Alternative Marathon Training

By George Andrews, PT, DPT

This blog post is about my experience with an alternative training program for the upcoming Chicago Marathon. This program was designed by me, a physical therapist and personal trainer. The emphasis of my program was on lower body strength and HIIT training. This post is not meant to be followed, but hopefully gets you thinking about adding strength training as a frequent activity during race training. 

Marathon training usually involves 4-6 days of running a week varying between long and short, tempo, speed work, and race speed runs. The intention of the long run is to get your body ready for the impact of the repetitive pounding and is not recommended to skip. There is also usually stretching and strengthening that is also part of any formal training program.

Personal Experience:

My experience treating people training for marathons is that they lack the strength to maintain good running mechanics leading to, knee, back, ankle, and other various lower extremity injuries. Most of the injuries could be prevented with lower extremity strength and stability training. The biggest excuse I hear is that “I don’t have time” in regard to strength training. This led me to try my alternative training program by cutting out a few of the running days and focusing more on strength training. 

I would also like to discuss my background. I am a former division 1, big ten athlete that strength trains and participates in HIIT training 5-6 days a week. My baseline fitness is high and I have above average cardiovascular fitness. I have ran several half marathons with a pace under 2 hours so running is not new to me. This however will be my first full Marathon. 

My Program:

During my training I would commit to one long run a week with increasing volume each week. My pacing was derived from my heart rate tracker on my watch trying to maintain a heart rate between 150-160bpm to make sure I would be able to maintain it for long distances. 

During the week, I tried to add one more faster tempo run to work on speed training. 

• Monday – Friday I would weight train and participate in HIIT training
  •  HIIT (High intensity, interval, training)
  •  Duration: Between 25-50 minutes
  •  Session included whole body work with bilateral and unilateral loading. These sessions usually are cardiovascularly tasking ranging from body weight movements to barbell and dumbbell. 
  •  Note: Sprints were included in some of the HIIT workouts. 

Check out previous running blogs for running tips and exercises

Conclusion:

Please note that this is an opinion piece based on anecdotal observations from my own training.  This is not meant to be used as anything other than facilitating conversation about traditional training programs and how they might be able to be redesigned to prevent injury for distance runners. Note that specificity of training remains important and completing your weekly long runs was a pivotal part of the training program. Each individual is also different and should be taken into account for any training program. 

All the therapists at Dynamic Physical Therapy have extensive backgrounds in treating runners. We also offer a running analysis to better evaluate your running form. Contact us today if you’re interested in setting up an appointment for a running injury or have questions about the blog post, [email protected] or 312-643-1555.