Lifting to Marathon Prep
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nossmf
Posts: 9,056 Member
Ok, so due to severe budget tightening (two kids in braces, AC died, new car) we're having to make some tough choices of what parts of our lives must be (temporarily) set aside. My contribution is my gym membership, which I've had for 8 years now. This means my access to all those nice heavy weights is cut off, and I don't have an adequate home gym setup. (Nor room to put it anywhere anyway... my basement is taken over by all the accumulated furniture waiting for my kids to grow up and go find an apartment of their own.)
On the plus side, one of the items on my bucket list is to run a marathon, so now seems the perfect time to tackle that objective head on. I used to love running in school (track, cross country) and hate running in the military (nuff said), but that was all a LONG time ago, so I know I have to take it slow and build my way up. That's not the problem, there are tons of programs online to help, from Couch-to-5k to beginner marathon tips.
My concern is all my glorious muscle and strength I've built up over the last 8 years is going to disappear, leaving me a skinny weakling like I was when I graduated school. (I'm a good 50# heavier than back then, and most of the change is muscle.)
So in addition to learning to run again, any idea how much of my figure I stand to lose along the way if I'm limited to bodyweight exercises like pullups and pushups?
On the plus side, one of the items on my bucket list is to run a marathon, so now seems the perfect time to tackle that objective head on. I used to love running in school (track, cross country) and hate running in the military (nuff said), but that was all a LONG time ago, so I know I have to take it slow and build my way up. That's not the problem, there are tons of programs online to help, from Couch-to-5k to beginner marathon tips.
My concern is all my glorious muscle and strength I've built up over the last 8 years is going to disappear, leaving me a skinny weakling like I was when I graduated school. (I'm a good 50# heavier than back then, and most of the change is muscle.)
So in addition to learning to run again, any idea how much of my figure I stand to lose along the way if I'm limited to bodyweight exercises like pullups and pushups?
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Bummer, sorry to hear about the required changes.
I remember Lyle's article about 1/3 of whatever got your lifting to where it's at is needed for maintenance - as long as the intensity (weight) isn't dropped.
But that's the problem - not enough weight.
Can you do enough reps for the body weight stuff (dips and upside down push-ups included for OHP imitate too) to compensate somewhat for upper body?
And eating at maintenance very needed.
I've seen others and myself lose upper body when endurance started - mainly because nothing was done upstairs at all - and likely wasn't truly at maintenance either. Swimming during tri times helped a bit on some muscles.
One of those times you don't want to wait a month and see what the weight has done before adjusting calories.
I wouldn't even do weekly avg TDEE method - more of MFP method, especially when long run starts getting longer and longer.
And use a good calculator to get the calorie burn right for the runs, and really try to get the MFP daily activity selection right.2 -
I would consider the following options keeping in mind I'm not really going into specifics here:
1) Bodyweight training
2) Is it in the budget to get a set of adjustable DBs? You could do a full body home program with 1 set of adjustables and be fine. You'd temporarily lose strength in some movements but I bet you could adequate maintain muscle mass.
3) If you can only use bodyweight you might still be fine but this might be a good time to consider occlusion/bloodflow restriction training to attempt to augment the hypertrophic response.1 -
Does your gym offer a daily rate? A lot of them around here do, and getting in a heavy workout even on a reduced basis like once a week or once every other week might be a more affordable option and would be infrequent enough not to interfere with your marathon training.0
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Bodyweight training really does go a long way especially if you work on different progressions to make things harder (one arm push ups, pistol squats, etc) and you can't go wrong with pull ups. You will start fighting muscle economy once your runs start getting to a certain length/amount per week but you'll have a ways to go. That and you can take the training approach of "finishing" a marathon which isn't as hard and will require less running overall versus trying to run a marathon in a specific time frame.1
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Oh, I'd definitely be interested only in "finishing" rather than time, lol. It's also looking now like I'll be working towards a half-marathon rather than a full, as the Denver marathon recently got clipped to a half.
I've also been reminded about the gym at work which has a small weights area I can try to hit before or after a shift. Not nearly as complete as the gym by my house, but better than nothing.1 -
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Are you going to keep us posted on your running progress??? I would love an update???1
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The update is... no update yet. While putting together a basketball hoop for my son, the wrench I was holding slipped, allowing the backboard to fall onto my big toe. I was wearing boots at the time which absorbed enough of the impact to prevent any bone breaking, but the resulting swelling and bruising was both remarkable to look upon as well as impossible to run upon. The pain has subsided and the coloration returned to normal, but I still feel small twinges when I try to push off, either for running or lifting, so I have been waiting until my toe heals completely before I begin a running program.0
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I'll bet even walking the goal marathon time at this point would cause some problems.
I sure hope you didn't verbalize something along the lines of "oh great, what more could happen!"0 -
You probably don't wanna know the words I "verbalized" when that metal bar slammed my toe...0
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Good news, bad news...
Good news is I did some quick running the other night in the grocery store down the aisle to get what I needed and head back to the checkout. My toe held up just fine, looks like I'm good to go to start running.
Bad news is my stamina is alarmingly low. Total time spent running through the store amounted to under a minute, yet in that time I was already breathing hard. My leg muscles felt fine, it was just my breathing. It's a good thing I'm giving myself a year to train before that half marathon next fall... I'm gonna need every minute of it!
Now I need to go buy some actual running shoes for the first time in a decade...1 -
Good news, bad news...
Good news is I did some quick running the other night in the grocery store down the aisle to get what I needed and head back to the checkout. My toe held up just fine, looks like I'm good to go to start running.
Bad news is my stamina is alarmingly low. Total time spent running through the store amounted to under a minute, yet in that time I was already breathing hard. My leg muscles felt fine, it was just my breathing. It's a good thing I'm giving myself a year to train before that half marathon next fall... I'm gonna need every minute of it!
Now I need to go buy some actual running shoes for the first time in a decade...
Start slow, you'll be fine!0 -
Compared to other fresh starters who need to get the muscle in the first place - this should be interesting when it's only aerobic improvement.
Well, aerobic improvement on other type of muscle fiber not the focus of lifting.
I'm sure your store experience was similar to almost everyone that bounds up a couple flights of stairs.
You think it's a speed that's not too bad, but the effects show it was clearly anaerobic.1 -
Well, it's official... my gym membership has lapsed. My last day in the gym I celebrated by selecting my favorite 14 exercises and performing a single set of them back-to-back, other than the warmup sets leading into the squat and bench. Those two I went heavy, the rest lighter, just trying to get a good groove and remember the feel of them. From there I went to bask in the hottub for a while (the heater was set wrong, more of a warmtub, sigh) followed by the steam sauna. Pity the sports massages cost extra, and the whole reason to give up the gym is to save costs.2
