Shorter Races Between Marathons

Audio Transcript

Coach Michael: Hey Runner Connect fans. Welcome to the Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast. I’m here to answer your training and racing questions.

Today we have a question from Jill.

Jill: I have completed full marathon training for basically three cycles in a row, fall 2016, Spring 2017, and now Fall 2017.

You recommend a spring half as opposed to another full. I signed up for a trail race in January and one in February. I can choose anywhere from 10-50K.

I’ve never done trail racing before so I’m not sure which distance to choose. My overall focus is to improve my full marathon time but I’m feeling like I need to switch it up a little.

What are your recommendations for the spring? When should I cue in my next full? Thanks.

Michael: That’s a great question Jill and something I really like talking about because it’s very important thing. It is very important question to ask yourself is when do I ought to change things up a little bit?

The human body responds really well to different stimuli. This is well understood, and most people get this but for whatever reason, we don’t often apply it in running.

We’ll do the same training cycle, the same everything, twice a year for a marathon, train for three to four months, and never change things up.

Often people will be caught in this huge rut of marathon training though they’ll stagnate their performances, they’ll run the same times, and it’s so obvious.

I think the answer is so obvious but unfortunately, it’s k hard to see it coming and not to mention you feel like it there’s an opportunity cost there and you’re missing out on the marathons.

Let’s say you love to run Boston or New York every single year and doing something like this where you change things up, would potentially involve missing one of those really big marathons that maybe you’ve done several times or missing a marathon that your friends are doing.

I understand that there’s opportunities that you’re going to have to kind of say no to, but I think it’s going to really help your marathon training and will talk about that today.

I think the trail races are a great idea.

I think that’s really something cool to change things up. Let’s say you decide to do marathon training and decide, you’ll be running a half. It’s great you don’t change things up but at the same time, what are you going to do?

You’re probably going to compare it to your full and you’re going to end up comparing it to the marathon. It’s going to be like two sides of the same coin once it comes down to it.

Trail races are a great opportunity to do something different and something that you’re going to have to change up the training so much for.

A trail marathon is so vastly different from a real marathon that you can’t even compare the two.

I think that’s a great idea. In terms of the distances, I would not do both. I would recommend doing one of them as a 10K. I think that’d be a great opportunity.

Now we’re talking about something that is so vastly different from a road marathon, that it’s going to be just a different stimulus on your body.

You’re going to 10K which is crazy different from the marathon and then you’re also doing it on trail.

I think do one of them as 10K and then the other one you can do a little bit longer.

I still wouldn’t do anything crazy long at this point because I think you’re going to be training for a spring half and I think focusing on some shorter stuff during this time makes more sense.

I agree with focusing on a half for the spring. I think the training is different enough that you’re going to have a different focus, you are going to work on some different energy systems, and I think it’ll ultimately end up helping your marathon.

I do want to talk about shorter races.

I am a huge proponent of people who are generally doing half and full marathon training. Half training is different from for marathon training.

What I recommend a lot for people that are doing half, and full marathon training is to do some very short races.

Do some 5Ks or 10Ks. Go find a road 8K.

People who ran the Richmond marathon and half, just this past week, saw that there was an awesome 8K there that’s fast; it’s got like a downhill finish, there’s a great opportunity to go get a nice fast 8K time that you never run.

No one runs 8Ks very often.

Find a mile race. Road miles are becoming crazy popular nowadays. The reason this works so well is because you’re going to work some different energy systems. You’re going to give your body something entirely different.

You’re also going to work on your short end speed, you’re running economy, you’re running form, and all of that ultimately will translate up to the longer stuff.

There’s really nothing to lose because if you’re training for a 5K and a 10K, the good thing is those are still very heavily aerobic events. It’s not like you’re it’s like you’re becoming a 400-meter star.

You’re keeping up with the distance stuff, the aerobics stuff that the tempos and the threshold and somewhat long runs, but you’re really adding in some real quick speed work, some heavy turnover stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily be doing is often a marathon training.

I want to talk really quick about Ryan Hall, who’s the American recordholder in the marathon. He’s also run the fastest marathon time ever by an American. It was Boston and it was like there was a huge back wind, so it was an illegal time, but he ran like 204.

Ryan is regarded as one of the best American marathoner of all time and one of the best American distance runners of at any distance.

What he did and the reason he’s relevant to this topic is that, Ryan Hall moved to the marathon at a relatively young age. I don’t know how old he was, but he was young.

Most Americans will go on the track and run in the N.C.A.A. in college and then for several years after college, they’ll stick to the track. You can see Galen Rupp doing this right now.

I believe Rupp is maybe 31-32 at this point and he is obviously now gearing up for the marathon and is doing well.

He graduated college in 2009. For seven years, he’s been just doing the track and now is moving up the marathon.

Ryan Hall on the other hand, moved up much earlier.

He moved up when he was young, and a lot of people think that it was an issue for him because he moved up and moved up so seriously; he had such huge success right away that he got in one of these ruts.

He was just one marathon training, just a year in year out, month in month out, week in week out that the few times that he did try to come back to some shorter stuff, but he was awful like relative to where he was at before.

Ultimately, he couldn’t use those to really help his marathon training. It’s something he tried to do late in his career but unfortunately, it was just too late. He was too far gone although he had myriad other issues as well.

Nonetheless, he’s a good example in an in needing to just take a little break and forego some marathons. Take six months of the year or even a full year and focus on short stuff and it’s going to be fun as well

You can run 5Ks every other weekend if you want to. I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily to do that all the time, but it’s something you can do.

Run a lot of races, have a lot of fun, go win some local races, but either way you can go have some fun. Get yourself out of the rut and it will help your marathon overall.

Runner Connect fans. That’s it for today. Thank you so much for joining me this week. I had a lot of fun. Don’t forget to submit your questions at runnersconnect.net/daily and we’ll feature a question on the show.