What I Learned Preparing for a Marathon in 20 days
It began, as many of my projects have, with an initial spark of inspiration. I’d just been to a 4-day Tony Robbins seminar. I was invincible. I needed to be unleashed. But at what? I needed a mountain to move. As my mind grasped in all directions for a challenge to road test my newfound awesomeness, I remembered the marathon was coming up. I’d talked vaguely about doing a marathon but the dates crept up and didn’t you need at least 12 weeks to prepare for those? And 42 kilometers is long. Like, really long.
All good excuses for someone who hadn’t attended Tony Robbins. But I had. I was doing the marathon, no buts. I registered within 6 hours of the seminar finishing. My brother signed up too (without having Tony looping in his mind, thus a much more impressive commitment). 20 Days to go.
What follows is what I picked up along the way about running and life.
Planning
Any plan is better than no plan, it also helps by giving more of a sense of urgency when you know you have milestones to hit.
Race Day still seems a long way off, but relative to the amount of practice miles you need to log, it’s fucking close. Set out a google sheet and put your milestones on there. Marking out the dates where I needed to hit new distance PBs helped — 25km, 28km, 30km, and finally 32km in the final week. If you haven’t run further than 25km by race day, you’re going to have a bad time (but you’ll still be able to do it; more on mindset later).
Planning sets clear priorities for your brain. The two weekends before race day my calendar had the following typically alcohol-soaked events, the AFL Grand Final (Aussie rules football, our Superbowl) and a bucks weekend at a winery. I don’t drink much anyway but stayed teetotal because priorities. Instead, I planned long runs on the mornings after those events which would demand I be in good shape.
Planning doesn’t trump doing. There’s a danger of going down a rabbit hole making the world’s best plan — the ideal nutrition, periodising long and short runs. Just start somewhere and tweak your plan later if you need to. I spent 10 minutes on the google sheet to log km and 5 minutes setting distance milestones in my google calendar. Then just do it.
Training & Recovery
With such a short window to prepare, it's the mental side that does most of the heavy lifting. You have to get your miles up quickly so start with a couple of shorter runs at the edge of your comfort zone to get the body ready, but then you’ll need to scale these to 25km runs after a week (2 weeks to go).
I’d been running 5–10km 3 times a week for the past few months leading up. My last long run was a half-marathon in June and I’d never run more than 22km before. I began with a couple of runs at the edge of my recent comfort zone (10km) to test the body then quickly pushed the comfort zone to 17km. This took a couple of days to recover from.
Recovery is critical with such a short preparation window. After each run, ice your knees, foam roll your ITB, stretch (hamstrings, glutes and calves), and take anti-inflammatories.
With 2 weeks to go, I did my first 25km run. When you step up to these longer runs, do them at a much slower pace and stay in a heart rate zone of 140–150bpm as much as possible. This is called Zone Training. In this range your body improves its aerobic conditioning the most, even though it doesn’t feel like as much effort (I actually picked this up listening to ultra-athlete Rich Roll’s awesome book while on a run).
Each long run took about 2 days to recover from. I’d do 2 short runs of 5–7km in between each. Over the 20 days I did 4 long runs:
- 15 days out — 25km
- 11 days out — 28km
- 8 days out — 28km
- 5 days out — 32km
After the final long run, I took 3 days off. By this stage, you can’t make any more endurance gains and if you can run over 30km then your body will be able to finish the distance on race day. I did two 5–7km runs at 3 and 2 days to go, respectively, just to keep the body used to the motions of running and keep loose. The final pre-race day was rest.
Mental Side
My brother also signed up for the challenge (actually it was his idea!) but was training in Sydney while I was in Melbourne. Having a buddy to do it with is good because you keep each other accountable — we followed each other on Strava and push each other to log more km. Another shout out to my partner Nat — I signed her up to run the 10km without asking — she soldiered through like a champ!
Off the back of doing the Tony Robbins UPW workshop, I had a bunch of mantras I could recite to get myself “in-state.” This is a really nifty idea also endorsed by Tim Ferriss, which is that you can use self-talk (reciting statements to yourself), combined with physical arousal (not the kinky kind, instead think fist-pumping, chest-puffing, jumping jacks, and chanting) to drive your emotions into a feeling of motivation to tackle challenges and succeed. I’m a natural skeptic but this was extremely effective for getting myself out the door to log some miles in the mornings. Self-talk on the run was also valuable to get you through when you’re halfway through a long run wondering when it will end.
Mantras
- Identify 3 limiting beliefs that have held you back in your 2 priority areas (whether work, relationships, health, purpose, etc). Remember, limiting beliefs aren’t the symptom (don’t think ‘I miss opportunities’), they’re the deeper underlying story you loop in your head which results in that symptom (more like ‘I am unworthy of success’).
- Reword those 3 into their opposites. Empowering beliefs (‘I am worthy of success’).
- Add a ‘fuck yeah’ type mantra for good measure (‘I’m a warrior’, ‘I fucking rock’, ‘I ship like a boss’, you get the idea).
Repeat these to yourself when you’re out running for at least 10 mins. You should be able to recite them in your sleep. These help a bunch when you hit 34km (now further than you’ve ever run before) on race day and your feet feel like bricks.
Music/Podcasts/Inspiration
I don’t do music when I run. Typically I’ll either listen to a podcast, audiobook or go silent. I found for the longer runs that biographical audiobooks worked better than podcasts. Audiobooks or podcasts which were too complex took too much concentration which I couldn’t spare when pushing my body through (no problem on shorter runs but on longer runs you need to keep mental gas in the tank).
Rich Roll’s Finding Ultra was great because you get to follow his journey overcoming adversity and his own demons to become the weapon he is today. Five stars.
I always did the first half (generally 90mins) of any long run silent or reciting the mantras to prepare mentally for the challenge. This was important and a big help on race day — you need to be able to reach a point of mental quiet at various points during the race. Running silent is also a great way to also let the unconscious, lateral thinking part of your brain work on other challenges at work or wherever.
Diet
I opted for a super low carb diet (pescatarian) up until 48 hours out from the race and then began 2 days of carb loading on basmati rice. The low carb diet was my usual diet and I did this so that my body would be fat-adapted to burn fat as fuel, meaning longer-lasting energy (see ultramarathon champion Zach Bitter’s posts on keto for endurance).
A typical day of eating in this phase for me:
Pre-run (5 am)
- 1 Tbsp Natural Almond Butter
Breakfast
- Smoothie (1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp flax meal, 40g salted caramel protein powder, ½ cup spinach, 250ml water, ½ cup almond milk, 1 tbsp peanut butter)
Lunch
- 200g steamed broccoli & asparagus
- 200g grilled firm tofu
- 100g avocado
Afternoon snack
- 30g macadamias
- Protein shake (40g salted caramel protein powder, 250ml almond milk)
Dinner
- 3 eggs scrambled
- 200g broccoli, asparagus, zucchini
- 100g avocado
- 1 tbsp EVOO
Final 48 hours
For the last 48 hrs before the race I had about 100g of cooked basmati rice with basic tomato pasta sauce every 3–4 hours to carb load. Carb loading ensures your muscles are fully-stocked with glycogen which they burn as energy during the race.
On the final day before the race, I ate dinner early (5:30 pm) to get to bed by 8:30 pm. I had a 350ml Prepd Prime drink which contains resistant starch, which gets absorbed into your intestine and provides longer-lasting fuel during the race (consume 6–12 hours before start time).
Race
I set an alarm for 2:45 am to wake and have a final bowl of rice for carb-loading to ensure the muscles were fully-stocked with glycogen. Then the final alarm was set for 6 am for a start time of 7 am. I took 2 energy gels; one at the start line and one at 20km and then had 4 cups of electrolyte drink during the race.
Post-Race
Recovery nutrition afterward included a Nut Butter filled Clif Bar (they’ve perfected the muesli bar, we can all stop trying), 350ml Prepd Recover drink, 200g grilled tofu, 150g broccoli, and ½ cup cooked brown rice. Dinner was soba noodle soup with mushrooms and tofu at a restaurant and then back to low-carb the next day.
Overall
I’m glad I put myself through the trial of taking on a big challenge in a short time frame. I felt alert and motivated the whole time because of the sense of urgency. Did I also mention I’m turning 30 this year? So, I was able to land a nice milestone in my 20s. You’ll get a physical sense of accomplishment from taking your endurance to the next level but more rewarding is the sense of mental strength you get from taking a potentially unachievable goal, single-mindedly striving for it, and putting yourself through tough conditions which takes grit to get through.
Be smart about picking the right challenge though, it needs to be at the edge of what you’re capable of so that you can elevate yourself to the challenge — an ultra marathon with 20 days prep at my level of fitness would’ve been stupid. But there may be an ultra marathon on the cards next year.
