Running amuck

I've occasionally been asked how to train for a long running race.  After putting a few marathons, etc under my feet, here's what I've come up with:

Here's my biggest tip: socks and shoes.  I know it sounds like a no brainer, but that's exactly my point: zombies dont have brains, and they're hella slow because they have oldskool shoes with swabby socks.  What killed me on my 1st marathon were old (8 years old) shoes and thick cotton socks.  Your feet sweat, then your socks soak up to become a rough wash cloth...then rub your feet raw....which is easy because  your feet are all water-wrinkled from the sweat bath.  Good for exfoliating, bad for running.  

Also, old running shoes invoke the power of alchemy to convert their once-soft rubber into adamantium plastic of doom.  Now, I know Reebok has been on a big advertising campaign vouching for this material, but it's all for show.  Doom hurts.  Jesus would not run with doom.  It just makes all the shock go to your feet and legs then they shatter in a bloody mess.  

Now, the 0.5 marathon may not be long enough to cause foot and leg death, but I think going to Road Runners and letting them analyze your running style then measure your feet will result in the best pair of shoes you can find.  If you have a smart phone, take it, and when you see the price on the shoebox, look it up online and then have them price match it.  While there, shell out the $6 for the dual-layer wick-away socks.  It has 2 layers of material the slide against each other (instead of against your feet) and they keep the feet a lot dryer.  

Other than that, just go run regularly until about 4-5 days before the race (then don't run at all).  And start carb loading early.  Like, 4 days before the race, eat no carbs for 2 days, then 2 days before the race eat complex carbs for those 2 days.   Apparently the bod begins to crave carbs a lot when you deprive it for 2 days, so when you finally give it what it wants, it retains the carbs as carbs instead of storing them as fat.  To help this process, eat grapefruit or something to increase insulin sensitivity (I take "chromate" from Sprout's to help with this too).  Insulin has the effect of putting the body into storage-mode, so the food you take in gets turned into fat.  Raising insulin sensitivity prevents some of that since your body will then produce less insulin when eating foods that cause an insulin response (ie foods with a significant glycemic index...like anything with carbs).   Another fun tip to psych out the body into storing food as not-fat is to do 2 mins of resistance workout before each meal.  Even just doing body squats (deep knee bends) or wussy wall pushups (face a wall, lean against it then push away like a semi-vertical pushup) will work the muscles enough to open their GLUT-4 receptors.  Other than sounding really cool, those receptors take in whatever nutrients you put in the blood stream for the next 30 mins.   Body builders use this fact by eating protein within 30 mins of lifting, but even non-protein will get absorbed into the muscle to be stored as energy or muscle tissue instead of fat.  That's a plus for running.  When I was in my get-really-lean phase, I did 2 sets of 30 of both those exercises before most meals.  It was pretty simple and didn't break a sweat, yet helped a lot.  

Race-day adreneline gives you a boost, so even if you really hurt running 10 miles during training, you can probably bust out the 13.  That's "bad advice" according to most.  Most say you should train running 30 miles to do a 26-mile marathon.  Eff those people.  Eff them in their doom holes. My last marathon dropped an hour in time, and I never ran more than 14 miles in a row while training.  Yet I ran the whole 26.2 without stopping.  Then again, I am kind of a badass....   But you too can have a fleet of fleet feet by getting comfortable with a hilly 10-13 miles here in north county.  I'd suggest training on the race route - the mental advantage of knowing where you are and where you're going is huge.  Being able to think "Oh ya...I've run this before" really helps be that badass I mentioned about myself being.  Remember: grammar is for the weak.

Oh ya again: Gu.  They give you Gu (PowerGel) every mile or 2.  The trick is to eat that snot every half hour, even if you dont feel tired or hungry.  Once you do feel tired and hungry, it's game over.  Time to put 'er down.  Hari kari and all that.  

Lastly: drink a cup (6 oz or so) of Powerade 5 mins before the race.  It'll be morning, and cold, but I read this tip on the top-10 list of distance runners.  Apparently powerade, when consumed 5 mins before running a long ways, turns into pure meth.  Alchemy all over again.  It's like mixing antimatter and matter to energize your warp coils and flux capacitors. but more delicious.  

Hope this helps!  And hope you're nerdy enough to appreciate this writing style.  If not, you know what to do with your doom holes.