Comrades Mararthon strength training – when to stop

Comrades Mararthon strength training – when to stop

While Strength training, speed work and hill work are all important elements to Comrades Marathon training, it is dangerous to only start close to race day. Also at what point should you stop doing these sessions before race day. All is revealed on this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast.

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Transcript

You’re listening to the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown and we’ve got the Comrades coach, Lindsey Parry with us once again. Lindsey, it’s the day after the Comrades Marathon online seminar that we did at the beginning of May 2016 and as we record this, what an amazing session last night. The next one is coming up on the 17th of May, if you haven’t registered yet, get to coachparry.com/comrades-marathon-webinar. You can register there. Lindsey, an amazing session last night, a huge turnout and I think everyone got lots out of it.

Lindsey Parry: It was brilliant, it was certainly one of the best ones we’ve done, ever since we started these things. Lots of enthusiasm from the runners, great interaction, really good questions. So the hour literally just flew by.

BB: Without a doubt. 17th of May is when the next one is happening. Lindsey, I wanted to ask a question and it’s a combination of three questions that we got asked lots last night that I want to share with people if they weren’t on that webinar.

Can I still get my intensity and cross-training in?

It’s got to do with doing speed training, hill training and strength training in the final month before Comrades. You’re obviously a huge fan of hill training, you’re also huge on strength training. People were asking: what do we need to do now in the last run-in to Comrades. Do we continue our strength training? Do we continue the speed? Do we continue the hills? What’s the best way to do it as we get closer to race day?

LP: So, I think the key word that you use is ‘continue’. So if you have been doing it all along and in particular, if you’re someone that is always how you’ve trained. So then yes, I would continue with that speed work, hill work, strength work. Right up until about 7-10 days before Comrades would be the last time that I would do those sessions.

Down Comrades Marathon – you need strength training

In terms of the strength work, in particular, if strength was something you added because you’ve been a regular listener or you’ve gotten advice for the Down run. The strength work is quite important. I would look at 10 days before, I’d cut that strength training out.

But during the taper, it’s important that we don’t completely stop doing everything. Our body does get accustomed to training in a certain way and receiving a certain stimulus. So even though we want to reduce that over the coming weeks, we still need to provide some of that. So hills, speed, strength, if you’ve been doing them, keep doing them, and cut them out 7-10 days before.

BB: Now is not the time to start cramming if you haven’t done them, it’s not going to help you now. Lindsey, thank you very much for that, we’re back in just a couple of days’ time with the next edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast. Until Friday, from the two of us, it’s cheers.

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