In the last 18 years, I’ve done a good number of 50Ks, 50 milers, and 100 milers. Until this spring, I had never done a 100K. Now I’d like to help YOU do one yourself. Here’s my series, in four parts, on running a 100K, whether you are a seasoned ultra-veteran or just cracking into the beyond-50K distances.
Part Three: Stay Healthy
In Part One of this training guide I upsold you on the idea of building a nice big base of mileage. In Part Two you learned to tackle the kinds of environments and terrain you will face in your event. But. There’s always a but, right? All of this new mileage and interesting workouts can leave you in a vulnerable position, and the last thing you want is a breakdown as soon as training gets good.
I’m going to separate out the two major things that can go wrong as “injury” and “breakdown”. They are very, very different and need some specific tactics to avoid each one in turn.
Injury: The Big Owies And How They Start
After a few weeks in a row of new training intensity an injury could come nipping at your heels (or thighs, or knees, et cetera). Why? Your muscles get strong super fast; your tendons and connective tissue, not so much.
You could be doing great things inside your calf muscle, bounding up hills in workouts, but the tendons behind your knee and down below—the achilles—are struggling to keep up with your calves new-found strength. It’s like the tortoise and the hare—that little rabbit is your muscles and they burst out of the gate, zipping along, while the rest of your tissues, from bones to ligaments and beyond, are plodding along at the pace they require, a bit slower than those muscles. Eventually the rabbit and the tortoise will meet at the same place, but not until the tortoise tissues catch up at their own safe pace. Until then, there’s risk of both becoming roadkill before the “race” is over.
You’ll feel it in some atypical soreness, first. Most runners ignore that. By ignoring soreness like a typical runner, you’re going to end up like other runners, too, who are typically fighting injury. Don’t do it.
[What’s atypical? That’s a bugger to answer, but hopefully you can tell when something just feels worked and when it feels WRONG. It takes a little experience to learn the difference, but it’s good to play it safe.]
Letting soreness turn to pain will leave you feeling like this poor doll under the car tire:
Roadkill. Don’t let it happen to your legs.
Now here’s where things are going to get grey, because I’M NOT A DOCTOR. I cannot and will not go into details of injuries, treatments, yadda yadda. Lots of people have good advice for that stuff, and I can send resources if you have a specific question about something I’ve battled before (runner’s knee, plantar fasciitis, achilles tendon issues….). Just ask.
Breakdown: It’s Like Injury But Without the Limping
Breakdown is the thing that happens way more often than runners like to admit, and more often than we even know. It’s invisible (mostly), and rather insidious. Sometimes it’s called overreaching. Sometimes it gets bigger and we call it overtraining. You might hear the words “adrenal burnout”. Much of it is related and it is very different from ‘regular’ injury. Instead of muscles and connective tissues getting all out of whack, in burnout it is the rest of the tissues in the body taking a beating, particularly organs that support all this stuff you’re doing. Your brain. Your pituitary gland. Your thyroid.
Your HEAD – yep, there’s even some psychology here. Everything is wrapped up all together and hard to tease apart. Because if you don’t feel like training, you are likely going to be a little pissy or depressed.
Many other people have written great stuff about burnout and recovery, like iRunFar and Geoff Roes and Pam Smith, but here are the basic symptoms to keep you on the lookout:
- higher resting heart rate (+5-10 beats)
- dreading regular runs, not just once in a while but a lot
- slowly losing your base/easy pace (slipping from 9 minutes to 10 minutes, et cetera)
- issues with food – not having much interest in food or eating too much randomly
- weight loss
- slow weight gain
- getting sick more than usual (in one bout with burnout from life stress I got two whoppers in less than two months after years without sickness)
What To Do: Be Nice To That Sack of Chemicals You Call Your Body
Again, I’m not a doc, but I have tons of experience in whacking my body all around. What can I tell you even if I’m not certified? Lots.
Here are four things what can stave off a LOT of maladies from injury to breakdowns to burnout to overtraining, no matter how peripheral they sound to your actual running. They’ll fend off illness in lots of people who don’t work out, too. Bonus!
#1 SLEEP
How much do you get? Get more. Got kids? Sorry about that. Still try to get more. Getting up early to train when you are sleeping 5-6 hour a night is going to catch up to you, likely when you can least afford it in your training cycle. I did the best training of my post collegiate life sleeping 9 hours per night. Currently getting 7? Get 8. Getting 6? Get 7. Then get 8. Sleep hygiene (google it) is really important, too. No glowing screens an hour before bed, or more. Wind down. Have tea. Figure something out that works for you.
#2 Sleep
The second rule of sleep club is, you definitely CAN talk about sleep club. Sleep has to be #1 and #2 because it is that important. I’ll write more about sleep, don’t worry. For now, just let that sink in over a cup of tea in a dark bedroom.
#3 Eat Real Food
Eat nutrient-laden food that can be identified as food. And that’s the easiest way to say it. Given the choice between a perfectly carb-protein balanced recovery shake and a banana? Eat the banana. Then have some nuts and some water. I can make a huge list of these kinds of ‘swaps’, like the famous book series. Here’s some more: eat fish, not fish oil. Eat the foods that vitamins come from: colorful veggies, eggs, and animals. Do that as often as possible and you’ll be building your strength and immunity inside-out, no “airborne” or “emergen-C” required. I used to not like canned fish, now I eat about a tin a day or more. Sardines in olive oil? One can costs the same as a fancy protein bar but the nutritional differences? HUGE. Need your carbs with your protein? Have some dates. (Larabars ain’t bad, all things considered.)
#4 Move Your Animal
Move around when you’re not working out. Get up from the chair a few times per hour – yes, per hour, not per day. There are 168 hours in a week. Just because we endurance types run around 15 hours each week does not excuse us from normal human motion the other 153 hours. Take time out for sleeping and there’s still about 100 hours that you are awake, NOT running. Further, running itself might mean we need even more mobility type stuff, just to work out the junk from partaking in such a single-motion activity for so long.
The two best resources on this kind of stuff on the planet, right now, in my opinion, are Kelly Starrett and Katy Bowman. Katy wins in my book because she addresses everything that we can do to become more functional and natural, while Kelly is interested in both mobility but also in sports mobility. Different focus, both of them are insanely useful.
That’s it for now…. ready for the next round, Part 4? The rubber hits the road in Part 4 with: