I cheated! I am a cheater!!!! One month ago I ran The Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, VA. I finished the marathon in a time of 3:30:14 which qualified me for the Boston Marathon in 2009 when I will be 45 years old.
I must confess. I cheated! I didn’t cheat during the race. I ran every single step of that 26.2 mile race, and I honestly finished in 3:30:14. I estimate somewhere near 50,000 steps in fact. No, I cheated while training for it!
Here is how I cheated. Years ago, I played with body building for a while. And I learned various principles. One of them was the “Weider Cheating Training Principle”. When you are lifting weights for body building, you lift heavy weights doing reps until you hit the point of failure. You cheat by going beyond the point of failure. This is done by getting to the last rep when you literally just can’t get the weight up. A spotter will help you lift the weight for that last rep when you couldn’t get it up by yourself. This cheating allows you to go slightly beyond your limits.
I don’t do the body building anymore, but some of the principles cross-over. Such as the “Muscle Confusion Principle” in which you vary the exercises you do to force your muscle to continually adapt. The FIRST training schedule has this built it by varying the speeds and distances from week to week. And even another principle that describes what I did “Weider Rest-Pause Principle” which incoporates shorts rests between reps so to allow more reps.

Just to give you an idea of the path to my BQ:
Aug 2006: Started running
Dec 2006: 5:24 marathon
May 2007: 4:21 marathon
Sep 2007: 3:51 marathon
Dec 2007: 3:36 marathon
Mar 2008: 3:30 marathon

How I used the Cheating Training Principle or the Rest-Pause Principle was to take breaks. I chose a fast training schedule. Faster than I was capable of completing. The FIRST training schedule had little guidelines about whether you are ready for this schedule or not. I didn’t meet these. But I had a goal of running a 3:30 marathon and qualifying for Boston. I didn’t use the FIRST schedule, but other schedules as well. I cheated with those too.
The FIRST schedule has 3 runs/week. I run my intervals on Mondays, tempo runs on Wednesdays, adn long runs of Saturdays. The intervals are very fast. They have prescribed rest intervals. I found I could run the distance at the speed usually, but I needed a longer rest. The book has me walking or jogging the rest interval, but usually I would just collapse in a chair gasping for breath. After a bit, I would run the next interval, and then collapse again. Sometimes I would sit for as long as 10 minutes between intervals. But I would run each and every interval at the speed prescribed. Over time, these intervals got easier, more doable, and I didn’t need as long of break between them. I even needed to break the 3200m interval into two parts by adding a short breather between the first and second mile.
On the tempo runs, I would add breaks in. Sometimes they were walking breaks such as walking one minute each mile, or just getting off the treadmill for a couple minutes. But overtime these got easier, and I was able to complete the distance without any breaks.
I especially cheated during the long runs. I hate the long runs most. Sometimes I will break a 20 miler into two parts. I would run 10 miles into the morning, and 10 miles in the afternoon. And I would take short breaks during the run to go to bathroom, get lunch or play on the computer. Sometimes, I would do part of my run Saturday night, and finish it Sunday morning. But I would run each and every mile. My legs were still tired, and I forced myself to keep running on them.
I have been told that taking breaks wouldn’t work. But I am here to tell you, they do work. I got faster! And I have a BQ to prove it! And I did it by cheating!!!!

Posted by Rob in Whatever on April 18th, 2008 |