There’s this culture within marathon training, from the newbies to the vets that you’re not really training for a marathon unless you’re clinging to the edge of life. Things that have become normalized include perpetual soreness and “tightness” (but particularly after long runs), the idea that things should hurt (achy knees, butt pains, calf pain, etc.), and excessive fatigue.
But just because something is common does not make it normal or okay. In fact, the normalization of these things is the symptom of the normalization of improper training and support systems for training.
Below, we’ll pull apart each of the common complaints and look at how as an athlete you should respond if you are experiencing one of them.
Soreness
Soreness is an indicator of a higher load on your body than it’s been prepared for or failing to recover appropriately from a training load that might be appropriate given your training history. What does that mean? It means if you’re doing something too hard or just too much than what your body is used to, you’ll be sore even if you recover well. If you’re doing training that might be appropriate, but you’re not recovering well, you’ll also have more soreness. If you are regularly feeling sore after big sessions or long runs it means you’re likely straining your body too hard for your ability or recovery. This could be because:
You’re Underfueling Your Work
The workout might be right, but if you’re doing it without enough fuel in your system you’re going to be asking your muscles to do the work than they bargained for.
By increasing your carb intake before your run and during your run the muscles can work more efficiently which will decrease the overall strain on your body.
You’re Underhydrating your Work
Much like above, your muscles require appropriate water: electrolyte balance and so if you’re losing water or salt at too fast a rate the muscles stop working as efficiently and have to work harder to do the same work. However, sweat rates as well as sodium loss is particular to both to weather and genetics. Generic calculators and algorithms by your watch are nice, but they don’t paint an accurate picture of your needs. Learn how much you’re losing during your runs in the current weather via measuring your sweat loss and learn to understand if you’re a high salt sweater. From there you can tweak your hydration plan to prevent soreness (and post long run dehydration headaches).
Your Recovery is Not Sufficient for Your Workload
Maybe you’re fueling and hydrating well and given your training history your training plan is appropriate. However, if your recovery strategy has big holes in it, then your body will give you indicators like extra soreness. The things that you will need to improve on here are things like getting more sleep, tightening up on your nutrition routine (think more food, more often) after big sessions, and work to limit other stressors in your life if possible.
You’re Missing Key Nutrients
The last piece here might be that something’s not quite right “under the hood”. Getting bloodwork drawn to give you insight into things like ferritin, Vitamin D, magnesium, B vitamins, etc. can let you know if there’s something particular in your diet you’re missing.turns ever 100m, our watches struggle (to varying degrees) to capture the truth path that we ran. As a result, it can miscalculate our pace and distance run.
Pain
Pain is pain and it tells us your training is putting too much mechanical strain on your body. While we can manage a lot of pain and injuries during marathon training it’s still telling us something that we shouldn’t ignore.
The cause of an injury (or niggle) during a marathon build is as complex a cause as any injury but typically is from some of combination of the following factors:
too high of an acute or chronic load, insufficient nutrition, insufficient recovery, and areas of insufficient mobility or strength for the load on the body.
Once you’re in the thick of marathon training the biggest things you can do once a niggle or full blown injury have popped up are:
- Take a few days off to let acute inflammation go down and see a PT to make sure it’s something you can train through.
- Adjust load to the area (aka change how much you’re running). This could mean strategically implementing cross-training forms like the elliptical to substitute some weekly sessions or change your training structure to allow for better recovery.
- Improve recovery practices. You want the area to heal which means you need to be prioritizing recovery. Increase the amount of sleep you’re getting, eat more food (timed better), some supplements might be appropriate based on any dietary gaps, and if you can limit some external stressors.
However, because of some of the adjustments that might need to be made to train comfortably, it might make sense to adjust your goals for race day. If adjusting the goals isn’t what you want to do, it might make sense to take some time off, let the body heal more quickly with the appropriate rehab, and come back for a different race.
Extreme Fatigue
Yes, you’ll be tired during marathon training, your legs won’t have the same kind of pop that they do when your volume/intensity is lower. This will most frequently show up the following ways when at a “normal level”; slower easy day paces, legs won’t have “pop” quality work, sometimes a workout will be a bit of a bust.
However, if you’re struggling through most quality sessions or finding you’re struggling to drag yourself through most runs, or struggling outside of training (are crashing after long runs, having changes in sleep patterns etc.) then more likely you’re circling the Low Energy Availability (LEA) train.
Other symptoms of LEA include:
- Changes in your mood
- Missed or irregular periods
- Low sex drive or decreases in sexual function
- Decreases in sleep quality
- Decreases in appetite
- Increases (decreases if extreme) in resting heart rate, decreases in HRV
If you’re finding yourself in this situation don’t just push through, the consequences can be lasting. Instead, back off training for at least a week, see if some things start to normalize.
During this time get bloodwork done to check under the hood to look for anything you can easily fix or to get insight into how dire the situation is. Also during this time, focus on the recovery basics (get more sleep, eat more food, cut out extra stresses).
If during that week you see a rebounding in symptoms, it’s likely you can return to training at a lower intensity and/or while sustaining the improved recovery practices.
However, if things don’t bounce back after a week or so of modification or you know you cannot sustain the recovery practices this is a good indicator that you likely need to cut your marathon training. If you have a history of injuries and particularly BSIs (stress reactions or fractures), this can be the difference between taking a few extra weeks off and needing a few months off.
Summary
As you can see, a lot of the things that have been normalized within marathon training culture are really indicators from our bodies that we’re riding the red line. Not only does this mean we’re closer to things like injuries, but it also means we likely won’t perform our best on race day. Compare that to if when feeling these things, you adjust so that your body can be stronger and better fueled. Imagine what you’d accomplish instead on race day!
Let’s not normalize these things and instead normalize the things that we should do if we are feeling them AND how to prevent it in the first place.
Want to read more on all these topics? Find it in The Training Club!