180. Marathon Training Mistakes to Avoid with Coach Lu

Strength training actually have different faces. The basic strengthening will help you to avoid injury. But as you keep going harder and harder, when you become more advanced runner, the speed workers shoot so hard, you actually have to level up the strengthening as well. Are you constantly worried about getting injured or you don't know how to get faster as a runner? And you want to continue to run for stress relief. Then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to Healthy Runner, the only place that provides you with training tips, injury recovery, and prevention tools with actionable strategies by experts in the running industry, so you can develop a stronger running body and feel confident that you can overcome any obstacle as a runner. I'm your host, Dr. Duane Scottie, Abid Runner, running physical therapist and coach, educator, founder of Spark Healthy Runner, where we help dedicated runners get stronger, run faster, and enjoy lifelong injury-free running with the perfect online running coach, even if you've been told to stop running with an injury, or you think coaching is just for fast runners. Learn more about our signature coaching program at learn.sparkhealthyrunner.com. Every week on the show, we coach you to grow as a runner, just like the process of building a strong, durable home that will last a lifetime requiring little maintenance. The design and planning is your mindset. The foundation is your strength training. The framing is your run plan. The electrical and plumbing is your nutrition. The insulation, drywall, and flooring is your recovery. The landscaping and exterior is your race strategy. If you master the six parts of growing as a runner, your running will be strong and last long hitting PRs well into your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Every week we help a runner just like you build their dream home. I'm your host, Dr. Duane Scottie. Welcome to the Healthy Runner podcast. Now let's take a quick pause from this episode in which I hope you're finding value from to talk about safety because it should be a top concern for every runner. Have you got the right running safety gear? Whether you're heading out the door for a quick easy run or logging a long run that you need to start super early before the sun rises, or you finish super late after the sun goes down, nox gear keeps you lit up from all angles so you are visible by cars. Their signature product, the Tracer 2, keeps you visible while you run by pairing powerful multi-color LED fiber optics with ultra-reflective 3M patterns and fluorescence. Nox gear's new Tracer lamp lights your path and boost your visibility that attaches directly to the buckle of your Tracer, eliminating the need to use a headlamp anymore because let's be honest, who loves that bouncing feeling on your head when you're running? Just use the code Healthy Runner during checkout when placing your order at nox gear.com to receive 35% off your order. Go ahead and give Nox gear a try. Trust me, we recommend it to all of our healthy runners in our coaching program and you will never feel more confident that you are safe while running. Now let's get back into this episode. Are you about to embark on marathon training? This could be your first marathon or you could be an experienced marathoner but you're still looking for ways to either crush a PR by running fast or or actually complete the marathon training cycle without needing to miss workouts because you suffered a stubborn injury that seems to always creep back up. You want to learn this secret that is helping runners crush their marathon race feeling stronger than ever. Spoiler alert, this secret is following these 12 marathon training mistakes. Welcome to episode 179 on the Healthy Runner podcast where we help you get stronger, run faster and enjoy lifelong injury free running. I have Coach Liu back on the show from our Healthy Runner coaching team to share all of his knowledge, experience and wisdom about the top mistakes you need to avoid during your marathon training so you can not only crush your race but enjoy lifelong injury free running after the race. Coach Liu, you know how we do this. Give all the new listeners in our community a little bit about yourself and let us know why you love to run. Okay, I'm Coach Liu. I'm a run coach. As part of this talk, Healthy Runner team. I'm a personal trainer. I'm also a coach in the veteran club in Boston. The veteran club is about 100 people but more than half of them are running Boston over and over again. It's a pretty dedicated club and a lot of them are Boston volunteers too. Yeah, so shout out to the Ben running club in the Boston area. And tell us how many marathons have you run personally yourself Liu? I run 15 marathons and two ultra-relays. A couple of half marathons, not as much as marathons. And all these 15 marathons, I did marathons in 12 states. And here are all the medals. Yeah, I love your medal rack and you got three Boston's behind you. And you're definitely checking off a lot of those states on the map to your goal of 50 marathons. So you are an experienced marathoner. Like you're not like myself that's run two. You know, I'll be running my third this year in 2023. But you've done this before. You've run this yourself many, many times. And you know, tell us how many athletes do you think you've actually coached to meet their marathon dreams and make them a reality? I coach runners for all distances. I'm about 50 runners with various distances, but about 30 marathon runners. Yeah, a big chunk of it in the marathon runners. Yeah, so you definitely are experienced from a programming side as well. And you've coached many different types of runners to, you know, be able to get to that 26.2 finish line. You know, and that's why I wanted to really bring you on the show today when I was thinking about this topic as we're embarking on marathon training. You know, I wanted to really cover this of like what are the most important things that we need to avoid as runners as we really get into the training? So not so much from a race standpoint and race execution. But as we get, you know, into this 16 20 maybe even 24 weeks of kind of marathon training. You know, what are the things that we really need to avoid? So that's why I really wanted to bring you back on the show to talk about this topic. And for those that don't know, I am Dr. Dwayne Scotty. I'm a running physical therapist and coach and us at Spark Healthy Runner have given hundreds upon hundreds of runners a plan for getting stronger and faster without injury during their marathon training. And this specific training today, well, we are going to share our top tips on what to avoid in your marathon training. So you don't make the same mistake many runners make when deciding to train for marathon. And our plan will work for you. All you need to do is really stay tuned, follow these tips that coach Lou is going to share. Next, you need to take action and implement these into your specific training. So you can't just learn and listen, but you actually need to implement and do. And then lastly, what we ask is that you share this with a running friend who has been frustrated with getting injured every time they crane for marathon. Or they're wondering why their marathon times are not getting any faster. And if you don't do the three things that I just outlined, what's going to happen is you're going to continue to like be frustrated that every time you train for a marathon, you don't have the quote unquote fitness right or you get injured. Or you're not getting any faster on race day and you just think you're getting too old for running. So there are six parts of your running journey that need to be optimized so you can run strong and last long. What are those parts mindset, strength training, run plan, nutrition, recovery and your race strategy. And when you execute these six key parts of your running journey, you'll not only feel more confident in getting stronger and faster. You'll stay healthy and enjoy the process of running again and crush some marathons. So coach lose 12 marathon training mistakes to avoid is not only going to relate to the run plan bucket. You will notice, but we're going to also be filling your mindset, strength training, nutrition and recovery buckets as well. And if you want to learn more about our six key parts to optimize your running journey, you can download your free copy of our how to grow as a runner framework. Just go to learn dot spark healthy runner dot com forward slash grow or click the link wherever you are watching or listening to this training. So coach, Lou, I'm excited to get into this. I want to know what is the first marathon training mistake that we want to avoid? Math on training all start we start with mind. We will stay that's physical, but also always begin begins in the mind. So the first thing I want to mention is that in a way early in the go setting base before you even start training. How do you set a goal? Do you set a goal based on your target arbitrary target, for example, I want to break four hours. Regardless of however your country is just I like to break four hours because school or because someone your colleague has done that. And that looks you hand out all the time you feel, oh, if he can do that, I can do that too. Right. In the goal in the goal setting, you want to start with that. So we want to you want to set a goal that's for you, not for others. So do not compare with others. Set a goal that's for you. So I think what I heard here is in this goal setting phase, you kind of really shared like two mistakes to avoid. The first mistake to avoid is choosing your plan based on some arbitrary target level of I'm going to run a sub four hour marathon. I'm going to run a sub three forty five marathon sub three thirty right like whatever that arbitrary target versus what your current level of fitness is. And then number two is really comparing yourself to others, right, or your younger self or your younger self. Yeah, so maybe someone who hasn't run a marathon in five years, 10 years, 15 years. I've had clients right who have kind of taken a hiatus as they've had like two children, three, four, five, like the latest clients, five kids, fish you hadn't run a marathon in I think it's like 15 years now. So kind of comparing yourself to like what you did like 15 years ago. All right, all right, and even probably, you know, comparing yourself to others that, oh, if you know a friend of yours who you maybe casually go for runs with on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they ran a three 50 marathon. Like you should be able to do that too, right. All right, it's good to have a high goal, but really don't be dragged into comparison. And I'll say do not just choose a plan based on your target, choose a plan based on your current business, stop on where you are and build up to whatever you can. Yeah, so having what I'm hearing is realistic goals, right. And not just having that pie in the sky and, you know, not just making this goal be a hard goal because you can do hard things. And, you know, you want to run this sub for our marathon because it just sounds good or you know other runners who have done it and you quote unquote will be classified as a faster marathoner. And you can make that time whatever you want, by the way, right. It's all arbitrary. It's all relative. But making, making smart goals and, and, and something that's realistic for what you run recently, right. Okay. All right. So those first two marathon training mistakes to avoid really relate to goal setting, the next grouping that you have in your list that you're going to share really relates to kind of designing the right marathon plan for you. So what's that first mistake we want to avoid when designing the plan. Again, that the clear project thing, you may or may not. That influence everywhere in every phase in planning in the plan building. So you look at someone else. I believe keep choking plan. Oh, he's doing 100 miles a week. And I want to be keep choking. I want to run 100 miles a week. But he has some talent there and he's four time athlete and he's as a whole team supporting this star with what you are. And do not just copy someone else's plan. And do exactly the same thing you may end up into yourself. Yes, we do indeed. And keep choking is human now, right? Because he didn't win the latest Boston marathon. But however, that doesn't mean that we can do the same training that could choke you guys, right? No, no. But we're also hearing is like, I'm just thinking about a lot of our runners who do go for, you know, some of their daily runs with their friends. And, you know, let's say you and like Tara or you and Barb, they like to run with, you know, Barb's doing an advanced marathon training plan or Barb's doing an intermediate marathon training plan. And just because you run with her a couple of times a week, doesn't mean that that advanced marathon training plan or that intermediate marathon training plan is right for you, right? Because you and Barb might be in different parts of your running journey. So not letting pure pressure influence the plan, right? Or if Barb's like, you know what? I'm running this marathon. Like I'm going to get you to sign up with me. And she's like convincing you, right? She's like, I need someone. I need an accountability partner. I love our chats during our run. And I just need a friend to like do this with. So you're going to do this with me sign up for the race. And then I found us a plan. So, you know, we're going to do this plan that I found, right? Like how many of you guys probably can relate to that story, right? So this is actually a mistake to avoid. So this is number three mistake to avoid is not letting pure pressure influence your plan selection or design. And remember, we stated our original goals was to be able to complete your marathon, feeling good, feeling strong, not getting injured and getting the best outcome possible. Right? It's not to establish a, you know, really deeper relationship and friendship with Barb. I don't know who Barb is, but that name just popped in my head. It is to actually accomplish those marathon goals of yours. All right. So what is your fourth marathon training mistake to avoid coach? Because I get into that, I'll say running friends are great. I love running friends. I like running community. But when you are training, you want to train your own based on your own business. So the fourth one is no face beauty. That's the other thing. A lot of internet. You said you search marathon one plan and 18 weeks, 16 weeks, 12 weeks. Go directly into speed work. Long runs with, which I call rolling with fights that you have some speed work in the middle of long run. They are cool, but they all assume that you have been running consistently for a few weeks with a pretty strong. We say that called a base. You are doing training consistently. So you less prone to injury. Then you are ready to do that. We are not saying you just come out from even if you run a couple of marathons and then you take, say, two months off. Then you just follow the 16 week plan with nothing between no, no, no, base building. We need it. All right. So mistake to avoid not having base building. And we've done a full training on base building updates actually this year. So if you guys check out episode 168 in the Healthy Runner podcast, you will get exactly what base training is, what Coach Lou is talking about. Hopefully you're listening to this episode before you're actually starting marathon training because you need to complete the base building first before actually jumping into a marathon. So if you found this and you were considering signing up for marathon, but you realize, hey, I haven't run the last two or three months. And before you actually think of signing up for a marathon 16 weeks from now. Consider listening to the base building episode and maybe delay that marathon race of yours for another four months, six months, eight months, even. All right. So not doing the base building. All right. So what is your fifth marathon training mistake to avoid? That's still in our big category of the plan designing category mistake category. And this one will be no cup that week. What is cup that week? We progress during training or finish increase. So the trend intends to get higher and higher. But at some point, every three or four weeks apart training, we want to add, or even five, six seconds. We want to add one week of mostly just easy runs and a lot less. We do some artich too. The key for this is that as you keep going, yes, you finish increase, but there's an underlying fatigue that keep building up. And you want to rest a little bit that will help you to get stronger in the next cycles, which by this cycle, I mean before the next cup I face say you have five weeks. Start training training training. You cut it back. When you cut back, you're finished to growing. But then what you want to do is that during the cup out week, the fatigue start to go down and then you already put it next month. Yeah. So this is, this is an important one. And I think this is one that many runners forget about because they think about their training for marathon and they need to build up to 26.2 miles. And then you kind of think, hey, if I'm training for a marathon like each week, I need to get better and better. I need to run further and further. And I need to progress my long runs. I need to progress my weekly mileage. So when coach Lewis talking about these cut back weeks, we're really referring to not only your weekly mileage, but also your long runs. So thinking about those weeks that they're not lost weeks, they're not, it's not like you're going to progress in your fitness. But what coach Lewis saying is that these are actually essential to allow your body to recover for a week, maintain your fitness where it is. So then the following week, you take that next step up. So, you know, sometimes if you envision a staircase, right, it's not a matter of going up. Let's say your staircase was like 16 steps and you're doing a 16 week plan. You know, on that staircase, there's going to be a couple platforms. It's not just going to be 16 steps that are equal like, you know, in depth, you might get, you're going to go up four steps. And then there's a little platform where the following week, you stay where you are or slightly come down in order to go back up. So these cut back weeks are essential in really keeping us healthy, especially, especially, especially if you're, I was going to say, Lou, especially if you're a beginner marathon runner. But then I was thinking I'm like, if you're any marathon runner, because if you're not a beginner, you're more advanced and you're even doing harder, faster, like speed work sessions, you're doing those long runs with spice that you like to call them. So your training is actually a lot harder. So you even need the cut back weeks, even more, you know, so I think everyone pretty much listening to this needs to really embrace the cut back week. Would you agree? Yes, definitely. All right. All right. So we are at number five. So what's number six marathon training mistake to avoid? It's kind of related to the last one, but most specific about too much speed work you want to avoid it because the body needs to recover. There's this principle 80, 20 principle, which means of all the mileage, let's say 40 miles a week, 20%, only 20% should be hard work. All the 80% should be easy runs. And by the 20%, I mean only the hard runs during workouts. For example, if you do three mile temple, always two miles, one mile and one mile, four down, only three miles. So half of it is the speed work. So you count that towards the weekly 20%, so if you have 40 times 20%, it's eight. So that belongs that's three. And you have five miles hard. Maybe you can include that in in a long run as a spice. Yeah. But don't do more than that because the body just doesn't recover fast enough. And so if you do more than that, your body will, that means you probably do not do the 20% hard enough. You don't have a sufficient recovery to do this. We work really the way we want or your, you just pull, you just fight through and then get injured. So 28, 20%, 80%, 20% of speed work. All right. So not doing too much speed work or doing too much speed work is a mistake to avoid. Got you on that point. So what's the number seven? This one you like it. Yeah. Yeah. So not including strength training, right? It's going to be super, super important to really build that resiliency in the body. So it can tolerate the demands of marathon training. I think everyone's probably heard my take on it. But, you know, what's, what's your take in what's your philosophy with strength training coach. Strength training actually have different faces. The strengthening, the basic strengthening will help you to avoid injury. But as you keep going harder and harder, when you become more advanced runner, the speed work is so hard, you actually have to level up the strengthening as well. Yeah. So to tolerate the demands of the faster running and the speed work. That runs. Yes. Well, that's not one that strength training helped you build resistance to the injuries and it kind of grow as your heart training as you, as you intensity get harder. But it kind of, but you also have to balance because strength training is also stressed on your body. You want to, you want to arrange it during the week. So you don't do a super, super hard training. And then the next day you have hard workouts, you probably will not be able to do that very well. So you want to arrange it well so that you can do both strengthening and recovering now and then do that. Right. Perfect. All right. I hope you are enjoying this episode and it is providing value for you. I wanted to take a brief moment to share a story of a real runner like you who is struggling with a common problem that you may be facing. Here is one of our athletes who got the guidance, support and accountability from our healthy runner coaching team to get clarity and structure on the six steps to growing as a runner with personalized strength, nutrition and run plans. I hope their story inspires you that there is hope to either get over your running injury or to continue getting faster or running longer so you can continue to get in those mental clearing miles and enjoy your running journey again. Here is their inspiring story. Hi there. My name is Jason and I want to take a minute to tell you about my experience with Spark Healthy Running and the healthy runner coaching program. So I found Dr. Scotty via a Spotify podcast searching for Achilles tendonitis. I had been battling it for about four months leading into the New York Marathon last year. It made my training not fun and it certainly had an impact on my performance and I couldn't get rid of Achilles tendonitis. I then had shoulder surgery and was out for 12 weeks. So when I came back the Achilles issues were still there. So I reached out to Dr. Scotty and signed up for his four week program and over that four weeks he coached me through the ups and downs but everything that he said would happen happened. My Achilles pain went from my 6-7 to roughly a zero over the four weeks. The strength training portion of the program put me in a place where I feel stronger as a runner than I ever have my hips, my legs across my body and my form. I feel in a much stronger position and mostly it created a level of discipline in my training that I hadn't had in the past. So I was a little bit sticker shock from the price of the program. That price actually led me to being more disciplined and taking the program very, very seriously and staying committed. And I couldn't be more pleased with the results. I'm running faster, I'm running stronger than I ever have and now in a great position to train for my next marathon. So thank you to Dr. Scotty and the Spark Healthy Running Team and that's it for me. I hope sharing that story inspired you and provided you some hope. If you want the 101 Structure Accountability and Support from our Healthy Runner Coaching Team of Experts, check out the Behind the Scenes video tour of our Signature Coaching program. You just heard about including other stories from runners who are just like you and we're struggling with the same sticking points before they signed up for our program. Just head to Learn.Spark HealthyRunner.com to learn more and book your strategy call with me today. Now let's get back into this episode. So now so all of those kind of mistakes so far. So we've we've shared seven with you now. We've really talked about two of them. We're with goal setting and then we really cover. Let's see five marathon training mistakes to avoid that really spoke to the design of your plan and how we design the marathon training plan. So now the last couple or the next couple I should say the next four really relate to executing the plan right and now you're in the training. So what is marathon training mistake number eight? This one is related to not listening to your body. Sometimes we get super motivated, which is good, but you also want to listen to your body. If you're not feeling very well, you shouldn't really push through. If you are sick, then the plan says I have a hard run there and you just push through and you try to follow the plan 100%. That's not 100% good for you because the plan will pre-build. And when you view the plan, either it's even if it's a customized plan, things will come up and if you don't listen to your body, you enjoy yourself. If you have a coach, then that you tell the coach and then you can make changes. Listen to your body. Yes, not listening to it. Listen to your body. Yeah, and I would also add to that, like not being flexible enough to modify the plan to your unique needs. And there's so many of us runners that are type A, me included, and you get it in your head and your stubborn, right, like I'm a stubborn Italian over here, that you're just going to go for it. And sometimes that's the worst thing you can do. And quite frankly, that's usually the cause of the majority of injured runners, I see. When we trace back to when their injury started, it was usually missing some of these signs that were happening in their training. And they continued to push through when they were sick, like you were saying, or they were under a very stressful condition. They were doing a lot of travel. They didn't get good sleep, right. All of those things are going to affect how you feel. So you really need to listen to your body. And also, I love the point that you brought up of, you know, even with a customized plan written for you, that plan will need to be modified because it's dynamic. It's ever changing because you're human and things happen in life. And you need to make sure that they're modified. And that is why I feel very passionate and strongly about how we work with runners is not, you know, just giving writing different plans for folks because we know this is one of the mistakes. We've seen many runners who come to us after they've made these mistakes and want clarity on it through our coaching program. And it is making those, I like to call them like in game decisions. And it's the decision making process of, okay. And actually this literally just happened yesterday. I'm looking at my calendar here yesterday at a runner who was traveling. She went to Hawaii and she was coming back and she admitted she was completely exhausted. She's jet lagged. She went right back to work the day that she actually came back and physically mentally exhausted, did a ton of hiking out in Hawaii, amazing views, all of that. But we needed to modify what I had planned for her a couple of weeks back because yeah, I wasn't planning on that happening, right. So we need to listen to our bodies. We need to be flexible enough to modify it and be okay with that. It doesn't mean that, you know, you're not going, if you don't follow the plan to the tea, you're not going to meet your marathon goal. And oftentimes this is critical in you actually meeting your goal is to actually modify the plan. So I love this one, Lou. Obviously you can see I'm very passionate about it because it is a common, a common, common training mistake sticking point that I see with so many runners who, you know, come to us for clarity or they're coming after they get an injury during marathon training. All right. So what is tip number nine or marathon mistake training to avoid? This one we've been talking about that in almost every podcast, every gas, running easy runs too fast. So easy runs as we said, just a few second questions before should be 80% of the weekly mileage and what do you mean by easy runs? We use up E, but if that's too technical, easy runs should be in general. Two to three minutes slower you than your marathon pace, which also depending on your kind of fitness, now you go marathon pace, record our first mistake. So easy runs should be two to three minutes slower than your marathon pace. If you just look at someone's job or someone run, oh, they're running side nine minutes for mile and most days because that's the easy runs. And oh, I can do nine minutes for mile. I'll do that every day. And I can just run as fast as him, but the thing you didn't know that they're going to race, they run seven minutes for mile. And then the easy day they do nine minutes for mile, but then when they turn hard, they run way harder. So you shouldn't just compare to someone else's plan, someone wants to run and then take that there, you need to run as you're easy run because you are different fitness level. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. This is such a common mistake. And it's one that I think for some of us, you know, you look at the number and you feel like you're not a runner. Fill in the blank. If you don't run less than a 12 minute pace, less than 11 minutes, less than a 10 minute pace. And for some reason that gets in people's heads. And it even sometimes is an initial goal for people of which your goal, I want to run less than a 10 minute pace for all of my runs. Well, well, why like that's not, you know, if you want to do this for longevity, we actually need to keep it in the RPE level that you're at. And like you mentioned, rating of perceived exertion. And we really got into a deep dive on this topic with Coach Latoya in episode 174 in the Healthy Runner podcast. So we'll definitely link that one in. But this is such a common mistake. And especially for marathon training, like this can be like detrimental really, really to your growth, your fitness. And you really just got to check that you go at the door and embrace it. And like Coach Latoya said, your easy days, your easy run should be two to three minutes slower than your marathon pace. And this is true, tried tested, like many people run marathons, two to three minutes faster than what they do, the majority of their runs during the week. And it's as a, especially as a beginner, you don't realize that. And you're like, how am I ever going to run in eight minute pace on, you know, marathon race day, if all of my runs are in the tens. Like, and I, I guess I understand that not, you know, if I just take my like primitive brain here and take away the run coaching side of things and everything that I've learned, you know, during my running journey. But it will happen. Trust us, right? Like coach, 15 plus marathon has helped 60 plus people like train for marathon. All of them have run their easy runs two to three minutes slower than their marathon pace. And I like to just give numbers, for example, like myself, and I always get comments on this when I do races, because I like, you know, post whatever the time was the piece. So for me, my half marathon time is like in eight minute pace around there, you know, marathon is going to be 15, a 20, 25, whatever, you know, we're kind of using around that ballpark. But my easy runs are in the 10 to 11 minute range. And if I have a really hard week, where I'm really extending out my speed work, it's, it's harder for me, or I'm doing those long runs with spice with some faster miles in there. Those easy runs that week or even slower. And I'm embracing it. And I know it's critical, critical recovery, critical to keep you healthy during your marathon training build. So such an important one, sorry, don't mean to like totally rant on this one. Go step, so what 74 coach, the Toyota, you'll get the deep dive on the easy run. So let's get to the 10th, the 10th marathon training mistake to avoid is what coach Lou. The 10th mistake is to ignore recovery, which kind of related to other things we mentioned about, if you run the easy run too fast, you can now recover enough. So ignoring recovery, recovery doesn't just mean easy runs, but also sleep and live stress, live stress is real. And do your bone rolling massage, gun massage, all kinds of things. Life, life stress is, you know, turns into physical stress, and it's all connected emotional stress, just talked about this with Stephanie Flippin actually emotional stress leads to physical stress, and it will impact your training and it will impact your recovery. And I think especially in this is something that I really, you know, found super helpful during training for my second marathon last fall was doubling down on the recovery. And not skipping out on, you know, my foam rolling, my soft tissue care that I like to call it, taking care of my feet, like really, you know, making sure after those long runs when, you know, the feet are sore, like they're heavy, you've been on your feet for a long time. You're going to be out there for three, you know, two and a half to three hours, pretty much for like those longer long runs, right, when you're marathon training. So, you know, making sure you are taking care of your feet, you're doing whatever recovery tools that you have in your toolbox, you're maybe getting massages, you know, you're using your percussion gun, your foam roller a lot, you're elevating your feet, maybe you're using compression socks a little bit more often. All of those things are super critical when you're marathon training, like you should be implementing them because recovery bucket is one of our six steps to growing as a runner. So, like all of us should do it all throughout the year, but especially during marathon training time, you need to double down on this and it is super important to get you through the training and beyond, right, so you're not, you know, winding up. You run your race and then you're going to rehab and you need to get rehabbed for an injury now, you know, you recover from your race and you resume your normal lifestyle of getting out there for your mental clearing runs. Yeah, I want to add one example here, I see a post that someone's having some minor injuries, but usually good, just really minus and so a few days of recovery will be fine. But then in the plan there's a 20 mile usually that's 20 mile right so he said, um, I still have this 20 miles in so, but I, but I still have this little injury that need a little rest, but should I just push through the 20 miles because everyone doing 20 miles. Then at this point recovery take priority one run doesn't make up right the whole thing. It's think about it, if you run in the field training, you run 500 miles and the race day is 26 miles, so it's 5%. So one one run doesn't really matter that much, it's accumulated you up. If you, however, if you don't do the recovery, you're injured, you can, you don't get to the start line at all. So recovery, very important. Yeah, now thank you for bringing that up and yeah, super, super important. And it is more of, you know, really crossing that mental threshold of like you have to run a 20 technically, you don't have to run a 20 right like if you can run 18, you can finish a marathon. We've even seen other folks run less than that and finish a marathon, you know, not that we advocate that from like a training standpoint, but like physically it can be done. Alright, so what's the 11th marathon training mistake to avoid? It's important one, not fueling your runs with proper nutrition, nutrition means both the jail that whatever you take, that food and electrolytes, you shouldn't just drink water because the sweat is not just water. There's salt and electrolytes in the sweat, if you sweat a lot and you're just doing water, the body in balance fluid in balance will be broke and broken. That's when you have crammed or even have shock, so don't ignore that and feel of course we run feel, but also when we run, keep running, keep running, the blood sugar drop low. So the little jail we take will help raise the blood sugar, which is most important to get our brain back to function. Even if you have all the energy in your body, the brain doesn't work, it doesn't work and the brain can only use sugar, blood sugar. It doesn't take to say running burns bad, but the brain doesn't take that efficiently, so you want to have fuel, you want to have electrolytes. So fueling, no fueling is a problem, make sure you feel. Yeah, and Brooke, our registered dietitian and coach and our healthy runner team will be very happy to hear this one because you know the fuel is the spark that we need right for marathon training. And you know, these are most critical for those of you who haven't embraced yet fueling your runs, haven't started doing that, you know, the runs that are most critical is your long run and your speed work, you know, sessions are going to be really needed if you're doing a shorter run. Maybe you can get away with that without fuel, but definitely your long runs and your speed work, like Coach Lewis said, you know, it's really going to allow you to actually feel confident when you finish these because they won't feel like a slugfest, they won't feel like you're so defeated, like, oh my goodness, 14 miles felt terrible. How am I ever going to run 26.2 or my legs just like feel like they're giving out, they feel so heavy and like these are the things that people say when they're not fueling properly. So, you know, fueling properly for your runs, very critical, I love the fact you brought up, you know, the fueling during the run with gels, the electrolytes. And I'll also add in there fueling before the run, right, especially those long runs and taking your free long run fuel, you know, making sure you eat something sustainable food that you're practicing because that we're going to need to do for your marathon race, you know, doing that during your training is going to be super important as well. We're down to the final marathon training mistake to avoid. That's also then that's also related to the final phase, the favoring, people have paper in place because you have all this energy, you cut back on the run to get some extra time and extra energy too because that's time we cut back the strain training as well. And I noticed already noticed a few athletes start to add some actual runs in more than I did more than I planned, so I quickly called a stop. So, so the mistake is to add some extra miles into workouts in the runs in that during the tapering phase, the tapering phase, you have extra energy, you want to conserve it, you want to save it so you can use it on a race day, you will feel strange, but that's what how it works, it's a science, how it works. And if you if you like how I need to use all this energy, then you don't have that on the race day, so don't do that, please don't do that. Yeah, so don't waste that extra energy, right, save it for the race day, so the mistake is really, you know, adding more miles, pushing harder during your runs during your tapering phase, and you know, not embracing the taper and not really, you know, completing it as it should be. And like Coach Lewis said, there's science behind this, right, this is why all, you know, elite endurance athletes, like they taper because the science is true, like you basically are allowing our bodies to adapt during the training, so we actually are running longer and we're getting more quote unquote fit, right, so our fitness is improving, but we're going to eventually get to a point where even though our fitness is improving the training is so hard, we can't give our all, so the whole purpose of the tapering is to actually have this period of recovery, so then on race day, we're feeling 100%, so we can give it our all on race day, so I love that one. 12th and final marathon training mistake to avoid is not adding in those extra miles or pushing too hard during your tapering phase, so as we get into the final stretch here coach, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this, you know, if you can change one thing about the misconception of marathon training, what would that be? You don't have to run everyone at marathon pace, it's so common, so common, I see that endless times, especially for people without a coach, so common, and I used to do that too. That end up, you try to run everyone fast, and so you kind of have the same pace for race day, and the easy runs, and every day runs, but if you waste a structured program avoiding all the mistakes we talk about, the easy runs, you run kind of slow, but then the race day, you suddenly get two or three minutes faster, that's because you follow all these steps. So don't run all the runs the same speed, you don't have to run everyone at marathon pace, it's a common, it's reasonable, you say, oh, I want to run 26 miles at marathon pace, so I just run everyone at marathon pace, and I get longer and longer and longer and longer, I hope I can get 26, I see that endless times, it doesn't happen that way. That's exactly when you see people, we come from, they go to mouth and teeth, and suddenly there's a huge cramp or just suddenly out of energy, and then this sudden drop of pace, because it just doesn't work that way. All right, I love that one, yes, all right, I hear that all the time as well, so thank you for bringing that up, I love it, so guys, just a recap here, in this episode really Coach Lewis shared with us 12 marathon training mistakes to avoid, I've been taking notes over here, so number one was choosing the plan based on target fitness, rather than your own fitness, number two, comparing yourself to others, or even your younger self. Number three, letting pure pressure influence your plan selection or design, number four, not base building, number five, not including cut back weeks, number six, doing too much speed work, not following that ED 20 principle, number seven, no strength training. Number eight, not listening to the body or being flexible to modify the plan to your unique needs, number nine, running your easy recovery runs too fast, number 10, ignoring recovery, number 11, not fueling your runs with the proper nutrition and 12, feeling that extra energy and adding more miles or pushing extremely hard during the tapering phase. Those are fantastic guys, if you follow these and you avoid these, you are going to definitely crush your marathon and if you're not sure of how to implement all of these 12 mistakes into your marathon training and want to get the structured run plan strength plan for running proper mindset nutrition recovery modifications. So we talked about before that really Lou talked about, then you can get the full support from our healthy runner coaching team, you can simply check out our coaching program by going to learn dot spark healthy runner dot com forward slash coaching or click the link in the show notes that I have for you and don't forget to download your free how to grow as a runner road map that I talked about today, so you can start implementing all of those principles into your training. And you have to implement guys now that you listen to this right you took that first step so we need to actually implement this don't just listen to us like actually do it. And if you've got anything out of today's training if this was eye opening you learn something please copy the link share with a runner you know who is embarking on their marathon training journey. So we can help more runners be able to cross that 26.2 finish line feeling stronger and more confident and honestly most importantly, I want our community to be able to enjoy lifelong injury free running so thank you in advance for doing that coach Lou as always thank you so much for taking your time to come back on the show educating our running community about these common marathon mistakes to avoid. My pleasure. And thank you to the listener whether you're listening to this during a run hopefully you're crushing that run listening and following these tips or if you're watching the video version in our spark healthy runner YouTube channel I see you guys and I appreciate you. If you like this training then you're surely like the next if you're listening on the podcast to you up episode 159 to learn all about how to grow as a runner in six easy steps or if you're watching this on YouTube just click the video that I have for you. Here let's maintain a strong mind a strong body and let's just keep on running until next time. Thank you as always for listening to the healthy runner podcast where we help you get stronger run faster and enjoy lifelong injury free running if you found this content valuable here's five ways we can help you grow as a runner for free. One grab a free copy of our six steps to growing as a runner framework at learn dot spark healthy runner dot com forward slash grow to follow our Instagram page at spark healthy runner. Three join our free group by searching healthy runner in Facebook for subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube dot com forward slash spark healthy runner. Five leave us a five star review so we can gain access to more experts in the running field and bring those lessons and trainings back here right to you. 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