“As a runner how do I deal with injury and the frustration of not being able to participate in the sport that is so much a part of my everyday life?”

Most likely at some point in our running careers each of us will be faced with a running injury and possibly be asking ourselves the same question. Whether it be a major or minor injury, if it affects our running routine it can be frustrating. Why is this when most of the world would be delighted to have an excuse not to run? Runners are a different breed.

Over time, running becomes not only what we do, but it is how we identify ourselves. Running can become so much a part of who we are that when this aspect of our lives is taken away from us we are left feeling lost (I know, I know—pathetic, but true). Our focus, our drive, and our motivation become fuzzy. Now we all know it is not the end of the world to take a break from running (we do have lives outside of running…don’t we?), but when we are the one on the “injured list” life can seem kind of bleak.

I started running in junior high and I continued to run all through high school. After high school I competed for four years on the track and cross country team at Weber State University. Interestingly enough, throughout my junior high, high school, and college career I can’t remember having an injury that ever took me out for more than a week or two. It wasn’t until after giving birth to our first child in 2009 that I dealt with my first major injury. I had started running again, but I soon developed some lower back problems that halted my running pursuits for several months.

It wasn’t until the beginning of 2010 that I was feeling pain free and at a point where I could start building up my mileage again. After only a couple of months of training, I was encouraged by how good I was feeling.

So, in April 2010 I decided to run the Salt Lake Half Marathon just to see where I was at. I hadn’t raced in a long time and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I surprised myself when I finished in third place (out of the women) and ran my best half marathon time of 1:21:50. I was still a long way off from where I wanted to be, but it gave me confidence and I began considering pursuing one of my “big” running goals again—qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials. My plan was to continue training hard through the summer of 2010 and then look to run a fast marathon in the fall.

Things seemed to be falling into place when I found out the Salt Lake Half Marathon time qualified me to participate in the Chicago Marathon (a great fall marathon to run a fast time) under the elite development program. I set out training with my new goal in mind, but about a month after the Salt Lake Half, I started having problems with my right foot. At first I tried to run through it, but eventually I realized I needed to take time off or it was never going to heal. Any training at this point was just counterproductive. Well, days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and I ended up taking 5 months off from running. It was a very frustrating time in my running career, but I did learn a lot from the experience.

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UtahRunning.com:       Hello everyone this is UtahRunning.com Richardson with utahrunning.com.  And thanks for listening in.  We think you’ll enjoy today’s interview and we’re looking forward to helping you get to know Paul Peterson a little bit better.  Over the past few years, Paul has consistently been one of the most successful marathoners in Utah.  He lives and trains near Logan but he recently traveled to Boston where he was the third fastest American and ran a great time of 2:17.  Paul, thanks for joining us today.

Paul:                My pleasure, thank you.

UtahRunning.com:       We really appreciate you sharing with us some of your thoughts.  I’d like to maybe just start with your background.  Could you just tell me a bit about your background, and some of your experiences with running?

Paul:                Yeah, I think I started competing in sixth grade.  I took up track for something to go along with soccer, like many of us did.  And I got into middle distance, then distance since I seemed a little bit better at that. And I did it all through junior high and on into high school. Then I started running cross country as well in junior and high school.  This was back in Indiana where I grew up.

At the high school level I was a good runner, but not spectacular.  I ran 2:06 for 800, about 4:40, 4:41 for the 1600, about 10:15 for the two mile and  around 16:20 for the 5K, solid times, but my claim to fame is I’ve never qualified for a high school state meet.

I did go on to run in college at a Division III school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, called Calvin College.  I walked onto that team and was able to keep developing there.  I had really good coaching there, was coached by Ryan Beemer a three-time Olympian, and Olympic bronze medalist in the steeplechase in 1984.  The coaches there were really quite excellent and I had really good teammates.

I ran the fourth or fifth guy there for most of my time.  I developed into a sub-four minute 1500 meter runner, and went under 15 minutes and under 31 minutes for the 10K by a little bit.  I had a decent college career, was All-American once in cross country.  And probably my highlight in college was actually experiencing a national championship, team championship.  My senior year in cross country our team took the national meet, so that was probably the favorite part of my college running.

UtahRunning.com:       I’m sure that would be a highlight of the college career.

Paul:                Yeah, that’s probably what I miss most about college is the whole team aspect.  You get out of college and you compete running as an individual of course, with all these great races.  There’s a wonderful variety of different types of races; adventure races, relays, marathons, 5Ks.  If you can think of it, it’s probably a race.  But that team aspect is so fun and brings out the best in people  I think, which is probably why relay races are very popular.

UtahRunning.com:       You mentioned your development through high school and college.  I think for me, that team aspect is definitely part of the development.  I’m sure it’s probably been a little harder since you’ve graduated.  I’d like to hear more about your experience leading up to Boston and preparing for Boston, obviously doing a lot of training by yourself.  Tell me about your training in preparation for Boston and some of the types of workouts you would do.

Paul:                I think that will tie into this continuing the story of post-collegiately I got out and decided to take to marathoning because it seemed the thing to do.  I did better in the longer distances. except I trained for the marathon, I trained mostly by myself.  I trained mostly like a 10K runner would train except with a long run thrown in there.  I think many of us have been in the same boat, where we get out of school and we’re kind of lost.  There’s no coaching and there may not be a good runner group to run with.  Even the motivation can wane without having those teammates there.

I spun my wheels for literally a few years, and ran good times in the marathon but I thought I was kind of underperforming for what my previous times were.  So I started out running in the 2:40s.  My first couple of marathons were in the 2:40 and a couple here and there in the 2:30s.  It wasn’t until the ninth marathon where I finally nailed one down and got under 2:30.

The training I picked up around 2005 and then picked up some more techniques in ’07, leading up to the trials, and then I kept manipulating those training methods and evolving them for my own use as I learned what works and what doesn’t.

Boston, you talk about a training cycle; when we think of a training cycle we think of the six months leading up to a marathon, or four months leading up to a marathon.  Really, this was eight or nine years leading up to Boston, learning how to run a marathon and learning how to train for a marathon.

What I did before Boston I’ve been doing quite a bit of for the last two and a half years or three years.  A lot of it is simply getting the consistency, making sure I get in a solid six days a week.  I usually do a six-day cycle, and multiple runs a day.  I double pretty much all my easy days when I’m doing heavy training anyway.  I’m hitting top mileage in upper 90s, low 100s.  I peaked at 98 before Boston but before the Indianapolis race I did last year, I hit 107 for my high.  I’ll get into upper 90s, low 100s for a lot of these races.

It’s consistency, volumes, getting those doubles in, and then it’s hitting the workouts.  The key to marathon racing, and what I was doing before Boston was marathon-specific training.  Again, I’m not training like a 10K runner, I’m not training like a cross country runner.  I’m not even training like a half marathon runner.  I’m doing things specific for the marathon.

Beyond just the mileage, the things basically entail doing big workouts and by big workouts I mean a session of speed work.  The whole workout lasts between 90 and 120 minutes.  Big workouts alternated with very easy days and then a weeUtahRunning.comd long run.  For me I incorporated a workout within the long run as well.

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Often, when people think of running, they think of marathons, road races, and running on a track.  However, there are hundreds of Utah High School cross country teams, and just about every college in Utah has a team competing in collegiate cross country.

If you are really bored, you can read the IAAF competition rules for cross country… or you could just check out our summary below:

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You can click the play button below to listen to the interview or read the full transcript below.

Ken: Hello everybody, this is Ken Richardson with UtahRunning.com. I’ve got Mike Spence on the line. He’s an elite athlete who calls Utah home. Mike competed at Princeton University where the steeplechase was his main event, and he came here to Utah to train with Hall of Fame Coach Chick Hislop. How are you doing Mike?

Mike: Good Ken.

Ken: Thanks for taking the time today to talk with us and all of the fans out at Utah Running.com. I just have a few questions to ask you and hopefully I’ll get some great answers from you and insight for everybody who visits UtahRunning.com.

Over the last few years your focus has kind of switched from the steeplechase to the marathon. What prompted that switch? What inspired the decision to change to marathons?

Mike: I’ve always been a guy, a distance runner who favored the longer endurance events over speed events. It’s been a long time coming. Throughout my career, I’ve had people saying you should try the 10K when I was in college. Or you should try the marathon when I was out of college.

The steeplechase has always been my passion for track and field. I’ve always believed that’s what you should follow, not necessarily what you’re best suited at. Hopefully those two things go coincide but for me it was that the steeplechase was where my passions were. That’s what brought me out here to Utah.

Following those passions has led to everything else. I came out here to train with Coach Hislop and that was a big decision for me. I’d never been to Utah before then except a family vacation when I was a little kid. That was a big career change for me but after a few years of steeplechasing, 6 years.

In 2008, after the Olympic trials it became apparent that it was going to take a real jump to make the A standard in the steeplechase, the Olympic A standard. The marathon standard, by comparison, is something I feel confident that I can hit. That’s the goal now, to train for 2012, that A standard is everything. If you have it you go, if you don’t have it you don’t have a chance of going really.

I think that it’s time for me to move up. I had a talk with Coach Hislop last fall, the fall of 2009, and he actually revealed to me at the time he’d been thinking the marathon might be a good switch for me for some time, but that it was a decision I myself had to make. He never prompted me to do it until I came to him on my own and said I wanted to give it a try. I actually thought he might be disappointed that I might be leaving the steeplechase, but he thought it was time to try the longer distance. That’s why I made the move.

Ken: I know he loves the steeplechase too, so I’m interested to see how the marathon goes for you. You actually recently ran the Duluth marathon. What made you choose that particular marathon as your debut marathon?

Mike: First of all it’s funny that you call it the Duluth marathon because it’s actually Grandma’s Marathon; there’s no such thing as the Duluth marathon, but I called it Grandma’s to start with and I got so many jokes about being in a race called Grandma’s Marathon that I started calling it the Duluth marathon too, just so people knew that it was an actual race in an actual city.

Grandma’s Marathon is one of the top races in the country. It’s probably the fourth or fifth most competitive marathon in the nation from top to bottom, after the big three, and then Twin Cities is up there with it. It’s a highly competitive field. All the best marathoners in the U.S. would run there at some point in their careers.

That was a big draw. I really wanted to run a fast, competitive race. The other thing is it worked with our timing. I needed a race that was in the springtime and it was a bit late. It was June and I was kind of hoping for something a little earlier but June enabled me to hit a couple other U.S. Championship races that were being held in the spring. It just hit the calendar pretty well.

Also, I like Minnesota. It’s nice. My wife and I have a friend who has a place up there in Duluth so we had contacts there. It’s one that Kristi my wife wanted to run for a long time. In fact, she was scheduled to run it last year but she had to pull out at the last minute due to an injury. We felt like it was kind of taking care of some unfinished business by getting up there to the race and it seemed to fit this year.

Ken: It’s kind of a timing thing but also a draw because it’s a major marathon with a deep field.

Mike: Yeah, and it’s a beautiful course too. It runs right along Lake Superior. It’s a flat course. Everything seemed pretty good. The only concern we had was it’s in June so June in Minnesota, you never know what you’re going to get as far as weather, and Coach Hislop was a little concerned about that. Previous years there have been a couple of times when it’s been in the 70′s at race time and that’s not what you want. Historically it could be 30 degrees up there, be snowing in June in Minnesota, but it might be 80 degrees too.

Ken: I’ve got a slew of questions to throw at you and maybe you could tell me a bit about them. Maybe you could tell me about your training leading up to the marathon, maybe your weekly mileage, the types of workouts, what was your longest run, just some details that would help out some people listening to us today.

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Expert Panel Question???

“What do you think about the five finger vibrams?”

Answer!!!

We think that barefoot running is a tool that everyone should have in their running toolbox. The Vibram five fingers and other minimalist shoes do a great job of strengthening the foot and biomechanics. We recommend that people start slowly and use them only as a supplement to their everyday running shoes. This combination will add to reducing injuries and more “bang for the buck” in the time spent training. Good luck and happy running.

by Guy Perry

Owner of Salt Lake Running Company, a specialty running store.

Expert Panel Question???

“I’m a 62 year old male runner, have run many half marathons but never a full marathon. I run 3 – 4 times a week averaging 25 to 35 miles. I play golf and weight train moderately. I’m training for a marathon and would like to feel more energized – suggestions?”

Answer!!!

Realize that training for a marathon at any age is an energy draining pursuit, but to help you feel as good as possible try the following:

1. Keep your run days to 3-4 times a week
2. Keep your weekday runs to no more than an hour.
3. Do long runs every other Saturday and start them about 16 weeks out(assuming you already can run 90 minutes for a long run)
4. Do your longest training run at 22 miles and do it 3 weeks out from your race.
5. Focus on eating really well after all your runs. Drink a recovery drink IMMEDIATELY upon finishing a run and then eat a whole food meal within 45-60 minutes following that has a lot of carbohydrates, lean protein and healthy fat.
6. Drink lots of water each day.
7. Sleep really well.
8. Use a sports massage therapist twice a month
9. Take a solid vitamin/mineral/ antioxidant supplement day and night.
10. Take an ice bath after each long run.

by Debbie Perry

Certified Sports Nutrition Advisor

USA Triathlon Certified Coach

Colgan Power Program Strength Trainer

Local Elite Runner/Triathlete