I had just 3.5 months in between the Humpy’s Marathon and CIM (California International Marathon). It wasn’t a lot of time to build a great deal of fitness, but I honestly do feel like I made a significant jump in fitness during that time.
When I look back on it, I realized there were quite a few things I did differently during this short period of time, and I do believe all of these things made a difference that ultimately helped me secure my sub-3 hour marathon goal time. I did everything from run more miles in a week, do more long runs, wear different shoes, and take in more calories during the race. Here’s a breakdown of the 8 things I did differently going into CIM–and during the race.
Strength Training
First and foremost, I truly believe the one thing that made the biggest difference in my fitness the three months prior to CIM was working with my strength coach. At the beginning of September, I had a free consultation with my strength coach, Maria, at Discover Strength, and I will never forget how sore I was after that first session. She kicked my butt, and she had me lifting in a completely different way than what I was used to. She had me doing a lot of eccentric work where I would lower the weight slowly (8-10 seconds) and then lift the weight in about 2 seconds. Some of the lifts were also new to me too, which challenged my muscles in new ways. This change in lifting was exactly what I needed because I’ve been lifting the same way for the last 20 years. I felt this jump in strength in my running gait–my stride felt more fluid and powerful, everything felt more smooth, and I finally had some arm muscles. Ha!
Iron Supplements
I have struggled with low iron on and off since college, but I finally feel as though I have gotten to a level of supplementing that works for me where I no longer feel short of breath when running, and I am not gasping for air during hard workouts. It took some time experimenting and talking to my doctor on how much I should take, but for the last few months, I never once had to cut a workout short or slow down in a workout because I couldn’t catch my breath.
Increased Volume
I’ve always been a pretty voluminous marathoner running at least 70+ miles per week during each training cycle. I did work up to 83 miles before RunFest in August, but this time I did one 100 mile week. I think as long as you can stay healthy, any added mileage to your training will only benefit you. (Of course there are exceptions, so take this as a general rule of thumb.) For the marathon, I think this extra time on your feet benefited me and made the distance on race day feel tolerable.
More 20+ Mile Long Runs
Going into Humpy’s Marathon, I did three 20 or more mile long runs (20, 20, 22). Going into CIM I did 4 (20, 20, 22, 24), and I’m almost tempted to count the Humpy’s Marathon itself as a long run too, which I know helped. One weekend I “only” ran 17 mile with a big workout in it, so I had 5-6 weekends of running long, which I know added to the volume and the fatigue put on my legs to prepare them for the distance of 26.2 miles. Heck, when I was running the marathon and starting the feel the effects after 20 miles, I reminded myself I’ve run 24 miles before in a training run, so I can do it again.
Marathon Paced Workouts
Within the last few marathon training cycles, I’ve started to add more marathon-paced workouts into my long runs and increase the duration of the mileage within those long runs. I also tried to run those workouts at a 6:40 pace rather than the 6:50 pace I need for a sub-3 hour marathon. I wanted that 6:45/6:50 to feel just that much easier on race day, so I pushed the pace just a bit.
The 4 workouts I did that really helped train my legs for the marathon were:
- 3 x 4 miles @ 6:40 pace [inside a 17 mile long run]
- 5 x (1 mile @ 7:10 pace, 1 mile @ 6:30 pace) [a 14 mile run on the treadmill]
- 2 x (30 minutes @ 6:40, 5 minutes @ 6:20 pace) [inside a 17 mile workout on the treadmill]
- 10 mile progression run working down to GMP at the end of a 21 mile run
Carb Load
The days leading into CIM was the first time I did a true carb-load for a marathon. I do believe having my glycogen stores filled to the brim on race day helped me with feeling so good the entire time. Shockingly, I never hit the wall during CIM, and I think this was one of the reasons! If you are interested, I detailed how I did my carb-load and what I ate in this blog post that I wrote last week.
Carbon-Plated Shoe
CIM was the first time I wore a carbon-plated shoe and chose to wear the Saucony Endorphin Pro+, which are currently sold out. It has definitely taken me a while to come around to using a carbon-plated shoe. Everyone knows they aid in performance, which is why people wear them, but I did feel like it was cheating a bit. I used to feel like I needed to run a sub-3 marathon without their added performance benefit, but in the end, I did use the Pro+ on race day. I honestly don’t know how much added benefit I got from them. I say that because I did workouts with them that weren’t really any faster than workouts with other shoes. I sure do love the extra cushion they provide though and noticed some forward momentum from the carbon plate. If anything, the biggest benefit I noticed was that my toes did not get as beat up as they do in any other shoes. I only lost one toenail versus 5-6 for most other marathons. Ha! (Side note: I’m doing all the right things to help this, but I am just doomed for having mangled toenails for the rest of my life.) At the end of the day, a marathon is still hard and still a long ways to run, and whether or not these aided in any significant amount to my performance, we will never know.
More Calories During the Race
In the past I’ve only used 3 energy gels throughout the course of a marathon, but then during the RunFest Marathon I upped it to 4 gels and felt noticeably better. For CIM I took in 5 gels, which kind of happened accidentally, but I am so glad I did. I honestly never hit the wall and felt amazing until the end at CIM. Umm. . . I also did run a 6:10 mile at mile 25 of CIM. Say what?! I detailed when I took these gels and what brands/flavors I used in my recap of the race.
The other piece that helped me run a fast time was the CIM course itself. CIM is a popular course if you want to run a fast marathon time. Add that to the net downhill of 300+ feet and the collective support of the other runners who are also going after big goals is unlike a lot of marathons. One reason I don’t like running marathons here in Anchorage is because there are not a lot of people–not a lot of people out cheering and not a lot of people to run with. At CIM it was the complete opposite–there were a lot of people out cheering and a lot of people to run with, which make a huge difference in your performance.
All-in-all, I believe each piece was important for my success of running 2:58:24 at CIM two weeks ago. I’m still living on the high this achievement has brought me, and I plan to as long as I can!
Interesting to see how much of a difference a carbon-plated shoe can make to one’s fitness endeavors. Definitely something to consider if one finds it difficult to see the results they’re looking for.
Yeah, it’s hard to say how much of a difference they make. Nike claims your marathon time with improve by 4% by wearing their Vapor Fly shoes. When talking to other runners, it seems as though the Nike carbon-plated shoes give the biggest boost, but they feel quite a bit different than regular running shoes.
Would you be willing to do a post on the specifics of your weight lifting/strength routine?
Gosh, I honestly don’t even remember my routines with my strength coach to give a lot of specifics. We did a lot of eccentric work, and I always lifted to true failure. I would do calf raises, pull-ups, split squat, squats, deadlifts, shoulder press, dead bug, and planks.