Recovery is an art, I suppose. All runners struggle with recovery, especially those who are new to running or adding more miles to their normal routine. As a general rule, don't increase your weekly mileage more than 10% a week. It's also a good idea to add a recovery week every 3rd or 4th week. For example wk1 - 25m, wk2 - 27m, wk3 -29m, wk4 recover - 15-20m. Listen to your body and remember your body will not benefit from the training if it is under-recovered.

With that said, let's talk recovery. Research shows that there is an optimal window of 30-60 min after your run when your body is most prepared to accept the glycogen/carbs you ingest. Using the 4:1, carbs to protein, ratio ingest this just after your run. How much you take in depends on how long your training session was and your body weight. This will allow your muscles to start repairing themselves. Excessive protein just after your run will slow down the absorption of the carbs. Also .plenty of water after your run.

You also need to make sure you are properly hydrated before e you start your run and that you have some carbs in your system. Running on empty is detrimental to the beginning runner because your body immediately starts to tap in to the glycogen as soon as you start running.

Do you incorporate easy runs into your training? Have you tried ice post run. Every three weeks I complete a 16 mile trail run that beats me up pretty good. When you run hills you must come down as well, right. On the downhill portion of the run, your muscles contract eccentrically. These eccentric contractions are more intense than on a flat course. Most likely it's not the uphill that is causing soreness, but the downhill. There are studies that show how downhill running leads to more muscle damage, even in experience runners. By incorporating hills into your running routine, you will teach your body to adapt to the added stress.

Feel free to contact me with any more specific questions or concerns. Good luck with your training.

Joby
joby@fitnesscoaching.us

By September you will be well on your way to complete a marathon. Half marathon distance should not be a problem because you will most likely be beyond that distance for your long runs. You can complete a half marathon up to two weeks before a marathon(assuming that you don't race it). I would use it as a training run. Decide what your mile pace will be for the marathon and see if you can hit these splits during your half marathon. If the race is a month or longer away from your marathon, I would take a few more risks and try an d hold a faster pace, within reason of course. The main thing to focus on is consistency with your mile splits.

Weight training/cross training - This is a great idea. I would really target the core area - abdomen and lower back. This is an often overlooked area for runners. All of your strength is generated from the core. I would also complete multi-joint movements such as the lunge, walking lunge, and I would even incorporate some modified plyometrics. Since you are new to running I would use little to no weight. A lot of this can even be done at home. without knowing your history in terms of athletic background/previous experience with weights, I hesitate to suggest anything more advanced......I have a database of hundreds of exercises. I would be happy to e-mail you some of these movements. They are animated so you get a good visual of what to do. You can see a sample of what they look like on my website http://fitnesscoaching.us/personal.html Its under "sample workout program".....Happy running!!!

Joby
joby@fitnesscoaching.us

I specifically want to suggest not listing to one damnword of what fitness coaching says. I have never heard so much trash and bull in my entire life as what was written by him.

A. Increaseing your weekly mileage more than 10 percent. I and everyone I have ever known have increase their weekly mileage a **** of a lot more than that. Some people I know have increased their weekly mileage from 30 to 90 miles in one week.

B. Recovery is an art as he says. And he obviously doesn't understand it.

C. Taking a recovery week. That's also bull. It's only for psychological reasons if you don't feel like pushing yourself. It's not physical.

D. Your body will not benefit if it is underrecovered. That is only true before a race. You should never be completely recovered for training.

It's also a good idea to add a recovery week every 3rd or 4th week. For example wk1 - 25m, wk2 - 27m, wk3 -29m, wk4 recover - 15-20m. Listen to your body and remember your body will not benefit from the training if it is under-recovered.

Your body makes it's improvement after you run so therefore it is COMPLETELY WRONG to load up on carbs before you run. You actually want to deplete your system during your run. That is where you will make your gains.

Everything else said by fitness coach is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. If you don't understand the entire picture and how training and running actually work then no advice given will be of any help.

BCADIENTE

I also agree with don, and while not a runner, i am a former national level rower and am now a triathlete, and many of the same ideas apply. every 3 to 4 weeks i (old team as well) take a reduced load week, where more work is put into form/drills/etc.

while the body does get faster only after it is tired, it is very important to not over do it, more so if you are new to a sport, regardless of what it is. you are going to gain the cardio for running much more quickly than your body is going to adapt to it musculerly(is that even a word?). and you need to slowly increase the milage each week, once you know what you are capable of and have been running for a while (i would say over a year) then you can start to mess around with larger jumps in distance. it is also a good idea to not do all of your runs at the same pace, ie do some shorts interval work on the track or hills, and some long slow runs, as well as some intermediat distance at your race pace.

that being said, it is not an exact science, and what works for one person is not going to work for everyone, each persons body is a little differnt and you do need ot listen to yours.

ice is also a very good idea, any areas that you have that are sore after the runs, ice them for 20 min or so.

if you have questions ragarding triaing or would just like to talk to a fellow athlete please feel free to email me,

David

savoie_d@denison.edu

Brooke,

HI there. The more you run the more your body will adapt to endurance training. The training you have done in the past has mostly been focused on developing/conditioning/strengthening your Type II muscle fibers. These fibers are recruited for power and high intensity speed tasks and they are easily fatigued. As a new runner, you are now switching your focus to develop your Type I muscle fibers, and the energy systems that fuel these muscle fibers. Type I fibers resist fatigue and we depend on these type of fibers to propel us during endurance events.

The good news is that you will become more efficient as you progress in you training. Endurance training will lead to an increase in your maximum oxygen uptake(VO2max), cardiac output, and stroke volume. The American College of Sports Medicine, studied individuals who were new to endurance training and they found an increase of 6-10% in overall Vo2max after about 8 weeks of training. Essentially you will be running at a faster pace(relative to your beginning pace). When you stick with an endurance training program, you will also improve you body's ability to use the oxygen in your blood as well as the nutrients it delivers to your muscles.

Stick with your training and over time you will see improvements...and I agree, you are smart to take it slow. You don't want injury to sideline you. Remember, consistency is the key....

You also said you "don't feel terribly unfit". You are right, you are not. You have just trained for a different type of performance.

Enjoy your running.

Joby
joby@fitnesscoaching.us

OK,

There is so much BAD ADVICE here that it would take me 50 pages to cover everything. I don't even know where to begin. I'll repeat again. If you don't see the whole picture then none of the articles you have read will make any sense whatsoever. For example, the idiots who speak about going easy for an entire week every 4th week know nothing about training. There is no reason in the world to to do that. It only results in losing conditioning and going backwards. If you feel that you are so burned out that you need to take it easy for an entire week, then your training is wrong because you have burned yourself out in your training and that is not the point of training.

You read a few articles here and a few articles there and think that you know everything there is. Well, you don't. Because running is a progressive thing. If you are not constantly progressing almost on a weekly basis then you are not training right. Let's just take me for example. I hardly ran at all all Winter long since November. When I began running again 3 weeks ago, I immediately began running 12 miles each morning. My time for that first week's 12 mile runs stank. It was 1 hour and 30 minutes. Yet, I progressed almost every day and now after three weeks I am running that same 12 mile run on the average in 1:12 minutes. That's 6 minutes per mile and a huge jump in just 3 weeks. And I can do it only because I know exactly how to do it. If I did it any other way then the way I'm doing it, it wouldn't work. That is why I can make such an improvement in a short period of time.

Secondly, 49 minutes for 10k is horrible. I would work on your 5k and 10k times before I would ever even think about a marathon. My old girlfriend who is five foot 9 and 175 pounds and does not have the body of a runner ran 49 minutes for a 10k. That's good for her and her weight but horrible for a real runner.

Finally, Hal Higdon is not and was not a national class runner. Hal Higdon is not someone who was ever pressured into needing to prepare himself to compete against national class runners in a matter of weeks. It's a whole different ball game. What if someone were to tell you that your life depended on you having to place in a certain event in 21 days and you were in bad shape. That happened to me over and over. You learn how to prepare real fast.