Train With A Purpose

In a New Year epiphany at the end of 2000, I resolved to run a marathon. By that time I had been running for almost nine years and had even tried the half marathon distance once, but I needed something bigger. A friend’s wife had recently run a marathon and I thought this was the next big challenge for me. I wanted to set bigger goals in my running life and see what I was capable of doing.

I didn’t stop there. Not only did I want to run a marathon, but I wanted to run a marathon to qualify for THE Boston Marathon, the granddaddy of the modern marathon. Never mind that I had no clue what it took to run a marathon other than just ramping up the miles for a few months before the race. Undaunted, I set my sights on running the Chicago Marathon in October 2001 with the goal of getting a qualifying time for Boston in 2002.

I bought a book on running a marathon to learn more, but I quickly became bored with it. I don’t even remember the title of the book. I’m not sure if it was just me or the book itself, but it quickly found a spot on my bookcase where it gathered dust until I sold it to a used bookstore years later. Instead of learning more about marathon strategies, I spent the first nine months of 2001 running a lot of miles. I basically followed the pattern of one long run per week that varied from 12 to 20 miles over the course of my training and all my other runs were short or intermediate in distance. I didn’t really think about the purpose of each of my runs; I just wanted to log the miles, so my pace was all over the map depending on how I felt at the time of each run.

As you might have already guessed, this did not end well. Despite the fact that I had logged more miles in the first nine months of 2001 than I had logged in each of the previous nine years of my running life, I went into my first marathon essentially unprepared. I didn’t have a good pace plan and my nutrition plan was basically non-existent, so I ran the race like I had trained – random and un-focused.

The result was disastrous. Not only did I smack head on into the proverbial wall around mile 20, but the subsequent 10K zombie shuffle so demoralized me that I vowed never to do another marathon again after I clambered across the finish line with a time of 4:11. I had missed my goal time by 41 minutes and failed to qualify for Boston. I also felt physically defeated. The Chicago Marathon had devoured me.

Nevertheless, I’m not one who gives up easily, so after a few months, I was determined to have another go at Chicago and began training in earnest for the 2002 edition. Once again, I started the “log the miles” approach. I guess I was trying to beat the marathon into submission with my approach much like taking a hammer to the job of making a precise glass cut. It didn’t work. A month before the 2002 marathon, I injured my iliotibial band (ITB) due to overuse and was successfully put out of my misery for a while.

Years later, the idea of running a marathon still had not left my head, but it wasn’t until I met a group of diehard marathon runners that I decided to give it another try. The difference this time was that my new running group had some very knowledgeable, experienced marathoners who weren’t shy about telling me what I was doing wrong. They taught me a lot and I used those lessons to help me become a more successful marathoner, and by the summer of 2009, I ran my second marathon and did much better. In 2010, I returned to the scene of the defeat in Chicago and ran a Boston qualifying time just under 3:20, and finally in 2011, I ran THE Boston Marathon a full nine years after I had resolved to do so. Interestingly enough, my Boston time was a full hour better than that fateful first marathon in Chicago.

How did I get such dramatically improved results? Obviously, I changed my approach to training, but most importantly, I had started training with a purpose. Every run had a specific purpose. Instead of just logging miles, I focused on different types of runs. I dedicated two days a week to tempo runs with the specific purpose of running at a fast pace for relatively short distances (3-5 miles). These tempo runs helped me improve my speed. I dedicated one run per week to varying speeds at longer distances (usually ten miles) or track interval workouts. These runs helped me build my endurance. I was gradually able to run longer distances at a faster pace. Last, but not least, I focused on a solid, consistent pace in my weekly long run. No more random ups and downs during the long run. I kept my pace within a specified range. This not only helped me build my endurance, but it helped me become a much better judge of what I was capable of doing and cut down on the risk of starting too fast.

While I have adopted the “Train With a Purpose” mantra as my own, it’s not really what I called my approach over the years since I made that change in my training. I simply referred to it as my training plan, but recently I read Runner’s World Run Less, Run Faster: Become a Faster, Stronger Runner with the Revolutionary FIRST Training Program by Bill Pierce, Scott Murr, and Ray Moss, and after reading that book, I realized that I was doing some of the things they recommended by making each run count. Admittedly, I’m not following their training plan exactly. I run five days a week and they recommend three, for example, but the philosophy is the same. I’m convinced that by the changes I made back in 2008 helped me get over the hump with the marathon and have helped me perform better.

Like the FIRST book, I think runners of all distances and abilities can benefit from making each training run count by having a purpose for each run. It’s helped me, and it can help you.