Back It Up

Salvaging a Disastrous Marathon

"I trained six months for this race. Then it was 85°!"

"I was on goal pace at 17 miles, but blisters knocked me out."

"All those long runs, and I blew up at 21. Maybe next year."

What marathoner hasn’t heard—or uttered—words like these? After months of high mileage, marathon-pace runs and tempo training, you taper, stock your glycogen stores and hone your mental focus to a razor edge. You’re ready to go.

But on race morning, something goes awry. By day’s end, you don’t ever want to hear the word "marathon" again.

If you fall on your face in a 5K or 10K, you can hop into another one the following weekend. But after a marathon disaster, you won’t get another shot for months. Or will you?

Part of the marathon’s allure is how hard-earned PRs are. A hot or rainy day might spell discomfort in a short race, but poor weather conditions have an exponential effect on performance in a 26.2-miler. Gastrointestinal distress, muscle cramps, dehydration and blisters can all arise in shorter races, but not as often as in the marathon, where their sting can prove fatal. Errors in judgment can lead to survival shuffles and humbling DNFs.

Despite these pitfalls, most runners are so busy micromanaging their training and tapering schedules that they don’t look beyond the day of the goal marathon at a contingency plan—in this case, another marathon scheduled within two weeks. Here’s how to attack this important element of marathon training.

Self-Confidence and Goal-Setting

First, know exactly what you want to accomplish in your goal marathon. Even veteran competitors arrive at a race making excuses: "Well, I don’t really need to break three hours; a Boston qualifier is enough," or, "This isn’t feeling like my day; I’ll just treat it as a training run." These nettlesome ideas are natural, but they need to be recognized and banished, because the marathon salvage plan doesn’t have much margin for error.