The running revolution

Thought you knew all there was to know about marathon training? Think again. Welcome to the running revolution

14 weeks and 27 runs after starting my experiment, I stood on the start line of the Cork Marathon shifting my weight nervously from foot to foot.

It was 2010 and I’d set out to challenge the traditional model of marathon training. The one that sees runners having to train five or six days a week and pile on monster mileage in order to survive the 26.2 mile ordeal. Although this was only my second marathon – the first that I’d prepared for – I’d been coaching runners for a number of years and had made a several observations.

In my experience, the biggest problem wasn’t getting runners to the finish line of the marathon, it was getting them to the start. Many of the off-the-shelf training programs that I’d seen would build up to four, five, six, seven or incredibly, eight runs a week with a total mileage that sounded more like your car’s oil change frequency.

I’d also noticed a tendency for runners to knock out mile after mile at the same monotonous pace. That ‘in-between’ pace that offers poor return on physiological variables such as lactic threshold and aerobic endurance. Too slow for one, too fast for the other. Junk miles, if you will, that might make you feel like you’d ‘had a great run,’ in the same way that gorging yourself on chocolate cake makes you feel like you’ve ‘had a good feed.’ Yes, you may be full, but it’s not exactly nutritious.

For 14 weeks I focused on two main things: quality, focused runs, and strength conditioning.  Two runs a week, and two or three sessions in the gym.

The benefits of strength training

Strength training does two things: firstly it improves the ability of your muscles to contract; in particular how hard and for how long. You can imagine that a bit of extra leg strength isn’t going to go amiss when you have a two-mile hill stretching out ahead of you.

But secondly, working in regular strength conditioning to your routine can reduce the number of missed sessions you need to take because of niggles or injuries. For example, if you’re shooting for a sub-four hour marathon and have 48 runs to do over a period of 16 weeks (as per my 3-run-a-week iMarathon programme), each one of them will be making a contribution to your result.

Theoretically, if you were in five-hour walk/jog shape when you started training, every session you do will bring that time down by a particular amount. So if you miss one because of a hurty knee, or a tight ITB forces you to pull back in a session, that’s a few seconds or even minutes of improvement that you won’t be getting. That’s a completely unquantifiable theory, but you can see that it makes complete sense.  If a session wasn’t going to contribute something to your performance, it wouldn’t be in the programme.

Strength conditioning can keep you out on the roads, putting in the graft that’s going to get you your times.

Posture and efficiency

Strength conditioning expert and coach James Dunne from Kinetic Revolution says: ‘Towards the end of a run, you’re getting tired. That’s when your posture is going to begin to slip and you’re at greater risk of injury. Forces aren’t being transmitted through your body efficiently, and after a few miles of this problems can really build up.’

‘Paying attention to how you run is just as important as how far you run.  A well thought out strength conditioning program can help you make improvements to your running technique, and sustain them even when you’re getting tired.’

James has a free online running technique challenge he runs through is website: www.30dayrunchallenge.com

Case Study

Experienced runner Gary Martin was sceptical, but after plateauing at 3:58 for the marathon, he took the plunge and adopted the ‘Intelligent Running’ approach.

He started the iMarathon programme, dropped his runs from six a week to three, added in some regular strength and conditioning exercises and he sliced 35 minutes from his marathon over the next 12 months. As a bonus he obliterated his half marathon and 10k personal bests, too.

Graeme McFall tried the Intelligent Running systems after peaking several weeks too early for the London Marathon last year. Recently he lowered his time from a painful 4:08 where he ‘collapsed at mile 23 and had to walk a couple of miles’ to 3:52, where he said that ‘at times I felt like I was running in the body of a proper runner’.

The biggest challenge for runners is to fall in love with body conditioning.  Most runners run because they love the experience, the challenge and the freedom of being alone, with only the sounds of feet on pavement for company. Body conditioning can feel like the antithesis of this, but more and more runners are discovering how investing just a few minutes each week can make a considerable difference to performance and enjoyment.

2 hours, 59 minutes and 38 seconds after the gun sounded on that grey and nerve-wracking day in Cork in 2010, I crossed the finish line.  I was 22 seconds inside my target of running under three hours.

Which of the sessions during the previous 14 weeks contributed to these 22 seconds, I don’t know.  But I’m certain that if I’d flaked on the body conditioning I wouldn’t have made it.