Stress Fracture and Elliptical Training

Audio Transcript

Christine: I am slowly healing a stress fracture in metatarsal number two. I can only do elliptical as I have no access to swimming. I normally run Jeff Gaudette’s half marathon training plan in his sub 3:30 marathon training plan, so I am familiar with all the aspects of the running. My half marathon times are 1:35 to 1:39 and my full marathon is 3:29. I’m a female age 50. Please suggest comparable elliptical plans for the half in marathon training with the levels, programs and speeds, on the elliptical for speedwork temples, long runs and of course the rest days that are typically in the half in marathon training plans. Thanks and have a great day.

Tina Muir: There’s a lot to go over there and as much as I would love to be able to give specifics, it’s very difficult for me to give exact recommendations as it depends on so many factors.

Different machines have different numbers of levels, et cetera. Firstly, I recommend that if you can, try to switch up the pool and the elliptical, not only does the elliptical get boring very quickly, but pool running actually will mimic the running muscles a lot better than the elliptical will. You will be able to maintain that neuromuscular fitness much better, so when you do come out of the pool or come off this injury you will have maintained a lot more of your fitness.

Now I know that pool running is boring, pool running makes you feel weird and people stare at you but if you really want to keep the best of your fitness, I recommend considering that and we have lots of great articles on how to pool run with recommendations from Lynda Huey who has worked with lots of Olympians on how to pool run correctly.

Just go to runnersconnect.net/blog and use the search bar to search for the pool running articles there and hopefully that will give you some more specifics on how to do it. Okay, I will get back to this elliptical question now because I know that is the question you asked.

Firstly, I would say that you want to turn it up to around halfway to two thirds of the difficulty level for most days. As I mentioned, it’s difficult for me to give specific recommendations of levels and resistance, but that should give you enough of a workout and you should be able to move your legs about the same speed you would run.

If you think about it, when you are trying to run on an elliptical or use an elliptical, you want to keep that same kind of cadence as the same as what you would running. You won’t think about how your legs and how your body feels when you’re running and try and mimic that as much as you can which should be around half to two thirds along the resistance levels.

On your workout days, I recommend turning it up one to two levels to make it a bit more difficult just because you will be moving your legs a lot faster. You want to avoid getting to the point to where, have you ever been riding a bike up a hill and you haven’t changed the gears and you end up gritting your teeth to try and keep the wheels moving. You’re not really getting much out of it. Your cords are burning but you’re rotating the tires so slowly that you’re barely going anywhere. You want to avoid that. You want to keep it kind of similar to running.

Now, when it comes to the workouts, you want to pretty much mimic what you’re doing on land, and I will explain what I mean by that in a second but I also would add an additional workout per week of shorter repeats, because your body is going to recover a lot quicker without the impact of running. When I say a shorter repeat, extra workout, I would say to do something for example like three minute, two minute, one minute hard with one minute recovery in between four times.

To explain that, that would be, you would run three minutes hard, one minute recovery, two minutes hard, one minute recovery, one minute hard, one minute recovery and then repeat four times.

You could also do things like three by five minutes, or one, two, three, four, five; five, four, three, two, one. Just kind of change it up with the number of minutes depending on what you want to do, what you feel like doing. Some days motivating yourself to do the longer repeats is difficult so I would maybe do some of the shorter ones, maybe 10 by a minute, 15 by a minute, but you want to just add that in somewhere.

Then when it comes to your regular workout, so as I mentioned, you want to kind of mimic what you’re doing on land. If you were in marathon training and let’s say you had six by a mile on your schedule, and you run around 10 minutes per mile during those workout days. On those days you would do six by ten minutes hard with whatever you would have for recovery, maybe three minutes, five minutes, whatever it will be, nice and easy.

You want to do your regular warm up, so if you usually warm up for ten minutes, do twenty minutes warm up. Just try and mimic it as much as you possibly can, and I would recommend adding a third to a half of your “run” extra on your easy days. If your easy day is usually 45 minutes I would consider adding 10 to 15 maybe even 20 minutes extra just to get in the extra cardio.

When it comes to the long runs, I’m sorry to say but you just kind of have to grind it out. If you are up to like three hours on your long runs, you’re just going to have to get out there and do three hours on the elliptical or this is really where I would recommend changing it up.

Maybe doing an hour and a half on the elliptical and then going straight to the pool and doing an hour and a half in there. You really want to make sure you get that three hours of straight cardio, as that’s the best way to keep in shape.

Once again, this is really where pool running will come in helpful. You can also do swimming because that will strengthen your lungs, which is going to help you, but again pool running combined with the elliptical is probably the best way to go.

One more thing I want to add is, that you really need to listen to the cross training podcast if you are in any situation where you are injured right now and you are cross training, because I know how frustrating and depressing it can be when you’re injured. If you listen to that podcast episode, not only will you be confident you can keep your fitness, and not only will you be given great advice from Lynda Huey, Darren Brown, and Alan Webb, but you will also feel a lot better about what you’re doing and how it’s actually going to help you.

You can find that at runnersconnect.net/crosstrain. Okay, I think I’ve answered that question, and I want to thank you guys for listening today. If you have enjoyed the episode, I really hope you’ll consider giving us a rating and a review. The reviews and the ratings help us to move up iTunes so that more runners can get access to these questions and all of us know it feels good to help other runners feel better about themselves.

If you have a question you would like to ask, you can go to runnersconnect.net/daily and you can either record a voice recording of your question or you can type it in through an email to either Jeff, myself, Danny or Clare. We will answer it right here for you, so be sure to check in soon. Have a great week.