Can I still stick with my very active weekday activities while keeping a half marathon training schedule?

October 30, 2009 8:11 AM

I play group sports and do strength training almost every weekday, should I still keep this up when I start my half marathon training?

I signed up for the ING Miami Marathon coming up Jan 31 2010. I'm going to be following this schedule starting November http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/novice.htm

I've been pretty active throughout the year because I play sports almost every day after work. I also try and go to the gym during lunch for about an hour for strength training every weekday minus friday.
Example of my week
Mon: Ultimate Frisbee, Tue: Basketball, Wed: Soccer, Thurs Volleyball, Fri: OFF

I've run on occasion, usually weekends, but never consistently. I've run two 5ks and completed them around the 32 minute mark.

Can I keep this schedule? What should I give up in order to be ready for the half marathon? I planned to run early in the morning before work so around 7am and Sunday to use as my long run practice.

posted by spacesbetween to Health & Fitness (16 answers total)

If I understand this correctly you would be working out 3 times a day Tuesday-Thursday, doesn't that seem like a little much? I am not a doctor or physical therapist or trainer or anything but I think your risk of injuring yourself is gonna be much higher if you continue with all of your activities as well as the running and a pulled muscle or groin strain can put a big crimp in your training, especially given your time frame.

If I were you, I (with no expertise) would probably dial the weight training back to 2 or 3 days a week and maybe ditch a couple of the sports days. Your body will let you know if you're overdoing it but that message might come as a sudden injury or just reduced performance. Also, make sure you pay attention to your nutrition because you're going to have to eat a lot more and what and when you eat after exercising can make a difference in your recovery times.

I currently weight train 3 days a week, run 3 days, and try to bike 1-2 days a week, either having a run-bike or lift-bike day on the weekends. The double days are tough and I have to be sure and eat a lot.
posted by ghharr at 8:58 AM on October 30, 2009

My advice would be that it depends on what you want to do. I think you might have more fun fitting in your training around the activities you are alreadt doing. If you are just trying to finish the half marathon, this should not be a problem.

I would cut out the Mondays after the long run for sure, you will need the recovery time. Other then that, maybe you could just add runs to warm up for your sports. Sounds like you are probably in pretty good shape, start with running maybe 10 minutes and up that not more than 5 minutes each week before you play basketball and volleyball. The long run is going to take a bit more work, I think that you need to be careful with increasing that mileage too fast.

If you are going to follow that training plan that you linked, I would cut back a good deal on the sports. That training regimen is tough to jump into for someone who is starting out from not being a fitness runner. Going out and running 3 or 4miles even one time in the first week could cause problems. I would ramp up a bit to that point.
posted by jefeweiss at 9:09 AM on October 30, 2009

(I never do group sports and I seldom strength train, but I am a runner. For whatever it's worth.)

Boy, this does seem like a lot. Other than strict volumne, you should consider what activites are hard on your connective tissue and joints. For example, if you're playing basketball, you are pounding on the ground; it's probably easier on you if you're playing soccer on grass.

You will get different advice from different runners here, but I always take a full day off the day before my long run (Saturday: so no running today). Fresh legs really make a difference. Then I (usually) run the day after my long run (Sunday), but short (3 miles) and slowly.
posted by teragram at 9:10 AM on October 30, 2009

After looking at the Cool Running Half Marathon plan, I would take back some of what I said above.

Their plan starts with the premise that you have been running for six months prior to starting the plan. It's really tough to know how the sports that you are doing translate to running time. If you decide to do this, I would be really careful.
posted by jefeweiss at 9:18 AM on October 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

I did the cool running half-marathon plan while swimming four days a week, and started riding my bike quite a bit at the same time. If you eat right, it's possible. However, note that swimming and riding are non-impact; your other activities are decidedly not so low impact. I'd lighten up on the other stuff.
posted by notsnot at 9:41 AM on October 30, 2009

First of all, I love Hal Higdon's plans. Slightly modified, they have gotten me through four marathons and four half marathons. Secondly, strength training is something that a lot of runners neglect, to their detriment, because strength training not only prevents injury by maintaining a strong core, but it also makes you a stronger runner. That being said, running and strength training and playing other sports gives you very little recovery time; less is more because your muscles need time to repair the tears and rips that happen as a result of high impact for long periods of time. A half marathon is a good distance - not too long and not too short, and it helps to have a strong core, but you don't want to risk overuse. Every body is different, and what works for one runner may not work for another, but I'll let you know what I do:
Saturday - Long run
Sunday - rest (bike ride or walk)
Monday - shorter, "recovery" run that is just to remind my body what it needs to do.
Tuesday - bike ride, strength train
Wednesday - tempo run or 6-8 miler or both
Thursday - strength train
Friday - bike ride, strength train
And now back to my long run. I alternate my Mondays and Tuesdays, depending on what I'm in the mood for.

I live in a city where soft trails are hard to come by and cement and asphalt are tough on my hips, so I actually run less. In doing so, I give my body much more recover time between runs, and I have sped up significantly - about one minute per mile.

This is not for everyone, but it works really well for me. And keep in mind that I also ride my bike 6 miles to work and 6 miles back almost every day.
posted by cachondeo45 at 9:42 AM on October 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

I train swimming and sometimes running, and I play group sports. Honestly, I don't find games anywhere near as wearing as training and I think you should be fine; maybe think about cutting back the lifting a little. If you start finding yourself totally exhausted then you may want to reconsider, but in my experience, run-swim doubles were way more painful than one workout and a game — to the extent that I don't really count games in my workout plans. Good luck on the run.
posted by dame at 9:42 AM on October 30, 2009

In my opinion, you should keep the sports you enjoy, and drop weight training sessions to 2-3 short sessions per weeks, concentrating on the basics - squats, deadlifts, press, push up, rows and core work.
posted by ye#ara at 10:36 AM on October 30, 2009

Well... yes and no. It really depends on your overall fitness level, as well as your run base. Your 5K times and your current training schedule indicate that you do not have much of a running base. So the time on your feet to complete a three mile training run is going to be a little on the longer side, and that is going to affect your recovery time. It's a little concerning that you don't have any type of run consistency going into this training. On the other hand, you probably have some decent overall fitness given your current training schedule.

It's probably pretty doable if you are committed and you are able to listen to your body (you need to pay extra attention to any sign of running injury since you're so new at this). Consider using your soccer day as the "2 m run or cross day" in Higdon's plan. Personally, I'd cut the weight training to 3x per week MAX, but then again, I'm assuming you train weights like I do (FWIW, I strength trained 3x per week for the majority of my half ironman training, and only 2x per week when marathon training). Good luck!
posted by smalls at 11:01 AM on October 30, 2009

To be honest, your question makes it sound like you don't have a great understanding of what effective strength training involves. The only people that can train 5x/week are Olympic lifters (because their training involves more skill work than absolute strength when compared to e.g. powerlifters) or other advanced competitive lifters who have developed a very high work capacity through years of training. And if you were one of those people and you were strength training effectively 5 days a week you would not be able to do much else and still recover adequately to actually make progress. So that's the first point.

Then pretty much everything the page that you linked to says about strength is utter nonsense. For example: "If you’re training for a race like the Gate River Run, you don’t want to bulk up. Extra weight will slow you down." This is false; gaining muscular bodyweight will not slow you down. A popular analogy says that "a bigger motor doesn't slow the car down." Then it continues: "To avoid putting on pounds, keep the pounds of the weights you lift low and the repetitions high." This is also a myth. Sets of 12 are good for hypertrophy, i.e. getting bigger. To gain strength without gaining size you should be focusing on heavier weights for low reps, e.g. 3-5. And then it says "The worst mistake you can make while lifting is to hold your breath." This is nonsense and dangerous. Any time the spine is loaded, as in a deadlift, a squat, or an overhead press, the valsalva maneuver (i.e. holding your breath) must be performed to increase intra-abdominal pressure and ensure the safety of the spine. Then it tells you to do bench press, curls, and crunches. I mean it's just a treasure trove of ridiculousness.

So, all that said, my recommendation would be to read Practical Programming for Strength Training by Rippetoe and Kilgore to gain a good understanding of how the body responds to training stimulus via adaptation and how an effective strength training program should be structured. Or failing that, I'd recommend strength training only 2x/week, and sticking with the squat, deadlift, overhead press, and maybe power cleans if you can learn them. Squat and press should be done 5x5, deadlift 1x5, and cleans 5x3. Starting Strength, by the same authors, will teach you how to perform the lifts, which will be done with barbells. You're doing yourself a major disservice and setting yourself up for various injuries if your strength training is all isolating muscles on machines. Feel free to memail me with any questions.
posted by ludwig_van at 12:32 PM on October 30, 2009

Response by poster: The strength training I do during my lunch hour is not that exhaustive. Truth be told we really only do 1 muscle group a day, for example chest 1 day and just do 3 sets of benching and maybe 3 sets of another exercise. Since a group of us goes, the rotation is rather long so we don't hit a lot of muscle groups and that is why we go 4 days a week. That is if we can, sometimes meetings come up which prevents us from going altogether.
posted by spacesbetween at 1:30 PM on October 30, 2009

Well, I don't know what exactly you mean by "exhaustive," but a good strength workout can consist of 2 or 3 movements -- generally a squat, a press, and a pull, e.g. back squat, bench press, deadlift, or back squat, overhead press, and power clean. This can easily be accomplished in less than an hour when you're starting out. If time is still an issue then I'd probably do something like squat and deadlift on Monday/Wednesday and bench/overhead press and chinups or cleans on Tuesday/Thursday. Keep your squatting and pressing to 3x5 at first, and deadlifts to 1x5. These numbers are work sets, followed by adequate warm-up sets, and they should be increasing by appropriate increments -- probably 5-10 lbs. for the squat and deadlift, and 5 pounds for the presses until that doesn't work anymore, at which point you'll need smaller plates in order to go up by 2.5 lbs. a workout.
posted by ludwig_van at 1:55 PM on October 30, 2009

It sounds like you're not out to WIN the half-marathon or have any specific goal time, you just want to be able to run/jog the whole way and finish, correct?

If that's true then you don't have to follow the Higdon plan to the letter, but you definitely have to put some miles in. No way to get past that. You have 14 weeks until the race so plot out on a calendar your weekend long runs and make sure your last couple of long runs are in the 12 mile range. Try to do a long run this weekend of 4 miles and see how that feels. Way too easy? Next week do 6 miles. A bit hard? Then next week do 4 and a half or 5. Then each week increase it by a half a mile. By the time the race comes around you'll be doing 12 mile long runs.

The rest of the week get some more mileage in. In an ideal world you'll also be doing some intervals (400m, or 800 fast runs with short rests in between) and some tempo runs (comfortably hard runs for 20-30 minutes with warmup/cooldown jogging). For your goals as long as you're running you can add some variety to these. But the most important thing is to never ever miss your weekend long run!

As far as dropping the weightlifting and other sports, yeah, you'll probably want to dial that back a bit so you can get some quality runs in without being too tired and to help your body recover properly. Listen to your body. If you're ALWAYS overly tired or sore then it's telling you that you're doing too much.
posted by jcmilton at 2:15 PM on October 30, 2009

*sigh*
"If you’re training for a race like the Gate River Run, you don’t want to bulk up. Extra weight will slow you down." This is false; gaining muscular bodyweight will not slow you down. A popular analogy says that "a bigger motor doesn't slow the car down."

By and large that isn't false at all, and add to the fact we're talking about long distance / aerobic activity even makes it all the more true.

Then it continues: "To avoid putting on pounds, keep the pounds of the weights you lift low and the repetitions high." This is also a myth. Sets of 12 are good for hypertrophy, i.e. getting bigger.

I have never heard anybody say high repetitions mean 12 reps or less.

To gain strength without gaining size you should be focusing on heavier weights for low reps, e.g. 3-5.

For best neural adaptations of fast twitch muscle fibers that's a sure thing, but again you're talking to someone who wants to train for a marathon.

And then it says "The worst mistake you can make while lifting is to hold your breath." This is nonsense and dangerous. Any time the spine is loaded, as in a deadlift, a squat, or an overhead press, the valsalva maneuver (i.e. holding your breath) must be performed to increase intra-abdominal pressure and ensure the safety of the spine. Then it tells you to do bench press, curls, and crunches.

Meh. Proper breathing is a good thing to learn and do and as far as exercises I'd be worried if it was instructing them to be done on a Bosu Ball, but otherwise all that isn't necessarily bad advice.
Maybe you should concentrate on flogging Starting Strength for more appropriate questions.
posted by P.o.B. at 10:56 PM on November 5, 2009

Mod note: comment removed - please direct answers toward the OP or go to MeTa or email with it, thanks.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:40 PM on November 6, 2009

Oh hi I'm going to respond to this now. Wouldn't want anybody getting confused.

By and large that isn't false at all

Gaining mass in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings has never slowed a runner down.

I have never heard anybody say high repetitions mean 12 reps or less.

I'm not sure what this means. The site that the OP linked and that I quoted recommended sets of 12 in order to increase strength without increasing mass, which is totally wrong.

Meh. Proper breathing is a good thing to learn and do

"Proper breathing" means performing the valsalva maneuver any time the spine is loaded, as it is in most of the major strength movements. Failing to breathe properly is a good way to injure the spine.

Maybe you should concentrate on flogging Starting Strength for more appropriate questions.

This question was about strength training. Starting Strength is a book that devotes nearly 300 pages to the proper execution of the major strength training movements. If you disagree with Mark Rippetoe's power clean cues or something, feel free to recommend a different coaching method. I have yet to encounter a more thorough or effective explanation and analysis of the lifts. I did not recommend that the OP perform the Starting Strength novice program, as it is clearly not suited to his goals. That doesn't make the book any less effective for learning to perform the squat, deadlift, bench, press, and clean, which are essential movements for anyone trying to increase their strength, regardless of their overall goals.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:47 PM on November 26, 2009