The Small Things

I have been thinking about what I neglected in my training cycle for the Boston marathon and what might have led to me injuring my calf just a week before the race. I realized that even though I had probably the best stint of marathon specific training of my life I did not incorporate a few things that would have most likely helped me avoid the injury as I rested and tapered for the race.

I had not seriously trained for close to ten years prior to this build up. What I learned about myself was that I am as durable as ever when it comes to running volume (16 weeks with an average of 104 miles a week). As long as I kept the paces within 15-20 seconds per mile faster than marathon pace I was fine. It was when I started running faster that I noticed how my body has aged. I tried to ignore it and kept telling myself that as I continued to run fast my body would adapt.

Here are the five things I neglected and I now realize are vitally important if I am to be successful in my goal of running fast in my 40’s.  I am planning on expanding on each of these with thoughts and suggestions in posts throughout the summer.

1. Core work: As a coach I am the first to tell my athletes the importance of a strong core to their running performance. But, as an athlete I completely neglected this area as I started spending more of my time running.
2. Strength training: Though I do not necessarily think I needed to be lifting weights I should have been doing some body weight strength training. Especially with my lower body. I know I have an imbalance between my hamstrings and quads that needs to be addressed as well as some calf strengthening that could be done.
3. Strides: I did a total of probably 8-10 strides in my 17 week build up. Every time a ran a speed workout I would notice how sore my calves would be for multiple days after. Ultimately it was running an extended tempo run at a pretty fast pace that injured my calf. I believe that I done strides consistently throughout the build up my legs would have had more opportunity to adjust to the stresses of faster running.
4. Stretching: This is something I did nothing of during my build up. I have always been fairly inflexible, but as I have aged it has gotten much worse. With my range of motion declining, especially when I am fatigued, this has a huge impact on how my body reacts to faster running.
5. Recovery: Other than slowing down for a few days after a hard effort I did not really think about my recovery efforts. Moving forward I am going to have to pay more attention to this area.