aren’t putting yourself at risk for injury.

So you want to follow this 10% for two weeks, and then down 10% for the third week until you get to your desired peak mileage.

For you Scott, going into this marathon, I would add somewhere between 5 to 10 miles to your peak mileage.

Because you average somewhere between 50 and 60 usually, I wouldn’t go more than 70 in preparation for this, because you certainly don’t want to be tired come race day.

I wouldn’t exceed about 70 miles, so once you get up to 70, you can stay there for a few weeks.

Keep it consistent and make sure that the third week continues to be a down week.

You want to come down 10%, and just follow that until you get to your taper.

Whether you do a 2-week taper or a 3-week taper, the taper will be exactly the same as if you were training for one marathon instead of two.

Another thing you should consider doing is running some of your workouts.

Some of your more intense runs, and your long runs back-to-back, really just pan caking those runs.

And this is going to obviously simulate the recovery and fatigue that you’re going to experience on this big race weekend of yours.

So for example, you could schedule a longer marathon pace tempo run the day before a moderate long run.

And again this is going to help simulate; running on tired legs, you don’t want to do this for every workout, or even every week.

I would just pick one or two weekends to implement this training technique, and make sure you schedule plenty of rest and easy recovery running after these back-to-back days.

This is because it is going to take you a few days to recover from doing two workouts back-to-back like that.

Scott, you did specifically ask how to build muscle strength in preparation for these two big races.

One thing I will say is that you do want to make sure you focus on core.

Your general core strength is absolutely paramount when it comes to a marathon, let alone two marathons back-to-back.

Oftentimes, when you see runners in the later stages of a marathon, you will see a lot of side to side motion with their arms.

I call it butter churning because it looks like they’re churning butter. And it’s just a lot of lateral movement with their arms.

This is because they do have some weakness in their core.

One more thing I will say about the training leading up to these races is that you should focus a little bit more on your general core strength.

You can do planks or you can do sit-ups

Just do a routine everyday or every other day that’s really going to build up that strength, and help your body to fall back on that strength when it becomes fatigued, as it inevitably will in the first marathon and then, especially so in the second marathon.

So do some more core work I would say.

You definitely want to make sure your midsection is nice and strong come race day, because this is going to allow your body to fall back on that strength when again that becomes tired.

Now I am going to talk a little bit about the race weekends.

When you are going to recover after your first race, you want to make sure you do this pretty promptly after you cross that finish line.

There are a few tips I’ll give you.

One is pretty obvious; it’s to hydrate as soon after your race as possible with some sort of electrolyte drink.

You can do Gatorade, you can do Nuun – whatever you prefer.

Just make sure you get some electrolytes and some fluids back in your system because you will have lost so much of that in the marathon itself.

You want to make sure that you get something with sugar in it, to stimulate that insulin response, and just help you get your fluids balance, help you get back those electrolytes that you’ve expended in that marathon, and help get that recovery process going a lot quicker.

Another thing I will say is to eat a small meal or a snack that contains something like a 4:1 ration of carbohydrates to protein.

If you can handle eating more than a small meal, definitely do that.

You want to get something in your system, and within about 30 minutes of crossing the finish line, even sooner if you can.

Just make sure that you are getting some sort of carbohydrate-rich snack in, right after you cross the line.

Again, that 30 minute window is paramount when it comes to recovery.

It’s really when your body is most responsive to those carbohydrates.

So make sure you do get a little bit of something in there, even if it has to be a banana and peanut butter, or some sort of shake.

If you can’t stomach a whole lot, just get a good, solid carbohydrate-rich snack in there.

Another thing I will say is to not skip the cool down; that is a recipe for a lot of lactic acid in your legs.

You want to make sure you do a quick cool down; it doesn’t need to be anything too lengthy.

You can do a light jog for 10 – 15 minutes and then be on your way.

But make sure you do some sort of jog because otherwise your body is going to have a hard time going from a pretty intense state, to a resting state.

That’s what the cool down is for.

It’s just to loosen your muscles back up and make that transition from an intense state to a resting state, a little more gradual.

After your cool down, do make sure that you stretch any major muscle groups and anything that you feel might be sore or tight.

You can also roll out any nagging injuries or prone areas.

Oftentimes after a marathon, the quads and the hamstrings are full of knots.

So you want to make sure that you roll out pretty well after the first marathon.

Make sure you do some stretching, some standard stretching, dynamic stretching, whatever you prefer, and some rolling out following your cool down.

You will want to roll out again later that afternoon or evening.

Make sure you do roll out at least twice that day just to ensure that you are getting blood flow to that area, and working out any knots that might have settled in your legs.

Another way you can get blood flow to the area and help reduce any inflammation from that first marathon is to do an ice bath as soon as you can after the race.

This is pretty easy; just get a bag of ice and fill up a bathtub and then just go in from the waist down.

That’s going to be a great way in to get blood to the area and help reduce inflammation.

Again, you’ll be thanking yourself a lot the next day for doing this.

You can do a couple ice baths that day, you can do one after your race, and then one that evening.

That’s again going to help expedite recovery and make sure that you are getting that information back down before you line up for your second race.

Another thing you can do is to take an Epsom salt bath before bed.

You can even mix the Epsom salts with an ice bath and just kill two birds with one stone there.

The Epsom salts are really going to help reduce inflammation and help push out any of the garbage in your legs, any of that lactic acid that is settled in your legs after that marathon.

Epsom salts are a great way to do that.

Another thing I will say, though I know Scott that, you being a veteran marathoner, probably already knows this but make sure that you are fueling very well that day, following your first race, and leading up to your second race.

You are going to have burned a lot of calories in that first marathon, and you need to make sure that you are replenishing all of your glycogen stores, really brewing up those stores in preparation for the next marathon.

A lot of simple carbs because by that point, your stomach will have gone through quite a lot of jostling in that first marathon, and it’s going to be a bit vulnerable.

So you don’t want to do anything too fibrous leading in to another marathon anyway.

So keep everything pretty simple.

Some nice, simple carbs, things that are easy to digest, easy on your stomach and couple that with a little bit of protein and you will be nice, ready to go come your second race day.

The last thing I’ll say is to try and get plenty of sleep; if you have a hard time getting good rest after a race like that as most oftentimes runners do.

You want to try and get a nap that day in the afternoon if at all possible, and then try and get as much sleep as you can that night.

If you can get about eight hours, that would be perfect, if you can get more, even better.

But try and make sure that you are getting plenty of sleep before that second race.

Sleep is when all of these vital processes take place. Make sure that you are getting quite a few ram cycles in there as you can.

Scott, thank you so much for submitting that question.

We’ve not gotten one quite like that yet and I really enjoyed answering that for you.

Wish you the best of luck with your 50 and 50 endeavor, and with this upcoming back-to-back marathon weekend you’ve got.

Again, if you have a question you would like one of our expert coaches to answer in an upcoming episode, you can submit it at runnersconnect.net/daily.

As always, we would love to hear from you and hope you have a lovely weekend. So please do feel free to submit whatever has you curious.

Thanks so much again for joining me today and I hope you have a fantastic run today.

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