Tomorrow is marathon day here in Boston.  On one hand, it’s a great day in our city, as loads of money is raised for charity and quite a few high level, well-prepared athletes come to town to compete for a Boston Marathon crow.

Unfortunately, it’s also a day when hip replacements become reality and 140-pound dudes in shorty-short shorts instantly become Johnny Brassballs so that they can fight through pain (and runner’s diarrhea) to complete a 26.2 biomechanical nightmare that is the exercise equivalent of taking a 1983 Chevy Cavilier out for the Daytona 500.  The Boston Globe ran a feature today that noted, “Each year for the past three years, about 1,000 qualifiers received medical deferments, allowing them to postpone their eligibility to run until the next year. As of last week, about 600 of the nearly 27,000 people registered to run tomorrow had sought deferments, and the organizers expected that number could double.”

Out of the Running

The thing that I think frustrates me the most about this scenario is that all the modalities listed as “treatments” are really just band-aids on a ruptured aorta.  They talk about oral NSAIDs, cortisone shots, ice, massage, knee straps, surgery, physical therapy – all REACTIVE modalities.  People wait for issues to reach threshold and only then do they start to perceive them as problematic.  And, there will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be any modality that will overcome a dysfunctional runner with a completely warped perception of reality a few weeks out from an event so physically demanding that it actually killed the first guy ever to do it.

So, with this year’s marathon upon us, I’m going to make a plea to the (few?) marathoners out there who actually read this: start preparing on Tuesday for next year’s event if you plan to run it.  Be a regular athlete before you try to become an elite athlete.  Don’t run to get fit; get fit to run.

Four-month training programs are a load of B.S.; nobody became elite at anything in four months.  Instead, put in a legitimate year of strength training, flexibility training, (energy systems) cross-training, sprint work, threshold work, and solid nutrition BEFORE you start running any longer.  You’ll feel like a million bucks and blow this year’s time out of the water.

Confucius said that “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  So, here’s Step 1.  Get a foam roller and start doing this series every day: