@tkugabrown wrote:
Just joined a running a club. I am on my 4th week, Saturday I did my first 8 miles run. My legs felt great yesterday, but waking up today they are very sore. The running group does a run/walk type of training and on our Saturday runs we do adjust the time with the extreme heat. I run 2-3 days a week 3 miles doing a 30/30 which is 30 seconds run than 30 seconds fast pace walk. Saturday we did a 20/60 (20 seconds run / 60 seconds fast pace walk),Anyone have any good advice or suggestions for things that have helped them! I did try the roller, it was on. I am working my way to a 13.1. Thanks.
I have lots of advice, probably way more than can be written here, and most likely way more than you want to read.
Regarding the muscle soreness, pretty normal, I still get it occasionally and I typically run between 150 and 250 miles per month. It's your body telling itself to get stronger and the best thing to do beyond message and rolling, is to ride it out.
Regarding training for a half-marathon...
I coach a lot of beginning runners on my company running team as well as in a local running club, and some of my standard comment for beginners with an eye toward a half-marathon are as follows:
Cautionary notes first:
- Give yourself at least a year, preferably eighteen months, of training before your first half-marathon.
- There are lots of training programs out there which claim to be able to get you up to half-marathon shape much faster, however, an informal poll of beginners I've known who've used them show at least half of them end up injured either during the training, or during the race event.
- The thing is, while the respiratory, circulatory, and muscular systems can be whipped into shape pretty quickly, joints, connective tissue (ligaments and tendons), and the skeletal systems take far longer (as in years) to develop. Push things too quickly and injury is a matter of when not if.
Now the good stuff:
- Train slow; nothing about a half-marathon for a first timer requires speed; NOTHING!
- Right now you're on what sounds like a version of a Couch to 5K (C25K) program; this is good as these programs generally focus on working your body into shape for endurance work, no speed drills need apply.
- Running three days per week is a pretty good plan for a beginner; I recommend you stay with it for quite some time (more on that later).
- Once you're able to run a 5K non-stop, work your way up to a 10K; the difference is, instead of doing the walk/run thing, just slow your running pace down enough to add say a half mile to your normal run every other week or so.
- Once you're able to run a 10K non-stop, keep things slow and start adding a mile every other week.
- There will be folks who tell you of a need for interval drills, ladder drills, and all sorts of other stuff to change things up; ignore them. Why? While those things are good for experienced runners, all they tend to do for beginners is get them hurt. I added this here to stress what I wrote above, and to set you up for my next point.
- Once you're able to run say eight miles at a crack, start adding a fourth day per week and ride that wave for a few weeks.
- Now comes some even more fun stuff; stay with your eight mile runs during the week, and up your weekend runs to ten, and then later on twelve or more miles.
- This is also the point where you might want to experiment with some faster paces during the latter stages of your runs. Keeping the initial part of your runs nice and slow, start dialing up the pace for the last half-mile, then the last mile, then the last two. This is where you'll start training your body for what folks call "tempo" as these faster segments will almost naturally become your pace for when you finally do run a half-marathon.
- Once you can comfortably run eight miles three days per week and then add in a couple of ten to fifteen miles on weekends, you're ready to safely run a half marathon.
One final comment; along the way run a few 5K and 10K races; the experience is both fun and very important in teaching you what to expect when the big day for your first "Half" comes around.
Keep us posted.
