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What to do when your marathon training gets interrupted
This is an excerpt from Advanced Marathoning-4th Edition by Pete D Pfitzinger,Scott M Douglas.
Part of the challenge of the marathon is that preparing for it takes so long and the training required is so demanding that roadblocks along the way to your goal are nearly inevitable. It’s important not only to organize your training and life so that as few impediments as possible crop up but also to deal with the ones that nevertheless occur. The most common roadblocks are injuries and illnesses, bad weather, and outside commitments. Let’s consider each of these intrusions into your marathon preparation to see how to adjust the schedules.
Injuries and Illnesses
Injuries and illnesses are best caught early. Successful marathoners have the ability to recognize an injury or illness at an early stage before it becomes serious. Returning to training after an injury or illness requires careful analysis—too much too soon will result in additional time off. During this period, it’s important to avoid the factors that caused the injury or illness in the first place, such as worn-out shoes, running on concrete, overtraining, or a lack of sleep. Be sure to read chapter 3 carefully to learn how to stay on top of your recovery so your chances of getting hurt or sick are lessened.
If you’re forced to miss more than a few days of training, you need to decide whether to try to catch up or revise your marathon goal. This decision will be influenced by how much time you missed, how long you’ve been preparing, and how many weeks are left until your marathon. Missing 2.5 weeks of preparation when you have 16 weeks to go is no big deal, but missing that amount of time during the last 2 months of preparation will likely require you to modify your goal.
Table 8.3 provides guidelines for when you may need to revise your goals after an injury or illness. Typically, if you’ve lost fewer than 10 days of training, you can safely start back where you should have been on the schedules. If you’ve missed V̇O2max workouts, however, you may need to slow your pace during your next few V̇O2max sessions to reflect the lost time. If you’ve lost 10 or more days of training in the 8 weeks before your marathon, be open to revising your goal. When you resume full training, gather information from your timed sessions to get a sense of how much fitness you’ve lost and whether your marathon goal pace needs to be slowed by at least a few seconds per mile (1.6 km).
Mother Nature
In general, you’ll just have to deal with bad weather. Sometimes, however, Mother Nature dishes up a blizzard or blistering-hot weather that’s counterproductive to continued healthy training. If you can, find a treadmill indoors or choose an appropriate cross-training activity until the weather becomes bearable.
As with other factors influencing your marathon preparation, weather might necessitate some not-so-minor changes in your life. For example, you might need to alter your normal schedule during oppressive summer heat so you can get in reasonable training early in the morning. Or if your area has been snowed under for weeks, you’ll probably need to find a few well-plowed stretches where you can safely get in your miles.
Try to anticipate weather when picking your marathon goal. If you don’t run well in the heat and live in a sultry climate, it makes little sense to plan for a September marathon because your hardest training will need to occur during the least conducive weather of the year. Similarly, Boston in April can be a tough goal if you live in an area where winter running is a daily challenge.
The Real World
For most people, training for a marathon means more time and mental energy devoted to running. If that’s true for you, don’t set an ambitious marathon goal when you know the rest of your life will be busier than usual. Once you’ve picked your marathon and have decided how long you’ll prepare for it, try to anticipate and eliminate factors that would significantly interfere with your training.
Why (and How) You Might Systematically Tweak the Schedules
We’ve looked at how to adjust the schedules if you hit one or more common roadblocks during your buildup. Readers of previous editions of Advanced Marathoning have also purposefully adjusted the schedules. Based on emails we’ve received and online discussions, here are the most common tweaks to the schedules and our thoughts on them.
Going Longer than the Schedules’ Longest Long Runs
Readers’ Tweak: This is the schedule adjustment we most often hear about. Many people say they feel better prepared on race day having done one or more long runs that are close to marathon distance. The psychological benefits of these longer long runs are cited more often than the physical benefits—having gone longer in training makes the marathon distance less daunting.
Our Take: The 18-week schedules in chapters 11 and 12 include one 24-mile run. If you’re following a different schedule, feel that one or two runs of up to 24 miles will boost your confidence, and you don’t have a history of injury related to training volume, by all means go ahead!
Doing More Tune-Up Races
Readers’ Tweak: Readers who enjoy racing (and the feedback it provides on their fitness) add one or more tune-up races to those called for in the schedules. The most common way to do this is to replace a V̇O2max workout or tempo run with a race. If the tune-up race is on a Saturday and is on the shorter end of the spectrum, runners will usually follow it with the long run prescribed for that Sunday. If the race is more toward half marathon distance, readers might do a longer-than-usual cool-down and count the day as the week’s long run.
Our Take: The key here is to get in close to the number of long runs prescribed in the schedules. If you can add 1 or 2 more tune-up races while still getting in the long runs, by all means go ahead!
Doing More Frequent V̇O2max Sessions and Other Forms of Speed Work
Readers’ Tweak: Some readers simply enjoy hard track workouts more than tempo runs and replace some of the latter with the former. These runners are typically relatively new to the marathon and feel that their speed is one of their primary assets.
Our Take: The key to marathon preparation is to prepare your body to run at a steady pace for 26.2 miles. Running a larger number of hard track workouts is counterproductive to marathon preparation because those sessions leave you tired for your more important training and is, therefore, not recommended.
Reducing the Distance of the Midweek Medium-Long Run
Readers’ Tweak: Primarily because of feeling pressed for time or low on energy, some readers purposefully go shorter than prescribed on the midweek medium-long run. Many keep this run between 10 to 12 miles throughout their buildup.
Our Take: This is a tough one; we can empathize with the difficulty of fitting in the midweek medium-long run, particularly during the winter months. Those runs are really beneficial for marathon preparation, so just do your best to hit the target distance. (For example, squeezing in 12 miles is better than settling for 10 miles.)
Reaching a Peak Weekly Volume That’s Between Those in the Schedules
Readers’ Tweak: Some readers feel that one schedule doesn’t have them running enough but that following the schedule with the next higher level of weekly volume will make them injured or too tired, so they aim for a weekly volume between the two schedules, usually while following the specific workouts prescribed in the lower-mileage schedule. For example, while mostly following the schedule for 55 to 70 miles (89-113 km) per week, readers might hit 75 miles (120 km) for their peak weeks.
Our Take: If it works for you, this is a sensible adjustment, so by all means go ahead!
Running the Same Weekly Volume on Fewer Days of Running
Readers’ Tweak: Some readers have found they feel better if they do the same weekly volume on fewer days of running. For example, in the up-to-55-miles (89 km) schedule, they’ll reach the target volume on 4 rather than 5 days per week of running. A typical tweak is to not run on one of the recovery run days in the schedule and run a little farther on the other prescribed running days.
Our Take: We can see how this approach may fit your overall life schedule. If it works for you, by all means go ahead!
Switching the Schedules to Longer Than a 7-Day Cycle
Readers’ Tweak: We’ve heard from several masters runners who spread the schedules’ 7-day training blocks over 8 or 10 or even more days. (Making this change means extending the number of weeks in your marathon buildup.) This tweak allows for more recovery after long runs, tempo runs, and the other most fatiguing workouts.
Our Take: We wholeheartedly endorse this approach for older marathoners who need more time for recovery than younger runners. We examine this approach in detail in chapter 5.
Of course, regardless of how focused you are on your training, you’re going to have the occasional day when meeting your training goal is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. A sick child, an unsympathetic boss, or a traffic accident all have a way of dashing plans for a high-quality tempo run. If necessary, juggle the days in the training schedule you’re following so that you get in the most important workouts while still allowing for adequate recovery. A good rule of thumb is that if you can do 90 percent of the planned training schedule, your preparation is going really well.
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