5 Surprising Things I Learned Training for My First Marathon

Signing up for your first marathon is seriously daunting. The long, 16-, 18-, and 20-mile runs and the aches and pains, many of which are inevitable, are just the beginning of the physical and mental challenges that come with training to run 26.2 miles.

But in the past 10 weeks since jumping at the chance to run the Boston Marathon with Adidas, I’ve found that the process has also been incredibly enlightening. Specifically, I’ve learned about just what it takes to train for a marathon.

When I crossed the finish line at my first half-marathon in Bermuda in 2015, I remember thinking that I physically could not take another step. When I ran the Boston Athletic Association half-marathon this past October, my hip flexors were so tight it hurt to walk. This past weekend, I finished a 21-mile (my longest distance ever) training run. My hips were tight and my quads felt shot, yes—but I’ve discovered that with the right work, your body is up for a heck of a lot more than you give it credit for.

Here, five other nuggets of knowledge I’ve picked about marathon training along the way:

1. You need to strength train.

No one tells you that if you want to run a marathon, you’re going to have to do a lot more than just run. When I first committed to Boston and started looking up training plans online, I assumed that most of my days would be spent on the pavement. To run a long distance, you just have to run more, right?

Well, not quite. The first few weeks of my training, before I started working with my run coach and trainer, all I did was run more often at my usual pace. Not only was I tired, but as I soon learned, this wasn’t the most effective strategy.

I never realized how much other work besides running goes into marathon training.

“The impact from endurance running puts a lot of repetitive stress on the body,” Kristen Mercier, a Tier 3+ coach at Equinox Chestnut Hill, tells SELF. “Strength training complements running by helping to build stability through the core and the hips, addressing imbalances, as well as preparing your muscles and connective tissue to take on some of the load.”

Specifically, moving in different planes of motion and working on your backside are really important. That’s because, as Mercier puts it, running is sagittal plane-dominant—you’re always moving forward, which means it works the front of your body (hi, quads) over and over again. Neglecting the back of your body can result in an imbalance of strength that may eventually lead to injury. You’ll also miss out on some performance-based perks: “Strengthening your glutes and hamstrings will give you more power as you run,” Mercier notes.

Strength training twice a week—incorporating moves such as lateral lunges, deadlifts, and core work—has helped me feel stronger and more stable moving in different directions. I’ve noticed I also feel more powerful and balanced on my long runs and can rely on more than just my quads to move me forward.

2. Listening to your body is important—especially when there's pain involved.

At some point or another, most of us experience some kind of pain when we run—especially if you’re new to a sport and still developing the right running muscles. But while bilateral pain (i.e. both hamstrings being sore after a run) can be a normal response to the repeated physical stress, one sore hamstring could be a sign of an imbalance or an injury of sorts, Scott Weiss, D.P.T., C.S.C.S., a physical therapist based in New York, tells SELF.

If your pain persists more than two or three days (or gets worse) or you hear clicking, popping, snapping, or grating when using that body part, you could be injured, he says. Even if an ache or pain is minor, it’s worth taking care of right away—if you ignore the little pains, they can wind up being much bigger issues that negatively impact your stride, putting you at risk for injury down the road, Weiss adds.

After experiencing regular calf pain during my training, I decided to mention it to my chiropractor, Ian Nurse, D.C., the owner of Wellness in Motion Boston, a clinic that specializes in the treatment of soft-tissue related injuries via physical therapy and massage techniques. Nurse ended up using some massage techniques designed to break up scar tissue, or adhesions, in my calf. Though admittedly painful (think: deep, deep massage sans the nice aromatherapy lotions), the treatments helped relieve my soreness.

“Scar tissue acts like a protective cast to an injured area, but it doesn’t have the same flexibility and elasticity as healthy muscle,” Nurse says. Manual manipulation, either from a therapist or self-massage with a foam roller or ball can help break up this tissue—hence why some runners are foam roller fanatics.

Throughout my training, I’ve seen Nurse for check-ins and treatments every 10 days or so. I’ve also made foam rolling a regular part of my routine. If something hurts or feels off, I’ve learned that it’s OK to skip a workout or do something else that feels better that day.

3. Working on your body alignment can help you become a better runner.

When your running step count goes from thousands a day to tens of thousands a day, you start to think about how everything from how your shoes fit to how much your shoulders lean impact your stride. After all, to maintain high mileage, you need to run as efficiently as possible—so if something’s off, you’ll start to feel it.

When my calf pain started to really bother me and I did some research to try and figure out what might be going on, another thing that kept coming up was not just running form but postural alignment.

“Body alignment simply means making sure the segments of the body are properly lined up with each other. This translates to how the body naturally was made to function with the most ease,” Weiss says. Your risk of injury “increases dramatically” the more out of alignment you are, Weiss adds. “Specifically with running, you may take millions of steps—and improper form for a million steps wreaks havoc on the body.”

Thanks to my job as a writer, which leaves me hunched over a computer most days, my shoulders are fairly internally rotated. But I’d never considered that this could negatively impact my stride. On my journey to sort out my aches and pains, I decided to have my posture analyzed at a postural therapy clinic that focuses on body alignment, where I learned that internally rotated shoulders and a tilted pelvis could indeed have been contributing to my tight neck and even my calf pain.

Everything’s connected in one long chain, after all. “Internally rotated shoulders cause a forward bending of the mid-back and the cervical spine [the neck] must compensate,” says Weiss. “It does this by hyperextending the cervical spine causing more wear and tear in the neck.” Even more, he says, is that a forward tilted pelvis can over-stretch the hamstrings, making it harder to extend the knee—which ultimately inhibits the calf muscles from being able to fully contract.

With the help of some stretching exercises—like lying down on the ground with my feet propped up at 90 degrees with my arms out to the side for a few minutes, and bird dogs—I’ve been able to offset some of this inward rotation (ugh, computers) and have noticed running feels more comfortable.

4. Sometimes, you need to do things you don't enjoy to get faster.

Even though I’ve been a runner for years, I’ve never been someone who really challenged myself by seeking out steep hills or actively trying to get faster. I’ve always just run to run, rarely challenging myself during my jogs. And if I didn’t care about getting faster, why tire myself out with bursts of speed?

Well, as it turns out, pushing yourself past your comfort zone and doing the stuff you don’t like—the stuff that challenges you—in your training is hugely important.

When my run coach Amanda Nurse (who just so happens to be my chiropractor's wife), an elite runner and Adidas ambassador, first showed me my training program, I was surprised to see that most weeks, I only ran three days a week—one speed workout, one hill workout, and one long run.

Mentally, speed work has been a nice way to break up my training and hit speeds (for short periods of time) that before seemed unattainable (confidence boost!). Physiologically, running faster further challenges and strengthens your cardiovascular system. “Eventually, the speed you could hold for only 30 seconds before, you'll be able to hold for one minute, then two, then maybe a 5K. You're training your body to feel more comfortable at faster speeds.”

And guess what? I’ve shaved seconds off my mile time. At the beginning of my training, I ran about a 10-minute mile. But during my 16-miler, I averaged a 9:16 mile pace!

As for hills? Running up and down a crazy-high hill in Brookline, Massachusetts, near my home has not been easy. And even though I, admittedly, still dread my hill workouts (if you saw this hill, you would too), I know they’ve paid off in terms of keeping my eye on my bigger goal and prepping my body for the inevitable quad pounding that comes with 26.2 miles.

After all, running uphill helps strengthen both the glutes and hips. “The downhill is equally as important as the uphill,” Nurse says. “Your quads need to get used to this in training so they are prepared come race day to handle the downhill force.”

After my 21-mile training run this past weekend, the quad pain was real, and I wondered how I’d feel if I hadn’t been doing the hillwork to get my body ready.

5. And sometimes, you need to dial back the intensity to help your body recover.

Before my marathon training started, I’d mainly seek out more intense forms of yoga (like CorePower Yoga) for a solid workout paired with an hour of stretching. But after I started training, I found myself signing up for restorative forms of the practice instead. In the days following a long run, it’s exactly what my body wants.

Turns out, poses such as Downward Dog (with a rolled up mat under the feet to help with calf and Achilles tendon achy-ness), supported Hero's Pose (seated up on two bolsters), and Seated Foot Stretch (tuck your toes under and sit back on your heels) are perfect for runners, says Allison English, a yoga instructor based in Chicago. It’s a great way to balance out all the high-impact endurance training.

Yoga also has some mental perks, thanks to the focus on breathing and holding a pose for a certain length of time. “It helps distance runners develop better focus in long moments of discomfort during running,” English says.

I’ve been trying to work restorative yoga into my routine once a week—though English encourages runners to find the mat two or three times a week for the best results.

Just about three weeks away from race day, there’s a lot I know now that I didn’t 10 weeks ago—much of which has made me a smarter, more effective runner and athlete. I’m still learning—this past weekend I discovered that 21 miles is a heck of a lot harder than 18—and I know there’s a lot more I’ll figure out leading up to race day and on race day itself as I (finally!) make my way toward that finish line.