Last Saturday, I ran 26-plus miles, the penultimate longest long run in preparation for the Western Pacific Marathon in Fremont on April 30. My final long run will be 28 miles three weeks prior to the race. Then the taper begins. There are all sorts of marathon plans out there, and many of them tap out the longest long run at 22 or 24 miles.
Although that’s a great plan for those wanting to finish, it’s not conducive to hitting a personal-record (PR) in the marathon. When I ran my first marathon last August in Santa Rosa, I completed only three long runs ranging from 20 to 22 miles. Although I still reached my goal of finishing the marathon at a 7:58-mile pace, my legs were shot starting at mile 22.
The combination of taking out the race too fast and not covering the distance in training prevented me from finishing faster. You only fail when you don’t learn from an experience, and I definitely took something out of the Santa Rosa Marathon. By the time I complete my final longest long run—I alternate between 12 to 14 miles one week as a “shorter” long run and 20 to 28 the next week as the longest long run—I will have completed five runs of 20 miles or more.
Chris Zepeda, who is the coach of the Hartnell College cross country and track and field teams, gave me the best piece of advice when I asked him how I could improve my marathon time.
“You have to get your body callused to the distance,” said Zepeda, who is a running guru and the former coach of Danny Tapia, the former North Monterey County standout who ran in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials last month.
Zepeda told me how Tapia would pick a loop and just repeat it over and over again with mind-numbing efficiency. By the time I toe the start line at the Western Pacific Marathon, my body will have been callused to the marathon distance. To run a PR in the marathon, you need to complete the long runs, do intervals and tempo runs.
But training won’t be enough—you’ll need to also dial in on these key aspects to finish healthy and strong.
Don’t make excuses with your diet
This is the Achilles’ heel—pun intended—for most fitness enthusiasts who fail to reach their goal. Most people make a mistake when they try to lose weight or eat healthy, often going for an all-or-nothing approach. They’ll try to eat healthy every single meal for a couple of weeks, but that only leads to a binge-eating episode later.
They also think eating healthy means not being able to enjoy food. Wrong on both counts. Of course you need to load up on veggies and salads—preferably the nutritional powerhouse foods such as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, spinach and kale—to maximize your health and fitness goals. But you can mix in small amounts of junk food everyday as long as you’re exercising regularly and eating healthy throughout the week.
In this digital age, there’s no excuse for not being able to spend a couple of minutes to make a delicious, healthy recipe that won’t expand your waistline.
Emanuel Lee is sports editor of the Free Lance and writes this health column.
