Having caught the marathon bug, many athletes have the urge to try back-to-back marathons. It’s certainly achievable, whether you just completed your first marathon or your tenth. And while there are very few runners who have the fitness or desire to run marathons on back-to-back days, you can still schedule multiple marathons in a season, as long as you do it right.
The first step to getting ready for your next marathon is recovering quickly and completely from the one you just ran. Immediately following your big run:
1. Drink.Pack your recovery drink, like POWERBAR
® RECOVERY shake, to consume immediately after you finish. Try to store a single serving of the POWERBAR
® RECOVERY shake in an empty water bottle prior to your event and store it in bag check. Then at the finish line, grab an extra bottle of water to mix up your recovery drink. Skipping this step is a bad idea and will just prolong your recovery time. Longer recovery time eats into precious training days between events. Within an hour after your finish, sit down to a full meal that’s rich in carbohydrate, contains a moderate amount of protein, and some fat — and keep drinking fluids throughout the night.
2. Hit the pool.To minimize your post-race soreness and get back to training faster, hop in a pool. The morning after your marathon, find the pool at your hotel and do some aqua jogging. Moving your muscles will increase blood flow to the area and help flush the metabolic waste (muscle breakdown) from your system. You’re going to be stiff and this might not be comfortable, but it helps the soreness go away faster. A word of caution — there is good pain and bad pain. If you’re not sure if what you’re feeling is just soreness or something worse (like an injury, muscle strain, or tendonitis), hold off on the exercise and see a doctor or physical therapist.
3. Bring on the ice.A little goes a long way. What do I mean? Five minutes in an ice bath will make you feel like a million bucks the day after a hard workout — be it a marathon or a hard training day.
So after you have managed your post-race soreness, what next?
There are a number of ways to judge how much time you should take between marathons. I like to look at a runner’s performance in their most recent marathon as a marker of how much preparation they need before tackling the next one.
Thinking back on your last marathon, you can probably point to a particular mile where the effort to keep going became dramatically harder. Depending on how well trained and rested you were going into it, you may have experienced this shift in effort level at mile 20, mile 12 or maybe even mile 5. Use the following guidelines to help athletes plan the timing of back-to-back marathons.
“It got hard at 20 miles or later.”If you conquered 20 miles of your marathon feeling strong and on pace, congratulations! Your training paid off, you have a solid aerobic base and you did an excellent job pacing your race. (Everyone gets tired in that last 10K.) If this describes your past marathon, you can be ready to run your next marathon in as little as 4–6 weeks.
“The first half felt fine, but the second half was a struggle.”If you made it to the halfway point on pace and feeling good, that’s excellent, but you still have work to do. Give yourself 8 weeks before your next marathon. The second half of your last one took a lot out of you, so you’ll need more recovery than someone who held their pace well into the final 6 miles. Then, you’ll also need to focus on developing more aerobic strength so you can hold your pace without digging so deep, and throw in some longer tempo runs as well.
“I suffered all the way.”If you were struggling by mile 5, you weren’t adequately prepared for your marathon. If you made it to the finish line, hats off to you for your perseverance and courage. Do yourself a favor, though, and take 12 weeks or more to get some significant training under your belt before your next event. Focus on building your aerobic base and gradually building up your weekly mileage so you have the endurance to make your next experience more pleasant.
It’s important, however, to also consider the effects of heat, hydration, nutrition, and pacing issues. If these were the primary cause of your difficulties in your previous marathon, it’s difficult to use your finishing time as a guide for how much training you need before your next event. In this case, your safest bet is to be conservative and take 10–12 weeks to recover, train, and prepare.
Training between marathonsThe biggest thing to remember about training for back-to-back marathons is that the first one is actually part of your preparation for the next one. You’re more fit than you were when you began training for your previous marathon. Allow enough time to recover after it and you can pick up your training at a higher level and be ready to go again much sooner.
In the weeks between marathons, focus on tempo work, intervals, and schedule one long endurance run every other week. You don’t have to go and pound out 18- to 22-mile runs each week, but 13- to 16-mile runs that take 2–3 hours are a good idea. Your tempo workouts should be 10–12 miles at 15 seconds faster than your marathon pace, and you can aim for two of these workouts per week.
Next race day: control what you canI can’t emphasize this enough to my athletes: Focus on things you can control, so you’re better able to deal with circumstances you can’t control. We all face environmental conditions and pacing and nutrition snafus, but the more you focus on what and how often you take in fluids and carbs, and the pace at which you set off to conquer your goals — the more successfully you’ll be able to deal with unforeseen situations like bad weather or harder hills than you imagined.
Abby Ruby is an Senior Coach for Carmichael Training Systems, Inc. She coaches runners, cyclists and triathletes of all ability levels and recently qualified to run the Boston Marathon.Disclaimer:The scientific information found on the powerbar.com website is derived from the following sources unless otherwise stated:
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Expert Panel:Trent Stellingwerff PhD, BSc, Senior Research Scientist – Performance Nutrition, Nestlé Research Center
Christopher D. Jensen PhD, MPH, RD Nutrition & Epidemiology Researcher
Tricia L. Griffin RD, CSSD, POWERBAR Sports Nutritionist