Dublin Marathon 2016 - Mentored Novices Thread

Antodoran136 wrote: »

Just want to say thanks to a few of you on here for the motivation during the week about my knee injury advising me to go to the physio I went in today in fear of bad news and after alot of work on it and alot of pain he has giving me some great exercises to strengthen up specific muscles that strengthens the knee area. I'm back on track hopefully and plan to get out tommorrow for 15miles lsr .. by the way just a little advice I done this injury on my hill sprints having previously been a footballer I was used to full out sprinting in which my form must have been all over the place my physio said to just go above your marathon pace in a stride keeping your form good and high knees. I'm afraid to tackle them again after this ...

Out of interest did the physio elaborate on particular muscles that were issue? (quads or Glute medius/TFL)

Personally I would scale the run back a bit tomorrow if you are only back on your feet as you run the risk of another injury. Scale back to say 10/11. You will still get benefits aerobically but there will be less of a risk of re-injuring

With hills or any sort of interval reps I would always say to follow the blow pattern in terms of effort:

1st 1/3 of reps - ease in should feel relatively comfortable
2nd 1/3 - starting to get a little bit uncomfortable
3rd 1/3 - having to work hard to maintain splits

During marathon training your should very rarely be "all out" in any session and generally should always come out of a session thinking that you could do 1-2 more reps if you really needed to.

It's about becoming more controlled at higher intensities rather than going balls to the wall in the hope that will make huge gains in your running (99% of the time it won't)

nop98 wrote: »

I would say that's okay - much better than twice-a-day at least, unless FBOT or Myles overrules me...?

I hope this week is going better for you? Not too many missed runs?

Running evening and morning is fine just be sure to listen to your body and err on the conservative side. If you have a short window of recovery between runs make sure than this is offset by longer recovery till the next. Some coaches actually use back to back hard days but ensure that it's taken into account with how easy they have after them (remember the recovery period is where fitness improves from the sessions it's half the formula to getting faster/fitter (alot of people forget that and just hammer away at training till they break down)

tipping wrote: »

Fascinating post again Myles. Have added S&C into the routine but I have a few questions for you/anyone on the squats as I seem to struggle with them and am not sure that I'm getting out of them what I should be.

What makes a good squat technique wise?
What muscles are you trying to work out? Should you feel a burn and if so where?
Is it aimed at strength or flexibility or both?
What number of reps should you be doing before adding weights?

In terms of squats you should have good ankle and thoracic (spine) mobility. If either is restricted you are going to find it hard to get into proper position (may have to put plates under heels for stability). You want to come down just below paralel (many people don't get enough depth and end up doing a quarter squat which is gonna load your quads and knees more than you want) keep knees roughly shoulder width apart and engage the traps to make a shelf for the barbell.

Ideally if you have any concerns a PT session can be worth its weight in gold to assess you form and correct it.

You want to be feeling it in your glutes for the most part there are other muscles which come into play but these are the big ones you are focusing on. Your glute max is the biggest muscle in the body yet one of the most under utilized in distance runners so the benefits from getting them working can be immense.

Strength is focus but this will also help with flexibility to a certain extent (not gonna go too much into stride here)

In terms of reps like anything should be progressive:

Phase one: Body Weight 2-3 x 20 reps (functional strength to work on correct form)
Phase 2: 2-3 x 14-16 reps, low weight (muscle and tendon loading prep phase)
Phase 3: 3-5 x 8-12 reps, medium weight (Muscle Mass Development)
Phase 4: 4-6 reps, heavy weight (Force/Power Development)

Should never aim to max out on lifts and even heavy weight should be about 80-90% of your absolute max.

I tried out a hydration backpack on my lsr this morning, the Vango sprint 3. I added 1.5 litres of water and 2 Hi5 iso tabs and it was brilliant. Probably overkill for Ireland, but I didn't notice any weight on the run and literally had fluids on tap.
I did start wondering if anyone has used one during a marathon or would you look/feel a bit of a tool lining up at the start with one?