Marathon Running: Who Are We To Judge?

In my life as a trainer (as opposed to my life as a masked superhero), I'm often asked about training for marathons. Someone with a good 30 pounds of extra baggage will proudly announce that they're going to train for and run a marathon--or even a half-marathon--in order to get in shape. 

Lots of pixels we'll never get back have been expended on why this isn't a good idea:  back in the day (not too long ago, actually), marathon-runners were crazy outliers who had spent literally decades running.  They were long-distance monks, two-sessions-a-day types who did long runs with their club on Sunday mornings.  The idea that one could expect to complete one of their hardcore, over-the-top challenges with just a few weeks of training would have been absurd a short two decades ago.  It's like thinking you can climb Everest with no mountaineering experience! (Oh, wait, people do that too...).

But now, every schlubby Tom, Dick, and Harry at the office water-cooler is training for, and running, a marathon, raising money for this or that charity.  Worthy causes aside, I've just never thought this is a very good idea except in the rare case of someone who's genetically freakish enough to be built to withstand this kind of punishment.

But the fact is that marathon running isn't going anywhere.  Zillions of people--that's an exact figure--are doing them, want to do them, have done them, enjoy doing them.  Who are we, the fitness aficio-snob-o's, to tell anyone that they can't do this or that in their pursuit of fitness?  That people should get in shape, but only using the tools and techniques WE want them to?  If the idea of running 26.2 miles down beautiful, closed-to-traffic city streets, with thousands of cheering fans watching, gets Al from Accounts Receivable to squeeze himself into a pair of running shorts, and lifting weights or doing sprints does nada for him, well, I think Al should be first at the starting line.

We--and I'm talking to my fellow fitness pros here--need to meet our clients where they are, not try to jam them all down the barbell-shaped hole that most of us live in.

I suppose if I were going to train someone to do a marathon, I’d encourage a lot of soft-tissue work, particularly in the lower body, I’d discourage much upper-body work save for the core and scapular stabilizers; I’d encourage lots of glute-activation drills and mobility work in the hips and ankles. 

They’d do a long run once a week, a couple of shorter runs, and probably some work in the water as well to de-load the body and encourage healing while promoting a training effect (moving in the water offers almost no eccentric resistance, and therefore promotes less soreness and muscle damage than running, which requires a lot of deceleration every time you take a step).  

But who cares what I think?  I’ve never run more than eight miles at a stretch, and I’ve never raced more than a 10K. 

Jeff Galloway, a former Olympic marathoner, has a training system in which he encourages walking breaks that’s written about here.  He's the guy you should listen to.  People are reporting not just fewer injuries but faster times.  No surprise.

If you’re interested—and I’ll forgive you—in this kind of race, check out Jeff’s stuff.