Why Past Athletes Fail Early & Succeed Later in Running
It happens every year. A longtime friend hits me up and tells me they want to run a marathon or achieve some endurance race/challenge.
Every single one of them is (was) an athlete of some caliber. High school sports, college club level, NCAA level…you name it. They all have one thing in common—they miss competition and being in pain.
The second point is more true than you currently think right now. Athletes, and endurance curious people, are slightly masochist.
(The general use of the word, not sexual…you do you if you’re both though).
In all seriousness, athletes associate pain with gain. If it doesn’t hurt, you aren’t getting better.
Flashback to your team sport days when your team had a shitty game the day before and your coach put you on the line to sprint. Yeah you played bad, so in order to get better you must be in pain now. All out efforts, extra 2-a-day practices, and low rest is what made you a good and gritty athlete.
It pains me to say this, but running for endurance works the opposite way to the above. It’s not your fault though, and playing the slow game has to be learned.
Here’s a real world example I see multiple times a year:
Ex-collegiate athlete decides to sign up for a marathon and THEN start training. Race is 4 months away. You generally feel good, your body is leaning down and your feeling athletic again.
You decide to pour the miles on and blow by the needed weekly mileage limits. You’re not worried about your heart rate or pace, because you’re used to having a high heart rate when it comes to athletics. You think the discomfort is normal and nothing to worry about, all part of the game.
2-3 weeks before marathon: LEGS BLOW UP. Achilles, hips, shins, all aching and feeling heavy. Your HR is spiking on easy runs and you can’t hold race pace. Many such cases.
In the end, the above usually turns into a bonk or blowup with miles 20-26 being a death march to finish their first marathon.
Believe me, this is very common, especially with athletes of past. The effects of training for endurance like an anaerobic athlete are usually DELAYED, and your legs become a ticking time-bomb.
When training for your first race, please don’t go out and sprint because you think “you still got it”.
Consecutive steps, time on feet.
Run slow (see below).
THEN, you can *maybe* add in some higher intensity work. Don’t let you hamstring roll up like a curtain.
But this doesn’t mean they are unsuccessful. Athletes are resilient, they probably blow away the average first marathon finish by at least an hour. They put their body through hell their first marathon training without even knowing it. Truly, they don’t realize until mile 22 or 26 on race day.
It’s not until after they do some research post-race on why they blew up, read a few articles (hopefully mine), review their training data, and think “shit”.
But they are now armed with their past experiences, new information, and in shape cardiovascular system that they know how to mold more efficiently now.
Success is all but written.
My 6 Rules for new runners who are past athletes:
Understand heart rate zones and your current fitness level.
Heart Rate Reserve % (“Karvoven”) is the best way to figure out your heart rate zones in lack of owning a lactate monitor and testing mid run. It essentially factors in your base fitness with your maximum output potential.
Base fitness = Resting heart rate.
Max output = Max HR
Derives heart rate zones from your ability, not just your age-group’s mean ability.
Increase weekly volume by hours before mileage.
Check out my Sunday long run post on this (LINK).
Pull back every 5th week.
It doesn’t have to be a massive pullback, but even pulling back 15-20% in your volume will allow your body to rest, while still moving forward. On these weeks you should feel like you can do more. Resist!
These pullbacks can become fewer and farther between as you progress deeper into your running phase.
Keep your long run below 50% of total weekly miles.
There are plenty of studies out there linking long run efficiency with marathon results. One of the main findings in these studies is the use of the long run. There are many points to be made, and I make them here in this post (LINK), but the main one is to keep your long run as small % of total weekly volume as you can. 30% is the ideal percentage.
Don’t run to soreness.
This goes along with “don’t be a masochist”. Run to equilibrium. There is a time for scheduled and carefully drawn up speed/high intensity days, but most of your runs (with the help of HRR %) should have you feeling normal.
The gold standard is to run for an hour and feel like it never happened. Always be at equilibrium, it allows you to stack on the volume more easily.
Always be walking.
Off days, on days, doesn’t matter. ABW. Always be walking. The stretching of your muscles from walking while in the middle of a marathon training block just might save your legs.
Plus, the zone 1 work walking provides will help level your HRV, and even provide extra cardio volume to your week. Never underestimate the power of zone 1, and therefore walking.
Something I’ve advocated for a lot in the past are quality or “consecutive” steps. This in my opinion, is the best tool for someone to transition themselves into a runner. If you can rack up 12K steps a day, with as many of them as you can possible being consecutive in walks of ~3,000 steps, you’re going to be a good runner!
Bit of a different post, but something to chew on for all you athletes of yesteryear out there!
-BTR
Not a former athlete myself; still a great post!