366 - The Marathon Plan Nobody Talks About — But It Works Every Time (The Purple Patch Way)
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon discusses a unique marathon training approach, emphasizing five unconventional principles. He argues against overvaluing the long run, suggesting instead a cluster-running strategy to build muscular resilience. Dixon advocates for multi-sport training to reduce injury risk and enhance cardiovascular conditioning. He highlights the importance of walk breaks for better pacing and form preservation. Strength training is essential for maintaining durability and preventing injuries. Dixon also emphasizes the importance of coaching and community support in enhancing performance and enjoyment. He invites listeners to explore Purple Patch coaching for personalized training plans.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00-1:19 Promo
1:47-3:27 Intro
3:56-16:15 Part 1
16:27-27:59 Principle #1
27:59-35:28 Principle #2
35:28-41:35 Principle #3
41:35-45:07 Principle #4
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Greetings, folks, today's episode is focused on running. It is a blueprint to set yourself up for success for an upcoming perhaps in autumn, or how they say in America, fall marathon or even half marathon. And so fasten your seat belt as you're going to learn the key aspects of running that might sound somewhat unconventional, but have been proven to help runners of all abilities break through injury cycles, find a little bit more joy in the process, and ultimately take their running performance to a whole new level. Now as you listen, if you're interested in learning more around Purple Patch coaching or of course, our highly popular running program, feel free to reach out directly. We'll set up a complimentary Needs Assessment call, and we'll see whether we're a good fit for you. We don't mess it up, I promise you simply reach out info at Purple Patch fitness.com now you might be listening as a runner, or perhaps you're a multi sport athlete, thinking about integrating a full marathon into your program. We are the masters of doing that also, and so you might decide to join our tri squad program as well. It all is a little reach out to see if you want to join the Purple Patch bandwagon. Info@purplepatchfitness.com alrighty, either way, enjoy the show. I think it's going to be useful and also a little bit of fun along the way. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 01:47
Matt and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast, as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today, we are going to turn our focus to running, more specifically to anyone who is interested or perhaps even committed to running a full marathon. Now, under the big umbrella, of course, we're going to include half marathons into that, because what it's got a slightly different challenge. Still. It's a big accomplishment for many, many people. Today, I'm going to try and help you set up a smart approach to marathon training that actually works, and that's really good news for you. It's also an approach that helps you integrate the sport into your life, ensuring that training isn't just effective, but it's also really fun. It doesn't feel like you're living in a cage when you're doing it. So listen today, follow the lessons, and I promise you you're going to excel. What we're going to do is I'm going to outline five running principles, and you should take those principles and apply to your running program to ensure that you're successful. Each one of these is controversial, unconventional, and yet we've learned unequivocal in its positive impact on all levels of runners. This is something that's a little different. This isn't going to be your stale old com. Building up your running program. Make sure you get your long run. Don't forget your hill repeats. Type stuff. This ain't dull. This is running excellence. Welcome to the Purple Patch School of running. And so without further ado, let's do it. Five Principles. First of all, though, I want to ground ourselves in? Why running a marathon is so darn difficult. It's all coming in today's meat and potatoes. Yes,
Matt Dixon 03:35
the meat and potatoes, folks. And when I was framing this episode, I thought, how should we ground ourselves? How should we start this show when we want to explore marathon running? And I think perhaps the best way to do it is to first just pause and answer a question, why are marathons just so damn hard? They're really tough, if you haven't done one. Well, let me tell you, they're not easy. They are an endurance challenge. And if you have done one, well, you know they're not easy, no matter which way you slice it, it is a physical challenge. In order to put our lessons in context today, I need to ground ourselves and hover over that question, why is it so darn hard? Well, let's face it. First of all, it's pretty not far to run. Just think about it. In fact, if you don't believe me, head outside right now, hop in your car, get onto your local freeway and drive for 26 miles plus, or about 42 kilometers. Don't listen to the radio, don't speak, just drive. Look around. It is a long way, and you have to run that distance to complete a marathon. The actual challenge of the race itself is almost a poetic expression of a challenge between cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and, of course, mental stress. Brain. It also includes fueling and hydration demands. It's actually far enough for hydration and fueling to matter. You see, the body can only carry about 90 minutes, maybe upwards of two hours, of fuel available to help your running performance. That means, by definition, in a marathon, exogenous fuel is critical. Under fueling early in the race, you end up with fatigue relying on untested race nutrition. Your tummy can get upset. You have inadequate fueling before the race. You're probably going to underperform. Under fueling in training, well, you've got huge risk of systemic fatigue or even injury, and so therefore this is a huge component as well. Fueling is a another often in triathlon, they call it the fourth discipline. But this is another challenge to marathon training. We also have to acknowledge that it is a long way and running is a weight bearing impact, therefore it has an amplified risk of injury. It's really challenging, because there's a pretty high likelihood that if you embrace the journey, unless you've got a really smart approach, you're going to get injured. What's that likelihood? Well, there's a widely accepted estimate that between 30 and 50% of marathon runners experience injuries due to training that either significantly disrupts or forces them to modify or pause their plan altogether, almost half of you are struggling with injury cycles. And there's one other challenge as well that often faces so many marathon runners, and that's what we call the antithesis, at Purple Patch of our saying fit and fresh. I can't tell you how many marathon runners really face the challenge of arriving fit and fresh, and instead, they arrive in a fog of fatigue, either due to really poor prior planning or just simple overload. Now it's harder to quantify precisely, but experts, consensus and coaching observations suggest that upwards of 40% of marathon runners arrive at their race really fit but systemically fatigued. 40%
Matt Dixon 07:17
that's meant that they've done the work, they've built the fitness but they haven't probably absorbed due to perhaps inadequate recovery, overreaching, etc, and that's why it's so hard. You've got to get your performance recipe right. So not only is it long and load bearing and you need exogenous fuel, but preparation is a real art and science in itself. And so how do we think about approaching a marathon? What's important in preparation in order to consider this? I think it's really helpful to consider the elements that feed into a great marathon performance. Now I spent some time reflecting on my own coaching, and I broke it down into quite a healthy list. So I just want to list these out. These are the requirements in preparation for marathon performance, and I think this is going to be compelling too. Number one, as I mentioned, you need to be fit. Cardiovascular wise, there's cardiovascular conditioning. Is a central element, a strong aerobic engine, as we call it that, and that is developed through really consistent, progressive running training. So we've got to be fit. That's very simple. We also need to think about the musculoskeletal system, because muscular resilience is a huge, important, important component. Let's think about that as having durable legs able to withstand fatigue and maintain it over the whole distance of a marathon. Remember, it's pretty far. We also need a really smart strategy in fueling and hydration, and I would break this out into actually, to fuel the journey of your training, so that you don't accumulate too much fatigue, make sure that you're yielding positive adaptations, ensuring that you're minimizing the risk of injury, and, of course, fueling and hydration strategy to actually sustain energy and avoid that wall that they talk about a marathon. In other words, the big bonk, and you don't actually run out of energy throughout the actual race itself. So there's a big umbrella of making sure you're dialing in day to day fueling and race fueling and hydration as well. So that's the third element. Number four, pacing, a huge component, a really disciplined practice plan to distribute your effort, whatever fitness you show up with, distribute the effort to ensure that you can finish strong in the marathon, and we see many, many people struggling to execute that. You've got to get your recovery, and let's call it, your taper, into your race right as well really strategic rest, what we would call intentional recovery, infuse. Into your program and then added rest at the end of the program that you can shed any fatigue that you've accumulated from from training without losing everything fitness that you've gained to hugely important component to it. We want you to arrive with that magical saying, fit and fresh on race day. We've also got to navigate this journey due to the fact that it is such a load bearing activity. We have to prevent injury. We have to ensure that our load management so far as training prescription is really accurate, and that involves really sensible progression from your start line, whatever your background, history and experience of running is so far, probably some additional strength work to ensure that the musculoskeletal system is really resilient, if you want to talk about that, and ensure that you're managing your training load, not to in terms of just duration, so miles or time, but also in the dose of intensity as well, so that you can really get dialed in. On that side, there's a mental preparedness side of Marathon preparation as well the tools that you need to develop over the course of the journey and the mindset so that you understand and are equipped to manage the discomfort that is a part of racing that enable you to stay present and make smart decisions and also to retain confidence under the pressure that is inevitable on race day performance.
Matt Dixon 12:45
And finally, the last one that I came up with, just logistics familiarity you got to go through and really be rehearsed around what gear you're going to work, what is your strategy around it, your routine that can eliminate some of the surprises that are under your control, but also respond and not react and amplify stress when there are things out of your control that inevitably happen on race day. So there are eight components that all feed into each other, into what you would label race day performance. So let's pause and let's hover here. We have eight things that we talked about, cardiovascular conditioning, muscular resilience, fueling and hydration throughout the journey, etc, etc. If you execute all of the elements really, really well. What is the one that is the most common limit? And it's a big if, in its way, you've got your pacing right, you've got your logistics, your mindset's Perfect. What is the undoing for most athletes if they're doing most things really, really well? I think this is a key question when you start to think about, how is it best for me to train for my marathon? What are the things that go in? What are the challenges that I want to understand so that I can address them? Do you know what the most common limiter is for marathon runners? Muscular, resilience. That's the one, even with great fitness, and if you pace it pretty well, and you have really good support in fueling, and you're tough and you've got the right mindset, many runners break down physically in the last 10 kilometers or so, six miles, they get to about mile 20, and suddenly there is this accumulated muscular fatigue. It occurs particularly in the quads, the front of the legs, the calves and up in the hips. You might have experienced this before. You're not under cardiovascular distress. Your mind is still sharp. You got lots of energy, and you look down and those legs just won't behave. They won't respond. You're just not dialing in accurately, muscular resilience. I call it mechanical fatigue, and it is disconcerting and it's highly frustrating, and it is the most common limiter for athletes to show up and match their training potential with race day performance. It is the thing and the reason this happens so much in a standalone marathon is in the distance, and this is maybe the cruelty and the beauty of the distance. It's just short enough that you can operate at a pretty high level. And so what that means is you are experiencing quite a lot of eccentric muscle damage from the 1000s and 1000s of foot strikes, therefore decelerating forces that are going into the ground. See if you're sprinting, bam, you're just bouncing off the ground.
Matt Dixon 14:17
And you're not doing too many steps, because it's only 100 meters or so, but over the course of 42 kilometers, you're doing 1000s of steps, and each time that foot lands, you have multitudes of your weight going into the ground, and your body must absorb, pause, decelerate and re accelerate with every single foot stride that creates. A whole mess of muscular damage. You also have underdeveloped strength that can magnify this in the key muscle groups. This occurs a lot with runners. They trot along on race on training days, they get to race day, they just don't have what I label the strength endurance in the key muscle groups to take you on the journey. So this challenge for most athletes that I would work with really drove my thinking when I started to think about, let's prepare our triathletes first, who wanted to include marathons, and therefore laid the gateway to, ultimately, our broader, global approach to running. So with all of this grounding in place, there are a few things that drive the principles of readiness for the vast swath of athletes that we coach, and this is starting with some athletes that are pretty darn fast two hours and 30 minutes or so, all the way up to people that are first timers that don't really care about how long it takes. They just want to get across the darn line and enjoy it as much as they can and make sure that they can thrive and be under control, not just survive. So I want to unlock for you five principles of running now we are going to start with the running itself, because ultimately, the truth is, if you want to get ready for a marathon, you've got to prepare with running. That's just the truth. Okay, so what we're going to do is break apart some of the training sessions, and I want to start with the most important one, with principle number one. It is the simple fact principle number one, the long run is vastly over valued. The long run is vastly over valued. Now this is, I promised you, controversial, maybe unconventional, but I also said that it is true that this actually leads to better performance. I see so many athletes and coaches place their marathon readiness around 678,
Matt Dixon 17:18
single run sessions over the course of the months of Marathon set training, it's all about the long run. In fact, the first question I hear when an athlete decides that they want to sign up for a marathon is, how long should the longest run be? Well, I don't really care about that too, too much to be honest, that's not really a driving predictor of your total marathon success. I know you want to build confidence that you can go the distance, and the fact that you've run 22 that gives you the value, the confidence that maybe you can just stretch it another four miles to get to 26 but I promise you that is not the most important predictor of your race day performance. The single long run is not a huge driver of success beyond some familiarity, and there's some value to that, so therefore some confidence building. Perhaps it's an opportunity to test your fueling and hydration. Okay, that's pretty good, and maybe you get a little bit of pacing insight. It can be a school of lessons. If you hit that longer run you decide to do and you go out too fast too early, it's going to slap you in the face, because you're going to have mechanical breakdown. And so it can maybe make sure that you don't go out too fast on race day. So it has value. It's not that you shouldn't run long but you shouldn't build your marathon program around the long run. Okay? It's not a determining factor of success. Cement that in your mind. In fact, the long run is one of the highest risk sessions on any marathon training program, because it tends to create a lot of muscular damage, especially if you are extending yourself in terms of distance. And that happens a lot with athletes that progress up their management training very, very quickly over weeks, not months, or just make huge jumps. Okay, great. I've done a 10 Mile Run. I'm now going to go 17 miles, almost doubling it. And so there is huge, huge risk of injury if you hyper extend the distance and duration of your run. A second component that's really risky is if in during your long run you have form decline, which is very, very important. If you start to run with poor form, I like to say, Never take a bad step. Now that's not realistic. You'll always take a bad step, but you get the concept. But if you are running the back third of the run, where your form declines, you start to carry weaker posture. You start to have your foot. Standing on the ground for longer, you lose some of the rebound. There is huge, amplified muscle damage, and therefore really amplified risk to injury as well. Alrighty, the second com, or the third component of the long run, which tends to happen is not allowing healing, enough healing to occur post long run, so you head back into challenging training too quickly. This is classic in a marathon training program where you see athletes running on a Sunday, let's just make it up for two and a half hours, and by Tuesday, they're running a strong effort, maybe a progressive building effort, or some hill reps. There is no way that your body has adapted to and responded and rejuvenated enough to absorb those hard intervals on Tuesday or even Wednesday, and that starts having a cumulative effect, and your risk of injury goes up, etc. And so the long run, while it's got a little bit of value, pacing, fueling familiarity, etc. There's a winning mindset that you can shift to, in which you can get all of those and yield those benefits without actually building the whole program around that long run, your success is going to emerge from a long view of months of consistency, and what that means is health. Anytime you look at your program, the progression of training load should be very, very shallow. The more time that you give yourself, the more capacity you have to build consistency and build up the musculoskeletal and tissue resilience to be necessary to absorb incremental gains in your overall total volume over the course of the week. It's a hugely valuable component. Let's take a step back. Remember what I said about the biggest limiter in Marathon performance? It's mechanical fatigue, in other words, muscular resilience. What you don't get massive muscle resilience just from a few big runs dispersed over your ramp in the last eight to 20 to 12 weeks of your training. Instead, if you can and you have time, give yourself more time on the calendar and build incrementally through high frequency running that doesn't deliver massive muscle trauma. If you give yourself time and you build consistency over the course of months rather than weeks, it is a healthy response that your body can adapt to get stronger, build resilience and give you staying power, durability. So it's a huge component.
Matt Dixon 22:50
Now, I understand it's not enough just to do a bunch of really frequent short runs and think you're going to get ready for a marathon. So what else can you add to your recipe that's going to give you the required cardiovascular conditioning and, perhaps most importantly, your muscular resilience. To give you that durability, we'll remove many of the long runs that will be number one and instead replace it with something that's a little smarter cluster running very, very simple blocks of training in where you get the required distance, but quite often at a higher total quality of running, in other words, more good steps, often at faster pacing. So what does that look like? Rather than building your training around a single run in a week that is going two, two and a half, three hours in duration, shift it out and go to a two or three day mindset where you can accumulate the required mileage and distance and magnify the resilience in those working tissues, but do it over multiple days. So what might this look like in really practical time? Well, perhaps you hit a really smooth run on Friday. Let's just make it up. It's a 60 or 75 minute run. It's calm. You might include walk breaks. You finish pretty refreshed, but it's in the bank, 75 minutes. Then maybe on Saturday, you might do a double run. Maybe it's 100 minutes in the morning, 45 at night. You've got over two hours of total running there, but you're doing it with a little break between, and that's building on top of the run the day before. And finally, on Sunday, you hit another run. Maybe it's 6075, 90 minutes, and you're doing that run building two at or even above your goal, marathon pace. Can you be running on that Sunday, day three, with great form, great posture, great pace, and it's a bit challenging, but over the course of three days, you have almost for sure, accumulated a marathon to. Totals worth of running, or even more sometimes, but you're doing it with much less muscular damage, mostly because your running is done with your best form that you can do. You're not just surviving on the back third of a run. Instead, you're executing with intent. This creates a huge yield of confidence, familiarity and understanding that your body is absorbing positive training where it is yielding adaptations. That's what you want to get. And I think the driver behind this is that the reason that we train is to prepare to race. It's not just to build your confidence. And so if you shift that and say, I'm doing what's necessary for me to prepare for my race, you're going to be a step ahead than your friends and compatriots that are just saying, I need to go and do this so I know I can complete the distance. And I know many of you are listening to this and go, that's me. It's really common. You shouldn't feel bad if that's the mindset, but you'll be amazed when you start to layer really positive training that isn't survival, but it's more like thriving, that you build inner confidence from that. I'm ready, I'm strong, I'm fit, my running performance is good. I would add to this as well, that any of the longer runs that you do decide to do, because I think I've been clear, there is some value to doing some longer running. I would much prefer you do that on a softer surface, this big value of hidden trails lower to mid pack runners, you might even do just some hiking, but getting the time on feet is good for the spirit, for the soul, for the confidence, even for familiarity of what it feels like to go the distance. But there is no reason that you shouldn't be doing it in a strength based environment, on softer surface, so that you can minimize the risk. It's a big positive impact. And so in that principle number one, there's a whole bunch of things. Number one, give yourself a longer lot runway. Number two, build really frequent running into the recipe so that you can instrumental incrementally. Build out focus your long run preparation around clusters of two or three day blocks of running, rather than the single king or queen run that you're only doing because I want to know that I'm ready. And finally, if you do decide to go longer, hit the trails, go on the softer surface, don't worry, it's not minimizing your readiness. This is a way that really is a recipe to stay healthy, and that is the biggest unlock to the purest word of high performance, running, consistency of training, principle number one, already. What about principle number two? What else can I tell you beyond this, to get ready for your full marathon, lean into the power of multi sport training. Don't just run if you want to get better at running, leverage the power of multi sport training. There are several reasons for this why the principal just makes sense, but we observe consistently athletes having huge breakthroughs because they're bold enough, brave enough to actually leverage the power of multi sport. In fact, this is an emerging trend at the elite side of sport. There are a high percentage of elite runners at the very thin edge of world class performance of running that like to integrate multi sport into their training. And it comes from various modalities. It might be stair climbers in the gym, it might be rowing ergometers. It might be leveraging, bicycle riding.
Matt Dixon 27:17
All of these are really valuable. Now you see aqua jogging as well, but that tends to be more around athletes that can't do weight bearing because of injury. And you also see some elliptical although I'd say that's a pretty low yield machine, the elliptical trainer, isn't really high value for runners, I'm afraid to tell you, but why? Why is this such a useful tool? Well, let's go back to what is the required components get ready for running. Number one, you've got to have cardiovascular conditioning. So as a coach, I want to get someone absolutely as fit as they can to drive. I want their cardiovascular fitness to be on, to be beyond what they've ever had before. The challenge is, if you're just running with a load bearing activity like running, where every time you put your foot down, you've got multiple times your body weight going into the ground, rebounding into the musculoskeletal system, the injury risk is high, and so we can integrate other sports. There's no rules. There's no rules on this. All I'm doing is training the pump and the associate plumbing that navigates and makes up the cardiovascular system in our body. And we can do that through various modalities. Is. And so when you leverage other sports that are non weight bearing, or at least low weight bearing, it reduces the impact the load. It allows you to build the cardiovascular conditioning and the muscular endurance without the repetitive pounding of running. And that is a performance advantage. It's not weakness, it's a performance advantage. So that's really good. It enhances your aerobic development as well. If you take modalities such as cycling or rowing, it's a great opportunity where, more frequently, you can leverage high intensity training build the size of your engine. And the reason for that is if I send you to the track and ask you to do a series of very, very hard work. The muscular damage is huge. It takes longer to recover, but if I have you do a similar type of session in a rowing ergometer or on the bike trainer, you can hit it, and within a day or so, you're ready to go, and you're able to actually leverage really high quality running without that muscle fatigue, quality of training goes up. You get to do more training over the course of the week, and you get to reduce injury risk. And so there's a huge opportunity to just do aerobic development in a safer and more sensible way. You also can develop the specific muscular resilience. Remember that mechanical fatigue that is the limiter on marathon training. You get to leverage these sports because a lot of them directly cross pollinate into running. There is a link between them. They work similar muscle groups. Let's think about the stair climber. It's not that fun. You do it in the gym, but it mimics uphill running. It targets the quads, the front muscles, the glutes, the carbs, the types of muscles that often fatigue in the back end of a marathon. So it's really, really good for late race, fatigue, resistance, a stair climber. Well, let's leverage it as a tool. A rowing the whole posterior chain, a lot of core strength, total body coordination, which is a part of the athleticism of running, you've got to make sure that your rhythm, your posture, is really good. Rowing can magnify that. And cycling targeting your quads, front of the legs again, your hip flexors coming right in here. It reinforces leg speed quite often, and that muscular resilience, particularly when you do the low cadence, high torque work, the Purple Patch special sauce that we talk about, in other words, strength endurance work. It tends to cross pollinate to running. This is really good, so what you get out of this in a low risk environment is greater total training volume. Now it's not just about trying to hit more training volume. It's trying to hit more total volume that your body can absorb to that you don't yield muscular damage to the extent you're going to get injured, and so you get total more effective training, and you're not increasing the risk. It's hugely valuable. Now, of course, it's even more valuable if you're a newcomer to running, if you're maybe a master's running runner, or you're prone to injury risk, really, really good. But I tell you,
Matt Dixon 33:15
every single athlete that I've worked with that has completed a marathon and have a Brett had a breakthrough has leveraged multi sport running. I promise you every single one of them. I've got hundreds of case studies for you. I'm going to give you a few real world results right here. One of my favorites, Ignacio, a marathon running at the New York Marathon, two hours and 34 minutes. Multi sport training throughout he ran most days, pretty easy, a little bit of an extended cluster run, occasionally a flash of high intensity, but most of his work came through swimming, high, high, high intensity, swimming and bike. A lot of strength endurance stuff on the trainer, two hours and 34 minutes. He also did walk breaks, but we're coming to that later. Jordan, one of my favorite athletes, moving to his late 40s, back to back marathons, two weeks apart, Boston and the Big Sur marathon in his late 40s. Both of those events, PRs, his Big Sur, which was the second one, was better performance than his Boston, leveraging multi sport Sarah piampiano and Cecilia Davis, Hayes, two of the Purple Patch pros, first time marathon attempts both went two hours and 45 minutes. That's pretty fast for a first time marathon. Both multi sport athletes. Julie three failed attempts to marathon to complete her marathon on a traditional running program fueled by Purple Patch multi sport. She broke the injury cycle. She's now completed four marathons, and she hasn't been injured since adopting the multi sport approach. The last one of those marathons, a Boston qualifier. And how about Panos? 58 years of age multi sport. He just completed his fastest marathon in the last 20 years at 58 faster than when he was 38 he's been doing it for a long time. The list goes on, and so leverage the power of multi sport. So there we have it so far. Two principles, number one, don't overvalue the long run. Number two, lean in to multi sport. Principle number three, walk breaks. Embrace the value of walk breaks. Let's ground ourselves here, and I want you to double underline this on your notes, because I think it's critical. Walk breaks are not a break from your running performance. In fact, they are the tonic that fuels your running performance. As soon as you shift your mindset from walk breaks being something that are a sign of weakness or a forced necessity, an act of desperation, then you start to develop a strategic tool to help you go faster. It's very simple. Walk breaks help you go faster in your marathon, take that home with you. Good. It's critical. Remember the biggest limiter we talk about if you do everything well, is muscular fatigue, mechanical decline. We want to get in front of this, and so by proactively and consistently integrating walk breaks into your training and of course, your racing, it preserves your form later in your race, it extends your endurance. It improves your economy, it reduces muscular damage. It helps you go faster. Now this is really critical, though. You need to use the walk brake strategically in your walk brace and racing. What that means is, even if you integrate short walk breaks, you get partial recovery.
Matt Dixon 27:24
And the research shows this. It's a great study in 2009 by belay, but the recovery of both heart rate and lactate care clearance improves. In other words, it makes the next block of running more effective, better. It also encourages better pacing, sustained aerobic ever over endurance. The peer reviewed research shows this, that if you integrate walk breaks, athletes tend to pace better. It's interesting, isn't it, walk breaks also help fatigue spirals and injury. They delay the onset of fatigue, that mechanical fatigue that we talk about. They allow athletes to maintain economy longer. And economy is a huge component of Marathon racing. It's a little bit like your miles per gallon, as if you're an automobile, really critical. But here's the thing about walk breaks, as I said before, it's not a sign of weakness. It's even used by elite level marathon runners. Every single Purple Patch professional athlete that I coached, every single one of them leverage walk breaks in training. It's a huge component. And I also think there's a mental component to this. Remember, our mind drives the body. It's a huge component, and it's a big challenge. You start the run, it's a long way. The marathon, you've got a big, big problem ahead of you, you have to navigate that challenge. It's a lot of mental load, and this is especially true for the less trained, the non elites. But in studies, when you introduce walk breaks, athletes consistently report greater perceived control and a reduction of race day anxiety when they leverage it. Now this is proven through peer reviewed research, it shows you. So how should you integrate walk breaks in your marathon training? Well, number one, don't just stoically stodgedly Stick to a eight minutes on one minute off ratio. You've got to layer your walk breaks strategically. Here's the thing, when you're going uphill, the speed penalty is less. When you're going downhill, the speed penalty is greater. So you want to try and distribute walk breaks at a time that is suitable for you and me for me and her for her, and him for him. So we need we're all individuals. We need to introduce walk breaks before our form starts to decline and we leverage it so that we can be really consistent.
Matt Dixon 39:35
And most importantly, invest in walk breaks early, before it is a sign of forced desperation. So here's what we do. I try and distribute the walk brakes when you can do something valuable and when the speed penalty is low. So withhold them for flats and even more, preferably Hills going uphill, if you can also integrate it at an aid station in. Enables you to do something useful. Get fuel and hydration in. So aid stations are another great place to do it. Just really try and avoid walking downhill, because that's where you do have a huge speed penalty. The second big strategic tool is, don't wait until you have to walk. Invest Early. And this can be really weird. You can be running along in the race, everybody's comfortable, and suddenly you do a little walk break. The people around you in competition will probably look at you. That's weird. That Runner was just great, and they just started walking. But over the course of time, you're going to see them later, because you'll be able to retain your form later in the race. And if you can retain your form, you retain your speed, and if you retain your speed, you'll be passing people, and you'll be having more fun, and you'll start to build the progression, and you're going to have a great marathon day. It's a really car important component. One more thing on walk breaks. This ain't Whole Foods, bringing the shopping out. Okay, don't confuse a walk break with a seated break at a park bench or a gentle stroll in the woods and the forest. It is a reset in which you are power walking to break, mentally break, physically reset and go again. And so as soon as you see it as a strategic tool. You're empowered. Really, really important. Principle number four, here we go. We've got two more to go. You can start to build your marathon program after this. Strength for most athletes is the bullseye. It's not a supplement, it's the bullseye. There are some runners in which in preparing for a marathon, strength could be labeled as an important and valuable supplement. But the truth is, for many, if not most, people that are competing in marathons, it's actually the bullseye look. Running is critical. We talked about that in principle number one, you've got to prepare for a marathon by running, but strength can be right up there, shoulder to shoulder with the running. It's huge. What does strength provide you? Well, it improves your muscular resilience. Remind me, what was the biggest limit to muscular resilience? There you go. It builds durability in the key muscle groups that we talk about, and so therefore, it's a key component to late stage fatigue. We want to avoid that. Number two, it is a reduction of injury risk. It strengthens your connective tissue. It corrects imbalances. Has a lower risk of overuse injuries, particularly knee down, really important runner's knee, shin splints, things like that. It enhances peer reviewed research proves this. It enhances your miles per gallon, your running economy and so in other words, it improves your neuromuscular conditioning and your coordination. Greater force production, making every single stride more efficient, less energy cost, more miles per gallon, better for late stage fatigue. Reduction, great. It actually helps with the muscular endurance to get ready for late stage fatigue, really important. It improves your posture. That's a huge component. It can even facilitate performance, longevity and recovery. This is a huge component, but there's something else as well with strength training, something that I've actually really experienced this year. The weird thing is that strength training sort of correlates into your just feeling better.
Matt Dixon 43:35
You just feel more compact, robust, strong, resilient, more aware of yourself. Endurance training works on the engine. It helps you navigate the toughness of resilience when you start to get fatigue. Of course, it's building muscular resilience. Strength training just makes you feel robust and strong good. There is a mental component to this as well. And So principle number four is simple. Every elite runner integrates year round strength in strength into their program. You should too. There has been a watershed moment over the last 20 years of endurance performance, when I first started coaching very, very few endurance athletes integrated strength. The few that did just saw it as some form of injury prevention. Make no mistake about it, it is a performance enhancer for every level of athlete, and it amplifies in value the lower down the performance scale you go, critical component. So principle number five, what could I tell you to help you show up to race day, where you're really excited to race and it actually drives your performance, you're going to end up going faster. You're going to actually successfully integrate the sport into your life. You're going to build better cars. Context and confidence for all other aspects of your life. What is it? Principle number five, what is it? What is it? What is it? Principle number five, share the journey and leverage coaching. Now I realized I sit here and I say this as a coach, but I just see it the whole time. So many runners that getting ready for marathon performance fly blind. They just copy really bad, outdated, flawed plans. Coaching is the thing that creates structure, accountability, a partner in your performance to help you with perspective. It's really, really challenging for every level of athlete, the higher level the athlete, the even more important this becomes. On this one, it's very hard for you to see yourself, to get out of the weeds, to retain perspective, to make smart decisions, to navigate and manage the different training loads, to maximize your adaptations. A coach does that for you. Add to that the community aspect, the team aspect that fuels your enjoyment, a little bit of added support and accountability ensure that you execute better. There are so many case studies where athletes have gone on the journey, trained for races, gone through multiple cycles, looked for an up level in performance, and the unlock has been the simple partnership of a coach and or integrating into a community. I can't overstate this enough. If I can encourage you on one thing, don't do it alone. It extracts the joy. It makes the journey tougher. It doesn't yield as good of a performance. There is a reason that when I coached professional athletes in an individual sport, I took a team approach, and that was the thing that created the flywheel, what we call performance inevitability.
Matt Dixon 47:35
It's not just a grind. It is something that is additive, that becomes something extra in your life. And so if I can encourage you on one thing, whether it's with us, whether it's with another coach, whether it's with a different team, get connected. Don't go alone. You will not only have more fun, you will get more yield and you will go faster. It is a huge component. And so for final takeaways, a reminder, drop the metrics driven chasing of mileage. You don't need to worry about how many miles do I accumulate this week? How long do I go? I'm only ready if I hit a 20 or 22 miler. That's not the magic number two. Build running as a lifestyle, not a panic plan, integrate slowly, leverage the power of multi sport. Those modalities are not just tools of recovery. They're tools of performance enhancement. Dial in all of the other habits. We didn't talk about it today, but fueling hydration, sleep, they are the things that fuel your running performance. Make sure you don't go it alone, support yourself and surround yourself with others, and when you're doing your running training, remember, walk breaks are not a sign of weakness. Shift the mindset. They become a strategic tool to help you go faster. These are principles that unlock running. They make it more joyful, more productive, and you ultimately go faster. And so I ask you, how are you going to train for your marathon. Are you just going to download a generic running plan, or you're actually going to take a smarter approach, one that actually works? I encourage you embrace the Purple Patch, moldy sport method for better health, better results and more joy in the process. I invite you to the Purple Patch community. I invite you to let us guide your program. Remember, whenever an athlete joins and puts their trust in us, they have never failed, if they're willing to commit and they lean into the program and they partner with us, we've never had an athlete fail. We won't mess it up for you either. I promise you info@purplepatchfitness.com
Matt Dixon 49:25
if you want to reach out for a complimentary needs assessment, but either way, I wish you the most joy in a wonderful sport of running. I hope that helps See you next time. Take care guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Marathon training, running principles, injury prevention, muscular resilience, fueling and hydration, pacing strategy, recovery, multi-sport training, walk breaks, strength training, cardiovascular conditioning, mental preparedness, logistics familiarity, Purple Patch coaching, athletic potential.