“Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing!”

o many readers of Marathon & Beyond, this subject will most likely seem a non-issue; they run marathons at the drop of a hat, as a normal part of life.

But to others, particularly the general running and marathoning community, the mere mention of running multiple marathons close together borders on insanity. This is not surprising.

The average hopeful enters a marathon untrained or only partially trained and with only a vague understanding of what the event requires either physically or mentally.

The proof of this is that up to 50 percent of those who enter a major marathon quit before the end or finish by walking and dragging their aching bodies the final painful miles. About 85 percent will never take the journey again. How sad.

Because so many unprepared people are entering marathons, two of the more difficult parts of the race are slowing to navigate around walkers and getting through the crowds piling up at the aid stations.

Many of the people hesitating at the water stops are desperately looking for ways to quit without seeming to be quitters. You don’t have to be one of them.

If you train properly and enter the race fully prepared mentally and physically, finishing the marathon running could be one of the most profound experiences of your life.

Passing dozens of people over the final few miles and flying across the finish line with a big smile on your face can be so exciting that even before you catch your breath, you are hearing the siren call of the next marathon.

Joy and excitement aside, I must confess that one of the two main reasons that I run multiple marathons is sheer laziness. Training for a single race takes a heck of a lot of work. Running multiple races is a piece of cake. Once you have taken the time to prepare correctly for the first marathon, the others fall naturally into place with very little training.

The second reason I run them in bunches is that it is a heck of a lot of fun. Plus, it really impresses normal people when they hear about the string of marathons my friends and I have completed in recent weeks.

HOW | FELL INTO MULTIPLES

I didn’t begin running multiple marathons by design—trather, I fell into it.

It took me two solid years to prepare for my first marathon in 1976. The race day was as hot as blue blazes, and I was physically wrung out as I struggled to complete the final miles. Yet I was so excited that I was already planning my next marathon before I had finished the first one. If you go to the nostalgia page at www.training2run.com, you will see a picture of me finishing the first race.

After that first experience, I took a few days of rest, trained a little, tapered— and ran another marathon, then another, and yet another. The second, third, and fourth races were each faster and a good deal easier than the one that had come before. Aha! I was onto something.

Since I was living and training at the time in Houston, Texas, the onset of summer put a stop to the first season of marathoning with four notches on my belt. Marathon number four was 45 minutes faster than marathon number one and required far less training. That became the pattern for the years to come.

My buddies and I entered every marathon we could find within a reasonable distance of home beginning in September and continuing through May. Come late May, sweating and panting, we would attempt to get into the best shape possible before the onset of the hellish Houston heat and humidity. When summer finally dropped down on our bodies like a hot soggy blanket, we would call it a season and go into a holding pattern until fall—or travel to more moderate climes to run ultras. The following September, we would begin running marathons again.

This pattern of running multiple marathons year after year is nothing new. Several years ago, I gave a seminar to a group of masters runners at the “Maraton Independencia” in Leon, Mexico. The average age of the audience was around 60 or 65, and the average number of marathons they had run during a year was about a dozen—the high was 25 and the low, if I remember correctly, was nine, not counting me. I had run only five marathons that year: Leon, “Gran Maraton Pacifico” in Mazatlan, San Antonio, Houston, and Cleveland. I had planned another one, but it was canceled for some reason.

No one in the group of geriatric runners at the Leon, Mexico, marathon showed any signs of injury or exhaustion. They just seemed excited for Sunday to arrive so they could get out and run.

THE BIG SECRET

The secret of successfully running multiple marathons is to train for the first race in the string very slowly, carefully, and correctly. You must enter that first race

completely pain free and injury free and fully rested. Immediately after completing the first marathon, you must take the proper steps to promote a quick recovery. If you enter the first race even slightly injured or tired or fail to take the proper steps to recover, things can only get worse.

For a comprehensive plan that will take you from the first step to the first marathon in your multiple-marathon series, see M&B September/October 2003: “A Classic First Marathon Training Program,” by yours truly. If you are unable to locate the back issue, you could join The Mad Dog Online Running Team (e-mail training2run@yahoo.com) and receive personal coaching. Or you could read the rest of this article.

BASIC MARATHON TRAINING IN A NUTSHELL

Begin by getting a good pair of well-fitting, firm, stable running shoes. If you would like guidelines on choosing and fitting running shoes, e-mail me, and I’Il be glad to send suggestions. Once you are well shod, go out four or five times a week for short periods of easy jogging mixed with short periods of comfortable walking.

The best time to train is first thing in the morning before eating. Eat nothing before or during the workout. In particular, stay away from concentrated carbs (see “Fuel on Fat for the Long Run” in M&B, September/October 2002, page 128).

Every other week, increase the length of your jogs and reduce the length of your walking breaks. When you are able to jog continuously for 30 minutes, four or five times a week, consider yourself a runner.

To keep yourself on track, avoid slacking off, and prevent nagging aches, pains, and injury, you should keep a detailed training log with observations and subjective comments. E-mail me for guidelines on keeping a training log and what information to record besides distances.

When your long run surpasses four miles, begin entering 5K (3.1 mile) fun runs—the more the better. They are a great way to develop speed, perfect pacing, and (most important) build your T-shirt collection.

Continue increasing the length of your sessions every other week, but mix up the distances. You should do a couple of moderate-length runs and one or two moderately long runs midweek and an even longer run on the weekend. The moderately long run should eventually be about twice as long as the shorter one, and the weekend run eventually should be about three times as long as the shorter one.

When your long run surpasses seven miles, begin entering all the 10K fun runs you can find, and continue running the 5Ks, as well.

That is a lot of time to spend on the road, and runners have developed idiosyncratic ways of coping. I like to dream the miles away. Often Iam able to leave my

body and travel to other times and places. When I return, I find that my body has continued on its way, somehow managing to cover several miles without having tripped over small dogs and baby strollers or having fallen into holes.

Many people listen to music or audio books while running, but I avoid doing so, since it prevents me from entering the zone.

One of my original marathoning buddies back in the 1970s played chess in his head. This, however, is well beyond my mental capacities.

Some folks, and I am often one of them, make training a social occasion and run with friends, gabbing the entire time.

ONE OR TWO VERSUS A GROUP

Iam not in favor of running groups. You have to put up with too wide a range of abilities and levels of commitment and too much whining and complaining. However, I am 200 percent in favor of running with a friend or two, especially if they are just a tad faster than you.

Friends keep you on your toes. If anyone in the group of three wants to sleep in, the other two won’t cut him any slack—they will come into his house and drag him out of bed if necessary.

If one of the small group wants to dog it, forget it. You have to keep up the pace in order to stay a part of the conversation—and conversation is a major reason to run with friends. If you keep up gabbing and listening, the miles pass without your even noticing them.

BACK TO ACTUAL TRAINING

After you have taken part in several 10Ks and your longest run of the week has topped a dozen miles, it is time to think about introducing the 10-mile, 20K, and half-marathon into your schedule. Continue adding training mileage on an every-other-week basis.

When you have found your target marathon, plan your increases so that your long run reaches 18 miles by four weeks before the race. Follow this with a 12to 15-mile long run three weeks before the race and a run two weeks before the event that is 20 miles or three hours (whichever is less). In marathon training, runs much greater than 20 miles or three hours take more out of your reserves than they give back in fitness benefits.

Sometime late in your training, run a five-mile time trial. Send your finish time to me at training2run@yahoo.com, and | will extrapolate your marathon potential from this figure.

Based on your known potential (not a pie-in-the-sky finish time), pace your first marathon correctly: begin easy, speed up gradually, and cross the finish line in a swirl of smoke and flame and with a smile on your face.

Do not stop and sit down after you cross the finish line. Walk about and begin reloading carbohydrates and rehydrating immediately. Get ice from a refreshment stand or medical area and rub it on your legs as you are eating and drinking. Then, as soon as possible after the race, take a long, cold bath or shower. Take another later in the day and daily throughout the week. If you can jump in an icy stream, lake, ocean, or pool, that would be even better.

The carbo-loading, rehydrating, and cold soaks will help speed recovery, reduce soreness, and make it possible for you to resume training within a reasonably short time.

RECOVERY WEEK LOOKS LIKE THIS

Your week following the marathon should look something like this, assuming that the marathon was held on Sunday: marathon, 0, 0, 0, 3 miles, 0, 3 miles.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, no running, but no sitting around, either! Take long walks, stretch your legs (it if doesn’t hurt), and soak your lower body in cold water.

Thursday and Saturday should be easy jog/walks, plus stretching and chilling. If the Saturday jog/walk shows that you are recovering nicely, with no strains, injuries, lingering soreness, or signs of exhaustion, you may begin light training the following week.

Providing that all systems are go, here is a possible progression for a second marathon in six weeks:

e Marathon 1: 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 3 = 32 miles e Week 1: 6, 0, 4, 6, 0, 4, 0 = 20 miles ° Week 2: 8, 0, 4, 8, 0, 5, 0 = 25 miles

° Week 3: 12, 0, 4, 9, 0, 6, 0 = 31 miles ° Week 4: 16, 0, 4, 6, 0, 9, 0 = 35 miles e¢ Week 5: 10,5, 4, 3, 3, 0, 0 = 25 miles e Week 6: Marathon 2

The second marathon builds on the year or more of training that went into preparing for your first race and is likely to be faster, easier, and more fun than the one that went before.

You may continue this process of running marathons every six to 12 weeks until either you run out of races for the season or the weather makes it too unpleasant to race. It is certainly possible to run marathons closer than six weeks apart, and I know people who run them weekly. However, if you attempt to run

them much further apart than 12 weeks, you lose most of the training benefits of the previous race.

If running the same old marathon distance month after month eventually gets stale or if you seek new and greater challenges, you can mix up your races. My most interesting race season so far consisted of three marathons, a 50K, a 40-mile trail race, a 71-mile mountain trail race, and a cross-country race that covered (when you figure the added miles tacked on by getting lost) about the distance of two marathons a day for 10 consecutive days. I will freely admit that this was a season of excess. But then again, The Mad Dog’s philosophy of life is: “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing; nothing in moderation.”

Some people are more cautious, or perhaps even timid (or you might say “sensitive”). But if you agree with the above philosophy or with the idea that you should learn your limitations and then ignore them, then perhaps running successive marathons, even successive ultramarathons, is the path for you.

One member of The Mad Dog Online Training Team recently celebrated his 50th birthday by running 50 miles, biking 50 miles, and swimming 50 x 50 meters in a single day. Todd, another member of The Team, celebrated his birthday year by running 14 marathons in 11 1/2 months, completing the final two on a single weekend.

Since you are reading this rather esoteric publication, I suspect that you may be one of the few, the brave, or the totally nuts who would go for some- i thing like this. A