What to Do Between Marathons

Audio Transcript

Coach Dylan: Hey Runners Connect fans and friends. Welcome to another episode of Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.

Today’s question comes from Susan who says that she’s a distance runner at heart but over the summer, she likes focusing on the 5k or 10K to build speed or power.

That is a great statement and for those of you who want to dive a little bit deeper into this, I’m more than happy to get into it, because I think that is just awesome Susan.

Everyone who trains for the marathon should have a season where they focus on what they enjoy, focus on a distance that is going to build their strength up and build their speed and power, for the marathon.

First off, it’s always great to focus on something that you enjoy doing.

If you enjoy training for the mile, or you enjoy training for the 5K or 10K, I think you should find time throughout the year to do it.

If you are like Susan, a distance runner at heart like many of us are, it’s good to let our minds and our bodies relax every once in a while.

Focus on shorter distances to build up resilience and stronger energy systems. This way, when we go into marathon training, we’re more prepared and we’re ready to run fast.

As many of us know, the marathon training build up is very long and very hard. We have a lot of bad days and we have a lot of good days as well.

With the marathon, comes increased mileage and for a lot of us, that comes with the increased risk of injury.

Of course, the marathon takes a big emotional toll from us to where when we finish our marathon.

Sometimes it takes our bodies a few weeks, maybe even a month to recover from getting back to where we were before, and it takes another month or two to get back into fast fitness, to feeling good again.

For those of you who run marathons back to back, that is awesome and I reward you for grinding it out and having great resilience, when it comes to doing the distance.

I think that in marathon training and as we do it Runners Connect, we always build in a speed phase.

We build it so that we test those energy systems and get our turnover going.

We’re ready to run fast, we’re getting strong, we’re building our strength, so that when we make that build up, it’s condensed.

It’s not 24-hour weeks, it’s not 18 weeks and at the maximum, it’s usually 12 weeks of just specific marathon training work; maybe 16 for some.

But what we’re doing here is that we’re allowing our body to become accustomed to the training in a safer, lower volume, higher intensity way.

We’re getting nice and fit and ready to run quicker at the marathon distance.

For some, that doesn’t make a lot of sense because why would a 5K training or a 10K training make us run faster in the marathon?

That’s a great question but if you think about it, if you run as fast as you can for a 5K and then your fitness goes, and you run fast enough for a 10K, you are slowly building up the systems that haven’t been tested before, that just goes up the chain.

As you become more fit, you keep accumulating those strengths and you’re building that up and you’re running fast for a half and then finally on race day, for that marathon, you’ve had this great training block, you’ve worked all your systems, and you’re ready to roll and hopefully you’re doing it healthy.

To go even another step further, we really want you to reach your full potential so, training your 5K and 10K for systems can certainly help.

What you’re going to be doing, is you’re really working on increasing your efficiency.

The more efficient you can be at a lower distance, the more you’re going to be efficient at the longer distances as well.

We’re going to be building up a strength so that when we run the marathon, we don’t break down so late in the race.

We want to finish strong and all the way through without breaking down, whether it’s physiological, or metabolically.

Like I had said, we’re just increasing our fatigue resistance and we’re allowing for a recruitment of faster twitch muscle fibers which in a marathon race, late in the race when you’re really pushing hard and you’ve gone through all your stores, you actually recruit faster twitch muscle fibers, even though you’re running aerobically as faster twitch muscle fibers are going to be fired when you’re running anaerobically.

Like a 200 meter or 400 meter repeat.

It’s always good to work on those faster twitch muscle fibers because they will come into play, and they’re always in play, when it comes to running long distances and they’re very underdeveloped.

If we can develop those, we can provide a higher level of resistance when it comes to marathon training.

Susan, I think that was a great question. I like training for the 5K and 10K as well, before I go into my own marathon training.

It’s something I always do and focus on, off season. I’ll maybe run one or two marathons a year but everything else in between is just developing my weaknesses.

If we can develop our weaknesses and become faster and stronger and make those weaknesses a strength, then we’re going to become better runners.

We really have to find out where it is or what it is in our training that causes us to break down, or maybe it’s something that we don’t necessarily like as much, because we think we’re not good at it.

For example, I have never been great at 200, 400, 600,800 meter repeats.

Those have been the death of me especially those middle threshold, those V02 intervals, those eight hundred even a K.

In the offseason, I work at getting that 5K, 10K, sort of workouts and I knock them out.

I have to knock those out even if I don’t necessarily enjoy it, but I do enjoy it because it’s going to make me a better runner, and if you’re anything like me or like many of us out there listening to this today, we want to get the best out of ourselves.

To do so, we have to be willing to do everything we can to make ourselves better.

Susan, I think you should do what you enjoy and that’s a phenomenal question because first off, you should always do what you enjoy like I had said previously, and I think it’s going to make you a better runner.

I think you’re going to come out of 5K, 10K training and into that distance half marathon, marathon, whatever it is that you’re training for, and if you have a great cycle and you do everything correctly, I think that you’re going to see the benefits from that.

When you look at your training cycle again or your training period build up and you see your plan on paper, you’re going to trust it because you know it works.

If you know it works and you have that increased confidence, you’re going to be ready, excited, and ready to roll on race day.

Again, thank you Susan. That was a phenomenal question.

For those of you who tuned in today and want to have your question answered by one of the runners connect coaches, head over to runnersconnect.net/daily and click the record button to send your question.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode as I did and if you haven’t already, consider heading over to iTunes or your favorite podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review.

It would help us reach more runners like you.

Finally, I want to thank our sponsor.

Do you ever feel like you have to look over your shoulder when out running alone? [inaudible 00:00:29] safety device that is creating quite a lot of noise among the running community.

Run Angel is the first personal safety risk wearable that in event of an emergency, boasts a 120 decibels high pitched siren and it notifies loved ones by S.M.S. and E-mail showing the time, coordinates, and map link to your location.

If you’re not sure what 120 decibels sounds like, it’s loud. We’re talking standing in front of the speakers at a rock concert loud.

It’s a sound that can attract aid in the event of an injury or create an opportunity for you to escape if your personal safety is under threat.

Whether you are running by yourself or walking back to your car after an evening gym session, Run Angel was developed to be worn on the wrist for greater accessibility so you can stay safe whenever and wherever.

Visit bestbuy.com or buy directly from runangel.com where you can enter coupon code RunCon20 for 20% off purchases.

U.S. deliveries are free and if you’re listening to this in August or September of 2017, you can even get a limited edition hard-shell travel case throughout September.

Run Angel: Peace of mind redefined.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you haven’t already, considered heading over to I-Tunes or your favorite podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review.

It would help us reach more runners like you. Thank you