The Balance of Training and Injury Risk for Masters Runners

This week’s podcast features a coaching call with a runner named Bradford.

After a year of fast racing, Bradford had a taste of success and is looking to make continued improvement as a new master’s runner. Having recently turned 40, Bradford set some challenging but realistic goals for the year ahead: run a sub-3 marathon and qualify to run Boston in 2024.

Bradford lives in Washington, DC and often runs several workouts each week with a local club of competitive athletes. While these structured workout sessions have enabled him to achieve fast times in the 5k and half marathon, Bradford is wondering how best to juggle all the elements of training for his first marathon.

Bradford and I talk about his past and current training and plan for how he can achieve his goals in the years ahead. While he is doing a lot of things right, we discuss ways he can make continued progress, including:

• How to alter his current schedule of workouts
• The importance of race selection when setting a challenging goal
• Why more mileage is so key to his marathon goal
• Using tuneup races to evaluate his fitness
• How to fit strength training into a busy schedule

Often we think about what we're doing wrong in training. This is a fun discussion on how to keep improving when you're already on the right track. Enjoy!

Join Team Strength Running to be able to come on the podcast for these coaching calls!

Don't miss our other coaching call episodes:

• How to Escape a Running Rut
• How to Fix Knee Pain
• Running And Lifting: How Elizabeth Does Both As A Sub-3 Marathoner

Links & Resources from the Show:

• Learn more about running your fastest marathon as a master
• Engineering a marathon PR as master’s runner
• See how High Performance Lifting can benefit your running
• Run coaching to help you set new PRs

We’re sponsored by InsideTracker, a company that’s been around for more than 10 years to help you optimize your health, longevity, and performance. To live your healthiest, longest life possible, you need to understand what’s going on inside your body. People age at different speeds. And generic, annual blood work doesn’t properly evaluate your biological age. But InsideTracker does.

InsideTracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system, designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, InsideTracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you’re optimized—and where you’re not.

With InsideTracker, you get a daily Action Plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add InnerAge 2.0 to any plan to calculate your true biological age, and see how you’re aging from the inside out. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store!

Thank you to our sponsor, Athletic Greens! They are a health and wellness company that makes AG1. This is a category-leading greens mix that has 75 vitamins and minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, antioxidants, and adaptogens.

One scoop per day is what I’ve been doing to help me fill in any nutrition gaps in my diet. It also provide a nice boost of energy and focus throughout the day. With all 3 of my kids in school, I know I need to support my immune system or else I’m getting sick and can’t train.

I also love that AG1 has changed over the last decade. Athletic Greens has made 53 improvements to the formula based on the latest research to make these nutrients more absorbable.

For our listeners, they are offering a year's worth of free Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs of AG1 with your first purchase. You can sign up for single shipment or for a monthly drop - the choice is yours. Check out Athletic Greens to redeem your offer today.