Marathon Training Tips

From How to Train for a Marathon, by tailwindnutrition, June 3, 2019, Tips & Tricks

Meet Chris

I’m Chris, Chief Training Officer at Galloway Training, RRCA Certified Coach, Boston Marathon qualifier, Ironman distance triathlete, and ultra-runner with 14 finishes at the Hardrock 100. I’ve coached thousands of runners through local Galloway Training Programs and Galloway Customized Training Plans offered online at JeffGalloway.com. My body stays in Florida most of the year, but my heart is forever in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

There are few things more empowering than finishing a marathon. Whether it’s your first, fastest, or fiftieth, every marathon finish is a reminder that big things are possible when you work on them step by step!

Know Where You Are

The first step in marathon training is taking an honest look at where you are in your fitness. At Galloway Training, we use a tool developed by Olympian Jeff Galloway called the Magic Mile. The idea is to run a mile (after a warm-up) as fast as you can without making yourself sick. Once you have that time, multiply it by 1.3 to see your predicted marathon pace.

Embrace the Run/Walk Approach

Walk breaks make marathon training less intimidating for beginners and slower runners. Rather than thinking about the 26 miles you have to cover, you can focus on the next few minutes you have to run before the next walk break. “I don’t know if I can run 10 more miles, but I know I can run for 2 more minutes!” is a common phrase I hear. Faster runners also benefit from the run/walk method because walk breaks keep your heart rate from spiking early in the run and therefore prevent your body from going anaerobic.

Rather than hitting a wall, run/walk marathoners often run faster in the last few miles of the race. With each walk break, runners enjoy a few seconds of recovery, allowing you to stay strong throughout the race, including those last few miles where it’s common to feel like you’re running with a piano on your back.

Set a Schedule

After determining your pace and run/walk ratio, you can chart a path to the marathon itself. Do this by scheduling a long run each weekend starting with the longest run you’ve had in the last month. Add a mile to your long run distance each weekend until you hit 10 miles. Then you can stretch your long run to every other weekend but add 2 miles each time (10, 12, 14, 16).

While your long runs should be significantly slower than your race pace (about 2 minutes per mile slower), the in-between weekends are good times to practice your race pace for a few miles (up to 8-10 miles if you’re serious about a time goal). When your long run reaches 16 miles, you can put 2 short weekends between long runs, and when your long run reaches 20, you can put 3 short weekends between long runs and increase the distance by 3 miles each time.

A typical weekend progression for a runner who currently has a 7-mile long run would be 7, 8, 9, 10, 5, 12, 5, 14, 5, 16, 5, 5, 18, 5, 5, 20, 5, 5, 5, 23, 5, 5, 5, 26, 5, 5, 5, marathon. That’s 28 weekends, so you can see why summer is not too early to start your winter marathon training!

How to Train with Less Time

Don’t have 28 weeks to train? No problem! You can jump-start your training by walking the “extra” distance you need for a long run. If your schedule calls for 16 miles, for example, and you’ve only run 7, you can walk 9 miles then run/walk 7 for a total of 16 miles. That effectively gives you the endurance you would have gotten from a 16-mile run without risking injury by increasing your running mileage too quickly. Once you’ve used this technique to get your training on track, you can pick up your schedule and continue through the marathon.

Incorporate Weekday Runs

While the long run is undoubtedly the cornerstone of marathon training, no runner can afford to rely solely on one run a week. Weekday runs are great times for hill work, cadence drills, form drills, acceleration-gliders, and speed work. Which of these you do and how often will depend on your specific race goals, but every runner should put in at least 2 runs during the week of at least 30 minutes each. Longer is fine, but weekday runs should not be so long that they cause you to be tired going into the weekend. It’s also fine to run more than two weekday runs, but every runner needs at least one rest day per week. If you can’t stand to take a day off, go for a long walk. It will still allow your running muscles to rest, and it will let you work on your walking pace, something run/walkers often neglect to their detriment.

Go the Distance

In addition to run/walk, I recommend a long run of at least race distance when training for a marathon. Many runners report a feeling of “hitting the wall” around 20 miles into a marathon, and it’s no coincidence that 20 miles is exactly how far most of those runners have gone in training. Pushing your long run to 26 miles reduces the likelihood of hitting the wall by increasing your endurance to the full race distance. It’s important to remember to keep your long runs at least 2 minutes per mile slower than predicted race pace. There is proof to show that runners who include a long run of 26 or even 29 miles in training hold their pace far more consistently than those who stop at 20.

Fuel for Success

Once you know how fast to run, how far to run and when to run, it is vital to practice for your race at every opportunity. That includes practicing and dialing in your race nutrition on your training runs. Unfortunately, marathons often choose hydration that doesn’t work very well. Often it’s too sweet, causing upset stomachs late in the race, or it neglects electrolytes that are vital to balance what our bodies lose through sweat.

For short runs, a single bottle of Tailwind Nutrition Endurance Fuel (2 scoops or 1 stick pack) should suffice. If it’s really hot, you’re a heavy sweater, or you’re going on a long run, you can create a concentrate to reduce the number of bottles you need to carry. This plan works great for marathon day as well – create a concentrated bottle of Endurance Fuel and grab extra water from aid stations to stay hydrated and dump on your head to stay cool. Endurance Fuel stick packs are easy to carry if you want to change flavors or add some caffeine throughout your race. There’s nothing like a kick of caffeine late in a race!

Don’t Forget Recovery

One of the great benefits of the above strategy is that run/walk marathoners recover much faster! Nevertheless, your body is going to remind you of your accomplishment with aches and pains after you finish a marathon.

Aches and pains can be greatly reduced with the right recovery strategy after your marathon. Some runners swear by chocolate milk and others insist on a beer, but both of those have more tradition behind them than science. Tailwind Nutrition Rebuild recovery is a much better choice to replenish glycogen stores, restore electrolytes, and start the healing process so your body doesn’t feel quite so much like it’s been hit by a truck.

Once you have the recovery process in motion, get your body back in motion by going for a walk. A few hours after your race, after you’re rehydrated and cleaned up, put on that finisher’s medal and go out on the town to show off your accomplishment and give your legs a chance to work out any lactic acid buildup from your race.

Walking a couple of easy miles a few hours after the marathon and repeating this the next morning will make a huge difference in how soon you are able to return to running (not to mention going down stairs without wincing)!

You’ve Got This

I’m often asked how much of running is physical and how much is mental, and I can honestly say that running is 100% physical and 100% mental. You have to do the physical work to train and prepare for a marathon. Without proper training, you might be able to finish the race, but you definitely won’t enjoy the experience. Likewise, you have to put your mind to work, both in visualizing your success and in believing in yourself throughout the process, including during the race itself.

The good news is that these two 100% important aspects feed off of each other. As you train physically, your mind accepts that you will succeed in your goal. As you grow in your belief in yourself, you are motivated to stay true to your training schedule and put in the miles each week that lead to race day. During the marathon, your strong body gives you confidence to run the pace for which you trained, and your strong mind keeps you focused to hang on even as you feel your legs getting heavy with effort.

Mile by mile and moment by moment you are accomplishing something as a marathoner that only a small percentage of the population ever achieves – not just a marathon finish, but a transformational experience, a clear message from you to the universe and from your body to your soul that you are not afraid of hard work and not intimidated by lofty goals because you know that any distance can be covered by those willing to take it step by step.

Eating for Endurance

Eating for Endurance:

What’s the best way to fuel for the Boston Marathon?

Should I eat a high fat diet to train my body to burn more fat and less glucose?

What percent of calories should come from carbohydrate? protein? fat?

When it comes to eating for endurance, today’s athletes are confronted with two opposing views:

- Eat a traditional carbohydrate-based sports diet, or
- Eat a fat-based diet that severely limits carbohydrate intake.

What should an eager marathoner, Ironman triathlete, or other endurance athlete eat to perform better? Here’s what you want to know about eating for endurance, based on the Joint Position Statement on Nutrition for Athletic Performance from the American College of Sports Medicine, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietietics, and Dietitians of Canada.

1. Eat enough calories.

Most athletes need ~21 calories per pound (45 cal/kg) of lean body mass (LBM). That means, if you weigh 150 pounds and have 10% body fat, your LBM is 135 pounds and you require about 2,800 calories a day. That said, energy needs vary from person to person, depending on how fidgety you are, how much you sit in front of a computer, how much muscle you have, etc. Hence, your body is actually your best calorie counter—more accurate than any formula or app!

If you eat intuitively—that is, you eat when you feel hunger and stop when feel content, you are likely eating enough. If you find yourself stopping eating just because you think you should, if you are feeling hungry all the time and are losing weight, you want to eat larger portions. Under-fueling is a needless way to hurt your performance.

If you can’t tell when enough food is enough, wait 10 to 20 minutes after eating and then, mindfully ask yourself “Does my body need more fuel?” Athletes who routinely stop eating just because they have finished their packet of oatmeal (or other pre-portioned allotment) can easily be under-fueled. Even dieting athletes want to surround their workouts with fuel. Their plan should be to eat enough during the day to fuel-up and refuel from workouts, and then eat just a little bit less at the end of the day, to lose weight when they are sleeping.

2. Eat enough carbohydrates.

According to the Position Statement on Nutrition for Athletic Performance, the optimal amount of carbohydrate on a day with one hour of training is 5 to 7 grams carb/kg. On high volume days, you need about 6 to 12 g carb/kg body weight. For a 150-pound (68 kg) athlete, this comes to about 350 to 800 grams carb a day—the equivalent of about one to two (1-lb) boxes of uncooked pasta (1,400 to 3,200 calories). That’s more than many of today’s (carb-phobic) athletes consume. You want to make grains the foundation of each meal: choose more oatmeal for breakfast; more sandwiches at lunch; and more rice at dinner to get three times more calories from carbs than from protein. Otherwise, you set the stage for needless fatigue.

3. Eat adequate—but not excess—protein.

Protein needs for athletes range from 1.4 g/kg (for mature athletes) to 2.0 g protein/kg (for athletes building muscle or dieting to lose fat). For a 150-pound (68 kg) athlete, protein needs come to about 95 to 135 grams protein per day, or 25 to 35 grams protein four times a day. That means 3 eggs at breakfast (with the bowl of oatmeal), a hearty sandwich at lunch, portion of lean meat/fish/chicken at dinner, and cottage cheese (with fruit) for an afternoon or bedtime snack.

For vegetarians, generous servings of beans, hummus, nuts and tofu at every meal can do the job; a light sprinkling of beans on a lunchtime salad will not. By consuming protein every 3 to 5 hours, you will optimize muscle building and deter muscle breakdown.

4. Fill in the calorie-gap with fat.

Include in each meal and snack some health-promoting, anti-inflammatory fat: nuts, salmon, peanut butter, avocado, olive oil, etc. Fat adds flavor, offers satiety, and is a source of fuel for endurance exercise. Training your muscles to burn more fat for fuel happens when you do long, steady “fat burning” exercise. By burning more fat, you burn less of the limited carbohydrate (muscle glycogen, blood glucose) stores. You will have greater endurance and avoid or delay hitting the wall.

A (tougher) way to train your body to burn more fat is to severely limit your carbohydrate intake and push your fat intake to 70% of your calories. That could be 1,800 calories (185 g) of fat per day. This very high fat diet produces ketones and forces the body to burn ketones for fuel. Keto-athletes endure a tough, 3- to 4-week adaptation period as their bodies transition to burning fat, not glucose, for fuel. While some keto-athletes rave about how great they feel when in ketosis, the sports nutrition literature, to date, reports little or no performance benefits from a ketogenic sports diet. It might nix sugar binges, but it’s unlikely to make you a better athlete.

5. Drink enough fluids.

A simple way to determine if you are drinking enough fluid is to monitor your urine. You should be voiding dilute, light colored urine every 2 to 4 hours. (Exception: athletes who take vitamin supplements tend to have dark colored urine.) You want to learn your sweat rate, so you can strategize how to prevent dehydration. Weigh yourself nude before and after one hour of race-pace exercise, during which you drink nothing. A one-pound drop pre- to post-exercise equates to 16 ounces of sweat loss. Losing two pounds of sweat in an hour equates to 32 ounces (1 quart). To prevent that loss, you should target drinking 8 ounces of water or sports drink every 15 minutes. Athletes who pre-plan their fluid intake tend to hydrate better than those who “wing it.”

**6. Consume enough calories during extended exercise.**

If you will be exercising for longer than 60 to 90 minutes, you want to target 40 to 80 calories (10 to 20 g) of carbohydrate every 20 minutes (120 to 240 calories per hour), starting after the first hour (which gets fueled by your pre-exercise food). If you are an Ironman triathlete, long distance cyclist or ultra-athlete who exercises for more than three hours, you want to target up to 360 calories per hour. The key is to practice event-day fueling during the months that lead up to the event. By training your gut to tolerate the fuel, you’ll be able to enjoy the event without fretting about running out of energy.

The bottom line:

If you are going to train, you might as well get the most out of your workouts. Performance improves with a good fueling plan. Eat wisely and enjoy your high energy!

Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD (Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics) counsels both casual and competitive athletes at her office in Newton, MA (617-795-1875). Her best-selling Sports Nutrition Guidebook and food guides for marathoners, cyclists and soccer players offer additional information. They are available at www.NancyClarkRD.com. For her popular online workshop, see www.NutritionSportsExerciseCEUs.com.

Reference:
Thomas, T at el. Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and Athletic Performance. J Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2016; 116 (3):501-28

Training Mistakes

Top 5 Training Mistakes and How to Avoid Them:

No matter how many years we’ve been running or how many races we’ve done, there are still some mistakes we may be prone to. Check out our top 5 training mistakes and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1 – Avoiding the Magic Mile

Jeff Galloway has given us a great tool to determine how fast to run our long runs, race rehearsal runs, and speed workouts. It’s called the Magic Mile (MM), and when we know our MM time, we can run with a plan. When we don’t have a recent (or any) MM, we are just running by feel, which sometimes can get us into trouble.

Solution: Run a Magic Mile every 4 to 6 weeks and check the MM calculator at Jeffgalloway.com to see your recommended paces and run/walk ratios.

Mistake #2 – Running the long ones too fast

Whether we let our friends set the pace or we “just feel good” when starting out on our long runs, it can be easy to fall into the trap of running these too fast. The long run should be at least 2 minutes per mile slower than race pace. You can’t be hurt by running the long ones too slow but running them too fast means you won’t be as recovered as necessary for the rest of your training.

Solution: Know your long run pace based on your Magic Mile prediction and don’t let anything pull you faster.

Mistake #3 – Cutting the long run too short

A marathon or half-marathon is a long way to run. Those who are best prepared for the distance will have the most fun during the race, but many runners balk at doing 14 miles in training for a half-marathon or 26 in training for a marathon. Whether they have difficulty carving out enough time for the long ones or they want to “save the real distance for race day,” they will be more likely to “hit the wall” because their bodies are not ready for the demands of the distance.

Solution: Put the long runs on your schedule months in advance and protect those days like you would an important appointment so there’s less chance you’ll be tempted to skimp on the distance.

Mistake #4 – Not listening to your body when it needs to rest

Small aches and pains come with the territory, not the territory of running, but the territory of living. Not everything calls for time off from running, but when something is affecting your gait (the way you run) or is causing you to feel lethargic, you need some extra time off. Whether the condition was caused by running or some other stress like work, continuing to push yourself when your body needs rest can lead to injury.

Solution: Turn a run day into a walk day. Get out and enjoy the fresh air without any worry about how fast you are going. Even if you have to miss a long run, walking that same distance will give you the endurance you need. If you don’t feel better in a couple of days, see your family doctor.

Mistake #5 – Ignoring nutrition

On race day you will have your socks picked out, your shoes well tested, and the rest of your outfit just right. You will have done the long runs and honed your pace if you have a time goal, but what will you have done for nutrition? If you haven’t practiced what you will have for dinner the night before, breakfast race morning, and during the race, you are ignoring an important factor that will impact your race day experience.

Solution: Use your long run weekends to practice race weekend nutrition, right down to the flavor of sports drink you intend to use. If something isn’t going to work for you, better to find out a month before race day than when it’s all out there on public display.

By Chris Twiggs, Galloway Chief Training Officer

Key Workouts

We get to workout! It’s a great privilege and a lot of fun. Our key workouts focus on helping you improve the pace of your run through practice.

Cadence Drills

Cadence drills are a great way to improve your running efficiency and form. By increasing your turnover rate, you can improve your speed and make running feel easier. Cadence drills can help you find a more efficient motion, even if you don’t have a natural predisposition for speed. Do this drill once a week and you’ll gradually see your normal cadence increase over time.

Acceleration-Glider Drills

This drill is great for developing speed and endurance. By doing it regularly, you’ll develop the muscle conditioning to move smoothly from one speed to the next. The greatest benefit comes as you learn how to “glide” or coast off your momentum. The main object of the drill is to keep moving at a fairly fast pace without using much energy.

Hills/Hill Repeats

Running uphill can help improve your overall strength and fitness. It is a very efficient form of strength training for runners, since it uses all the muscles you activate when running on flat surfaces but with added resistance. Your legs may be a little sore at first as you get used to hill training, but they will adjust and start to gain tone and definition. Running hills will also help improve your cardiovascular fitness by increasing your heart rate and building up more stamina.

Long Run

Let’s not miss the weekend long runs. Even if you’re new to distance training, many of your training runs are going to take you into new mileage territory. When running a new distance, it should be considered a “long” run, regardless of the actual mileage. Long runs are at least 2 minutes per mile slower than your goal pace, to reduce wear and tear on your body. Reducing impact means you can recover quicker from training runs and keep progressing with your training. The body makes many physiological adaptations to meet the demands of distance running, and slowing down is recommended.