Pfitzinger Pete - Advanced Marathoning

Keep your core and resistance workouts to a minimum in the last 10 days before your marathon, and eliminate them in the last few days. If you’re used to cross-training, it’s okay to continue gentle versions of your normal activities until a few days before the race. Flexibility training is fine to do right up to race day, but don’t go overboard. If you’re used to a few 10-minute stretching sessions per week, don’t suddenly devote half an hour a day to it in the week before your marathon.

The same goes for form drills. If you’re used to doing them, then it’s fine to do a short sequence in the week before the marathon. As with flexibility training, the drills will help you feel looser during your taper, which, if nothing else, can provide peace of mind while you’re reducing your running. Again, though, don’t suddenly add new exercises or increase the amount of drills you do during your taper. The hay is already in the proverbial barn.

If at all possible, during the last week before the marathon, reduce not just your training but also the amount of stress in your life. Assuming the cooperation of your family, friends, and coworkers, try to do the following:

• Avoid having major deadlines at work or other energy-draining undertakings.

• Wash your hands frequently to lower your risk of catching a cold.

• Get plenty of sleep early in the week.

• Let others do the driving.

• Minimize the amount of time you spend at the prerace expo.

• Save sightseeing for after the marathon.

• Spend a few minutes each day in a quiet spot visualizing a successful race.

As race day approaches, it’s normal to feel anxious. The marathon can seem more like a concept than a reality when it’s 10 weeks away, but when it’s just a matter of days to go, it can become all too real a presence in your thoughts. That’s especially true when you’re tapering your training and might be a little more on edge as a result. (And because, if you’re like most marathoners, you’re worried that all the months of training are quickly evaporating after just a few rest days.)

To keep your mind at ease, practice visualization during your taper. In some of the time that you would usually allot to running, sit or lie in a quiet spot and mentally run through your race. Anticipate potential problems – a twinge in your calf, sudden rain, and so on – and see yourself overcoming them. Also visualize yourself running relaxed in the early stages of the marathon and then running strongly over the final 10K. If you have a time goal for your marathon, repeatedly picture yourself crossing the finish, with the clock showing your goal time.

Your overall preparation for the marathon occurs over several months. During that time, you meticulously plan and diligently train so that you’re in peak condition for the race. To do your best, however, you also need to have a plan for the marathon itself. That plan is the focus of this chapter. How much should you warm up for the marathon, and what should that warm-up consist of? How should you handle the first few miles, the first half of the race, the long stretch up to 20 miles (32 km), and the final 6 miles and 385 yards (10 km)? Let’s take a look at race-day strategies that help you get everything out of your months of preparation so that you cross the finish line exhausted but satisfied.

Warming up for any race is important. The purpose of a warm-up is to prepare your body to run at race pace. This involves increasing your metabolic rate, your body temperature, and the circulation of blood (and thus oxygen) to your muscles. The warm-up activates your aerobic system to work optimally from the start of the race.

There’s a downside, however, to warming up for the marathon. One of the challenges in the marathon is to reach the finish line before becoming glycogen depleted. In chapter 2, we emphasize the importance of carbohydrate loading before the marathon and taking in carbohydrate during the marathon to help ensure that you don’t run out of carbohydrate before the finish. But during a warm-up, you burn a mixture of carbohydrate and fat, thereby slightly reducing your glycogen stores. The key, then, is to find the minimum amount of warm-up necessary to prepare your body to handle race pace as soon as the starter ’s gun is fired so that you save as much of your precious carbohydrate reserves as possible for the 26.2 miles (42.2 km) ahead.

The optimal warm-up for the marathon depends on the level of the marathoner. For beginners, whose main goal is to finish, no warm-up is necessary. They can warm up during the first couple of miles of the race. For more serious marathoners, who will attempt to run the distance significantly faster than their normal training pace, the optimal warm-up consists of two runs of about 5 minutes each, with some gentle stretching in between.

You should start warming up about 30 to 40 minutes before the start of the race. Start your first warm-up run slowly, and gradually increase your pace so that you finish at about 1 minute per mile (per 1.6 km) slower than marathon race pace. Next, stretch for about 10 minutes, including loosening up your shoulders and neck. Follow that with another 5 minutes of running, this time gradually picking up the pace until you reach marathon pace for the final 30 seconds or so. Then stretch a bit more.

That’s it. Try to time your warm-up so that you finish no more than 10 minutes before the race starts. If you warm up too long before the race, you’ll lose some of the benefits of the warm-up yet will have still used up some of your carbohydrate stores. The ability to time your warm-up like this is an advantage of running a smaller marathon, as compared with a megarace, where you’re more likely to be herded to your starting position long before the race begins.

Before the start of the Olympic marathon, the athletes do a bit of nervous jogging around, but almost no one does more than 10 minutes of easy running plus one or two accelerations up to race pace. This is enough of a warm-up for these runners to handle a 5-minute-per-mile pace for the first mile. A similar routine will get you to the starting line prepared to handle your goal marathon race pace.

Assuming that you have a time goal for the marathon, how should you go about trying to achieve that time? Some marathoners go out hard and then try to hang on as well as possible in the second half. Others try to run an even pace throughout. A few take it easy early on and then run the second half faster. Let’s consider the physiology of the marathon and the implications for your optimal pacing strategy.

In chapter 1, you saw that your marathon pace is very close to your lactate-threshold pace, which is determined by your oxygen consumption at your lactate threshold and your running economy. If you run faster than your lactate-threshold pace, then lactate accumulates in your muscles and blood; the hydrogen ions associated with the lactate deactivate the enzymes for energy production and make you slow down. When you exceed your lactate-threshold pace, you also use more glycogen, so your limited glycogen stores are depleted more quickly than necessary.

These basics of marathon physiology indicate that the best strategy for the marathon is relatively even pacing. If you run much faster than your overall race pace for part of the race, then you’ll use more glycogen than necessary and will likely start to accumulate lactate. If you run much slower than your overall race pace for part of the race, then you’ll need to make up for this lapse by running faster than the most efficient pace for another portion of the race. The optimal pacing strategy, then, is to run nearly even splits, taking into account the idiosyncrasies of the course you’ll be running.