Lessons from Meb
I recently finished Meb Keflezighi’s “26 Marathons” and it’s worth a read, especially if your library has a copy. As the title he suggests, he briefly recounts each of his 26 marathons in a separate chapter. It’s a quick read and will probably leave a lot of runners wishing he had gone into more detail on his training and buildups. A few valuable takeaways:
Relax: One of his best early performances came when he stressed the least. In Chicago 2003, his primary goal was to run a 2:12 marathon to get the Olympic “A” standard. He let the leaders go and just focused on his own race without worrying about covering moves and racing tactically. He constantly felt like he was holding back and holding back. He ended up running 2:10:03 for a PR by 2 minutes, 30 seconds and it felt incredibly easy, more like a tempo run than a marathon.
It’s Normal to Want to Quit: Meb only DNF’d one of his 26 races. “Maybe it will help you to hear that I most definitely thought about dropping out of every marathon I ran, even when I won Boston in 2014.” He had valid reasons for pulling out of several, and the number of mishaps is actually shocking (e.g., getting the wrong bottle, running with a breathe-rite strip in his shoe, choking on a caffeine pill, stopping 5x to deal with food poisoning) but he stuck with it, cycled through B and C goals, and made it to the line.
Injuries Are Everywhere: Injuries are a frequent presence in the book. Weekly mileage up to 125 will catch up to anyone, but I was surprised by how many training blocks were compromised by injury. In his later years, he switched from 7-day microcycles to 9-day microcycles to allow for extra recovery runs. He credits this with helping his longevity as a masters runner. He avoided training in pain and used cross-training in the pool as needed. Even if training was compromised, he didn’t rush to catch back up. He advocates being undertrained rather than overtrained. The goal was always to get to the line healthy and hungry to run.
