Marathons & Moderation: Guest Post #2

Hello Healthy Happier Bear readers! I’m Emily and I blog about my addiction to sweating at Sweat Once A Day. I love following Ashley’s posts about her fun, fit and fabulous life in NYC! When Ashley tweeted for people to write about balance during marathon training, I eagerly offered to write about one about one of my favorite subjects: run hard play hard.

I’ve run 11 full marathons while holding a full time job (and a few part time jobs), dating, spending lots of quality time with my family and friends and partaking in my fair share of happy hours. If there’s one thing I feel I can speak with some degree of authority, it’s balance and marathon training.

Here are my top 10 tips for how to run like a rockstar without sacrificing anything else in your life.

1) Embrace the Mornings.

Okay, don’t hate me, don’t hate your alarm clock, stop pushing that snooze button.

If there’s ONE thing you can do to make your life more balanced during marathon training, it’s learning how to hear your inner rooster, rise with the sun and get miles logged before most people get out of bed in the morning.

Through 11 marathon training cycles, I’ve learned a valuable lesson: I will never regret working out in the morning, but I will always regret not getting out of bed to get my sweat on.

You never know what will come up after work: a late night at the office, an impromptu happy hour, a dinner date with that hot guy from the gym. You will never have to worry about fitting in the spontaneous fun in life if you get your training over and done with before you head to work.

2) Get Creative.

There are never enough hours in the day. I tackle this unfortunate fact of life by making sure no hour goes to waste.

When time is tight, I’ll get creative with my training schedule: run home from work at night, run to happy hour, stretch during a conference call, run errands…literally.

Why waste 30 minutes on the subway in the morning when you could use that time to run the three miles to work and cross your training off the overflowing to-do list for the day?

3) It’s okay to miss some workouts.

One of the biggest mistakes during marathon training is to adhere too closely to your training schedule. Don’t stress out if you miss a 3 mile easy Wednesday run. If there’s one workout to prioritize during marathon training, it’s unquestionably the long run. As long as you get that in, you’ll be golden on M Day.

Some things are more important that sweating. Please do yourself a favor and choose to prioritize your best friend visiting from out of town, your boyfriend’s birthday celebration or meeting a work deadline over squeezing in a shake out run.

4) Pick a Night to Party Like a Rockstar

When I trained for my first marathon, I learned to live for Thursday nights. I was too worried about my Saturday morning runs to go out on Friday evenings, so I would take advantage of Thursdays to go out like a champ.

Instead of limiting yourself to never going out, or stressing about always being tired, pick a night to do it right and stick to that so the remainder of the week you can get good sleep and be focused on preparing for the 26.2.

5) Reward Yourself

There are some mornings, days, evenings during marathon training when you’re just not going to be motivated to log your miles.

One of my favorite ways to overcome this challenge is to reward myself for dominating my training plan. I’ll tell myself “do these 5 miles and you can drink champagne with the boyfriend” “finish your long run strong and a guilt free bottomless brunch is in your very immediate future” “get out of bed to run at 6am tomorrow and your favorite salad place is serving lunch”…you get the picture.

There’s no shame in a little personal bribery mid-marathon training.

6) Con Your Friends to Join

Marathoning is a foreign concept to many people.

How many of you have gotten the question “how long is the marathon?” That’s what I thought.

Get your friends involved. Have them join you for 3 miles of your long run, get them to meet you for brunch after a 5k, bribe them to make signs for your race, get them drunk and convince them to sign up with you…I mean, no…that’s what I meant.

Your friends will get excited about something that’s so important to you. Help them figure out how to become a part of your marathoning world and you’ll get to spend more valuable time with them while getting your training/racing done at the same time. Golden.

7) Make Friends While Training

The best thing I’ve done while training for various marathons and triathlons, is to put myself out there and meet people who are also in training. Look for running groups, fellow bloggers/tweeters or triathlon clubs in the area with group workouts.

Take a chance and go. I guarantee that the worst thing that happens is you have a good time. Many of my best friends in the DC area started as strangers on the internet or randos in some running group I found in the neighborhood. Do it. Trust me.

8) Cut Corners

If you’ve ever read my blog, you know that I don’t shower. Ever.

I’ve learned that if I can squeeze in a run at lunch, but not a shower, it’s worth it if I can make it to my best friend’s birthday BBQ.

9) Lunch on the Run

The best way to balance training for a marathon with a full time job is to utilize your lunch breaks for quality sweating.

Now, I by no means have a job that grants me a full hour to lunch on a daily basis. But on days when I can sneak away from my desk, I do. And I find that having a midday run helps me accomplish more than usual in the morning before I lace up my running shoes, and the noon endorphins refocus me for the afternoon workload.

10) Love Sweats

Before I tricked my boyfriend into dating me, he had never raced before. Sure he ran for fitness, but getting him involved in the all-consuming world of running/triathloning and sweat addiction has helped keep me sane and balanced while amidst my many training cycles and has given us a new passion to bond over and keep our relationship exciting.

And single people?

Do you know how hot sweaty men are. Refer to tip #7 and start meeting some new men in spandex. I’d be lying to you if I told you I don’t spend every minute I’m on my bike checking out the muscley calves of the hot boys who pass me.

Happy running and marathon training to all of you! Run hard, play harder and you’ll be dominating 26.2 miles in no time. Thanks again to Ashley for letting me hang with all her lovely readers for a bit and consume more than my fair share of her blog space rambling about my love for sweat filled marathon training!