Ready, set, go!
This is episode 453 with sub-three marathoner, running coach, weightlifter and one of my former private clients, Elizabeth Corkum.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
I'm your host, Coach Jason Fitzgerald.
And this episode features a former private coaching client of mine, a running coach herself, Elizabeth Corkum.
She's a 258 marathoner and a five day per week weightlifter, which makes her an interesting case study on how to combine big running goals with significant time in the gym.
She's an incredibly upbeat and positive person, so I know you're going to enjoy her story.
Now, if you're new to the Strength Running Podcast, this show features training conversations, coaching calls and experts in the running space to elevate your thinking about the sport.
Because if you better understand the process of improvement, when you recognize knowledge as a competitive advantage, you'll be a much better runner.
Since 2010, we've been helping runners around the world improve with our award-winning article library, free email courses and our proven training programs and coaching services.
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Alright, let's begin.
This episode is actually a repost from 2022, because it's a powerful example of what you can accomplish.
My guest is an incredible athlete.
Elizabeth Corkum, who goes by the nickname Corky, is a 258 marathoner, a certified running coach, weightlifter and, as we'll see, beer lover.
She has a USA Track and Field Roadrunners Club of America and Lydiard Foundation coaching certifications, as well as being a certified personal trainer and specialist in sports nutrition.
We're going to discuss her introduction to the sport, how she spends five hours per week weightlifting while balancing marathon training, the many setbacks she's experienced recently, and how she's bounced back and what she does when she disagrees with me.
I had so much fun speaking with Corky about her running and I hope you find her as refreshing, honest and wise as I do.
If you'd like to work together, go see all the options at strengthrunning.com coaching.
Without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Elizabeth Corky Corkum.
Corky, thank you so much for joining me and chatting about your running today.
My pleasure.
Thanks so much for having me Jason.
Yeah, so full disclosure.
This is the second time we're recording this because we had a little bit of a tech issue with round one.
But nevertheless, I am so excited to be back here with round two.
You are one of my one-on-one coaching private clients.
I consider you a very impressive athlete and you just had an amazing spring marathon and And one of the reasons why I wanted to talk with you today Corky, is that you do things a little bit unconventionally.
So I think this conversation is going to be eye-opening.
It's going to be interesting.
And you're going to share a little bit of a different story on how you go about things.
So I really appreciate your time today.
Happy to bring my unconventional form of training front and center.
So, yeah, you I want our listeners to get an idea of who you are.
And I'll start with the question I'm not supposed to ask you.
How old are you?
And then how long have you been a runner?
So I'm 38 and I'm very proud of that because I want to be part of the movement of women not being shamed by feeling like they can't say their age.
And I've been a runner.
You know, runner, I've been a runner longer than I've identified as a runner.
I think I began running in my early twenties um for the same reason a lot of people do um, whether it is health wellness, mental relief um And honestly, for me it was partly fear of not fitting in certain – um costumes.
I was, I was an actor at the time and, um, had this fear of not being castable.
And you know Hollywood does not really help with that stigma for most people, especially if you're young and cracking into the industry.
So I began running the way a When I was 26, when I ran my first race 26, I kind of went through a bit of a quarter life crisis and had a lot of big changes in my life.
And running, for some reason, was something I really gravitated towards.
And I...
Ran my first race, which was the Broad Street Run, which is a 10-miler in Philly.
So I don't start anything small.
I'm kind of an all-in kind of gal.
And trained for and raced the Philly Marathon that same year with a quest for a BQ, which I accomplished.
And from there, that love affair just, it went wild.
And so I would say for about 12 years now, I would absolutely consider myself a runner.
What was your athletic background like before you became a runner?
Because I think a lot of folks will listen to you and say wow, you started running, you ran your first marathon, you qualified for Boston.
I mean, this is already a fairy tale story.
Were you an athlete before you started running as well?
I'm going to say no.
I've always been active.
I grew up on a Christmas tree farm.
So being outside and manual labor was kind of part of the price you pay when you're a kid on a farm.
Um, I was really into musical theater so I was dancing a lot and I played basketball.
But I quit basketball because it was conflicting with my dance classes.
So after my freshman year of high school, I quit basketball to really focus on performing.
And I was a choir, auditioning for different things, dance classes seven hours a week.
So while I was active, I would by no means say I identified as an athlete at all.
I went to a music conservatory for college.
We did not have any sports.
Ballet class was what we had.
And so no, I really was not somebody who was into team sports or being in a gym or doing anything that most
I would say most kids honestly grow up doing as part of their education.
Yeah, I think that level of activity though, is good preparation for practically any sport, especially dance.
I actually think ballet and some of those types of dance are really helpful in building coordination and proprioception and some of those skills.
So I'm not really surprised to hear that.
Now, I am curious.
You ran the Broad Street 10-mile run.
Then you ran the Philadelphia Marathon.
That's a special place in my mind because that's where my PR is from.
What was your first marathon time that year, your first marathon ever?
It was a 3.32.33.
Wow.
You remember down to the second.
I love it.
You are definitely a running nerd.
Well, I mean, I had that etched in my brain, you know wanting that BQ, which obviously the Boston qualifying standards have now changed.
Um, since then I'm dating myself here now.
But um yeah, but the wild thing was I ran the near, excuse me.
I ran the Philly marathon at a faster pace than I ran the broad street run um within seven months time.
So, um, The Broad Street Run was an amazing experience.
It's my very first race.
It's a large race.
It has the energy and the vibe that I think a lot of runners love after their first time and are hooked.
Um, but I was, you know, I was so new to it that, um, I didn't really know much about pacing myself.
I'd never done a speed workout before.
And so again, when I decide I'm going to do something, I go all in.
When I decided I was going to run my first marathon, it was like great, I'm going to really had any question that I couldn't.
But at the time, I also didn't know many runners.
So I didn't have anyone to whisper in my ear, hey, this is hard.
People don't do this.
This is a big undertaking for somebody who has no idea what they're doing.
So sometimes ignorance is bliss.
I was just going to say ignorance is bliss, especially when you first start running.
My God, the improvement gains in the first year of running.
I wish I could go back and capture some of that magic where every race you run is a huge PR.
And it's like you just think that the improvement train is just going to keep on going forever and it is such an exciting time.
Now I also wanna acknowledge that you are a certified running coach.
You have multiple certifications.
You have a roster of your own private clients, but you've hired me as your coach.
What were some of the reasons for hiring me about, let's say, that was about 15 months ago or so.
I think it was the spring of 2021.
Yeah.
You know it's funny.
Whenever I talk to runners and say I have a running coach, they're like but why?
And I'll say, well, a lot of coaches have coaches.
Same reason doctors go see other doctors or therapists go see therapists.
Just because you're incredibly qualified at something and maybe really, really good at what you do.
That doesn't mean you have the ability of being objective about yourself.
And I think having another set of eyes on your training is really important.
And I had been self-coached for a long time and had gotten myself to a 303 marathon twice.
Back-to-back years, both in Europe, both on pancake flat courses.
And I felt...
I had kind of taken myself as far as I could go, because I was getting to the point where I was like well, I have to then just do more.
It has to be more mileage or more speed work or more of this or more of that.
And it's not always more.
It's just the pattern, the progression and sometimes holding yourself back or looking at things differently.
And so...
And I acknowledged I'd done a good job at getting myself to where I had.
But also I don't want to keep banging my head against that next training block at a 303 forever.
I realized I needed help.
I needed another set of eyes to steer the ship.
Yeah.
Here we are.
Here we are.
We're about pushing up on a year and a half in.
And we're definitely going to get to your marathon that you just ran last spring, because that is sort of, like you know, one of the big goals that you had and you were able to accomplish it.
But I want to kind of back up a little bit.
One of the big reasons why I wanted to talk with you on the pod is that your strength training habits, your strength training workouts, are different than how most runners approach weightlifting.
And it's actually admittedly, not exactly what I would recommend to most runners, even though that's okay.
So can you talk a little bit about how you approach strength training, how you structure it on a weekly basis and kind of how you got started with it?
Yeah, and this is where I'm unconventional, right?
I started with strength training...
2015, I think, was when I was working to get my personal training certification.
I'm one of those people where I want to know the answers.
I want to know how to do something.
If there were a million different certifications out there specifically for running and they would all give me information, knowledge that was not available.
Otherwise, I would be checking them all off because I just want to know more.
So for me, learning about strength training felt like a really nice addition to running.
In 2015, I had already... run a 305 marathon and had done a couple half marathons.
And it's weird going back and like, ooh, in time.
When was that?
But I also felt I was not very resilient in terms of my form and injury risk and my recovery and And I thought that maybe strength training would be something that might make me a more resilient athlete and just hold up better.
And so that was when I started dabbling with it.
The strength training world can be really scary, especially for runners.
Gym culture does not make anybody feel welcome in the weight room unless you look like you know what you're doing and you look a certain way and usually are male.
And so I was intimidated for a long time.
And I think that that's very... relatable for a lot of runners.
And I started where I was and that was lifting what I could with good form for however many reps I could, starting small and then building up from there.
And then fast forward to, I would say 2017, all of a sudden.
That was a year where I knocked off PRs from every distance from, I think, the mile, all the way through the marathon.
And it wasn't that I was all of a sudden training harder.
It was that strength training had become a big routine.
And so at that point I was strength training, I think, probably about five days a week, about an hour at a session.
And usually three of those sessions would be focused on upper body and two of them would be on lower body.
And I found that I would kind of double load the hard days.
So on a day that I was doing a speed workout or a tempo or a long run, I would then add in an hour of leg day later in the day, which never feels good.
You're never going to be deadlifting your max, but that's not the point.
That wasn't why I was doing leg day.
It was, you know, to really load the legs those days.
And then on my easy run and or rest days, those would be days I'd be going to the gym for upper body strength, knowing that you know the legs aren't doing anything while I'm doing the upper body stuff.
So I could be a bit more flexible with that.
And I've more or less maintained that same routine all the way up through now.
And I know that's not exactly what most marathoners do.
And most marathoners though, to be fair, probably don't have the time to be doing double sessions most days the way I do.
And so I would say that's one of the luxuries of having my own business and being in the fitness industry is I can be a little selfish with how I do structure my work time so that I can get in the training that I feel that I'm thriving on.
Yeah, and most runners, I think, would not even want to get into the gym five days per week.
So it's not necessarily, let's try to find the time for this.
You're kind of lifting as frequently as a bodybuilder might lift.
And that's certainly you know.
Anyone who's been listening to my stuff for a long time, you know they can probably hear me in their ear saying you don't have to lift like a bodybuilder, but you found something that really works for you.
And I'm curious how you structure things within each individual workout, because you know you're certainly lifting as frequently as a bodybuilder does.
Uh, most bodybuilding workouts are usually a little bit longer.
They're high volume.
Um, so maybe an hour, but usually a little bit longer, maybe an hour and a half or so.
So I'm curious, you know, what, how many exercises are you doing?
What kind of rep and sets?
Are you typically working with when you're in the gym?
Give us an idea of kind of what your strength training looks like on a real, real granular level.
Yeah, so I would say I normally aim for three to four sets of in the six to 10 rep range.
Um, six to eight kind of being the sweet spot.
If I can do it well with good form for three to four sets of 10, I know.
Congratulations body, you have maxed out to what you should be for this.
It's time to add weight, you know, add load and then drop the reps again.
Um, in terms of how many moves I do within a session, I would say, off the top of my head, probably 10 to 12.
When I'm doing leg day, some of it is the stuff that all runners should be doing, band work, right?
Like clamshells, glute bridges.
It's not necessarily the really heavy stuff.
I usually start with that and then work my way up towards using kettlebells dumbbells barbells, and then, you know, really kind of increasing that workload.
For leg day I do a some classic deadlifts with the barbell lunges.
That are side lunges, reverse lunges, different types of squats, just thinking about keeping my body really resilient.
And then upper body day, you know, obviously the legs get a break.
Um, but it's the same sort of formula in that, you know, I'm aiming for the six to eight reps per set.
If I can go up to 10, congratulations, body you're progressing.
It is time to increase the load and drop the reps again.
And um, I find at this point, since I've been doing it for a long time, I'm not pushing so hard where I'm chronically sore.
In fact I rarely feel sore and I know I have to sometimes then really kind of start pushing myself a little bit harder in strength day.
But man, if I take a week or two off from leg day, like after my goal marathon or something, that first leg day back it feels like I've never done leg day before.
That sensation never goes away.
You take a little time off and it's regrettable.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
So definitely something to say about consistency.
And I think a lot of runners are concerned about that, and rightly so.
You know, am I going to be really sore from my lifting workouts in the gym, and how is that going to impact my ability to accomplish all my mileage or get in my long run or hit the splits I need to during a workout?
And I think one of the responses I have to that and I'd be curious to hear what you have to say is that's only an issue if you're lifting too much weight or if your workouts are just too long or if you're just so new to strength training that you're kind of in that first phase two three, four week area where it almost doesn't matter what you're starting.
You could be a new runner.
You're going to be really sore from it.
Or you're starting to lift for the first time.
You're going to be pretty sore from that.
And so I think... that fear is a little bit overblown.
And you're actually a great case study on someone who you're prioritizing consistency over being a hero in the weight room.
You're not trying to max out all the time.
You're not trying to just lift the heaviest weight that you can.
And I think that approach is... the best approach you can have.
I'm going to be at 90% today.
I don't need to have a hero workout.
I don't need to go so hard that I'm PRing in the weight room every single day.
It's the consistency.
It's the ongoing regular habit of strength training that's really valuable.
So Um, I'm curious what you have to say to, to runners who might be afraid that they're sore.
And then I'm also curious the other big fear that runners have is that they're going to get injured in the weight room.
So maybe you can tell us about any injuries that you've gotten in the weight room and how you think about staying healthy when you know you might be dead lifting.
You know a bunch of weight and and that you know honestly, scares some runners.
Yeah, I mean, I think first off, start where you are.
And that's true with everything.
But with strength training specifically, you know, if you've never lifted before, do some body weight things or add weights what weights feel appropriate.
And it's okay if they look laughable and if they're a funny pink colored weight at the gym, right?
Like just pick up what feels appropriate for you.
Your body will adapt with slightly less trauma.
You won't be quite as sore.
You know, and you'll gradually progress.
Also, I think it's really smart and this is true for somebody who's also coming back to strength training if they've taken a hiatus is go slightly lighter than you think you absolutely can and focus on form and range of motion.
That's often when people hurt themselves.
You know they walk into the gym and they're like yeah, I'm going to bench press, you know, and they put the weights on the barbell and you know they're all about that number, but their form is garbage.
They like pinch a nerve in their back or whatever, and then they're out.
They can't do anything for weeks.
And was it worth it?
No, of course not.
So why do we lead with ego?
Just start with a barbell, right?
That's usually 45 pounds.
If that sounds heavy to you, just see if you can do that before you even think about adding any weights to it.
And then you can progress from there.
There was a time in my life where a 45-pound barbell for a bench press probably felt challenging.
Now that is absolutely not the case.
I am pressing pretty close to my own body weight at this point, but and I do not weigh 45 pounds or anywhere close to it.
Almost add a hundred to that.
And that's where, you know, but point being start where you are and build progressively.
Um, And in terms of injuries, injuries are going to happen in most athletic activities.
Be mindful about what you're doing.
Pay attention to what you're doing.
Pay attention to your form and what muscles you're using, just like when you're running.
Something I actually recently encountered was a shoulder thing, and it was with doing some dips, and dips are a risky move for your shoulders just by nature.
Yeah.
I know that.
I've never had issues before.
I got a new hookup for my gym, but it is not adjustable regarding how far away the handlebars are.
And so while that position works well for For my fiance who has wider shoulders and just a different grip, for me, I was kind of forcing it and I kind of felt a little bit of a pinch there.
So I have eliminated dips for the foreseeable future.
And same with incline presses because for some reason in an incline, I feel it.
But when I was back flat, doing bench presses today and doing pushups, I don't feel it.
So make modifications.
If something doesn't feel good or feels a little dangerous, don't do it.
And deadlifts are one of the most amazing moves you can do They look scary.
I would say have somebody help you break down your form if you are new to it.
Done the wrong way, yeah, you can hurt yourself.
But again, start with like a couple of pounds on either side of that barbell, something far lighter than you can actually deadlift, and just get familiar with that movement.
And then you'll progress from there.
I actually think that running is a much higher injury risk sport than weightlifting, because running is something that everyone thinks they can do.
Everyone thinks that running is easy.
Because, hey, we've all run, right?
Even if you're a sedentary person, you probably have run in the last month or two to catch a train or a bus or just jogging somewhere or just for a couple steps.
And so everyone has this idea that running is very simple and you can do it.
But it's an impact sport.
You're landing with two to five times your body weight.
So those runners who are like oh yeah, I started running a month ago and I'm going to train for a marathon now.
Those runners I'm much more worried about than the runners who want to get in the weight room and start doing some you know heavier lifting.
You know, if they're maybe doing some body weight strength exercises and they want to graduate to do some more challenging, heavier lifts, you know, that doesn't really strike me as a particularly injury prone activity.
As long as you're taking those precautions, like you said,
And I'm kind of laughing because I'm thinking back to what you were saying, with the weight room not being the most welcoming place for runners.
And I, for some weird reason, maybe I'm just strange.
I get strength from my little five foot seven, 132 pound frame, walking into that weight room with my one inch split legs on and lifting not an impressive amount of weight with a.
I love it.
I don't know.
That's weird.
I just like the dichotomy of that and the contrast of that.
That's neither here nor there.
We could probably record a separate podcast about the weird activities I like in the gym.
But I want to kind of move back a little bit and talk about when we first started working together, because I certainly had to get used to your lifting, because you weren't going to stop and I was okay with that.
And, you know, you're also someone who's been doing it for a while.
You know your body.
You know just hearing you talk about you know these dips were hurting my shoulder a little bit and This incline bench press was hurting.
So now I do it differently.
And you really understand how your body responds to specific movements.
And so I've given you a fair amount of leeway to kind of just do your thing, because you know how to do your thing.
But when we first started working together.
I'm curious because you're a coach, you've been running for a while.
Did anything surprise you?
Did you need to do anything differently with me that you hadn't done before that?
You know, maybe when you saw your first training plan, you were like, hmm.
What is this?
What is Jason thinking here?
But nevertheless, you got on board with.
Nothing that was super surprising.
I would say the dynamic warm-ups before every run.
Yeah. was a new concept to me.
Obviously I know the benefit of dynamic warmups.
And it's something I suggest for my runners, especially before something like a speed workout.
But having a routine on the schedule for every single run, that was definitely new to me.
Took a hot second to get into that habit because I'm so used to, like you know, doing what I normally would do and just head out the door and go, instead of being like Oh wait, I have something I need to do before that.
Um, but otherwise nothing was super strange.
Um, I think I was more accustomed to, unless I was strictly like a marathon mode, running five days a week instead of six, but doing just in general slightly higher mileage during those days.
So it wasn't that I was running less or more mileage than what you gave me.
It was just distributed differently.
Yeah. which, you know, my body was fine with.
It's just two different ways of handling training load.
Yeah, I have an interesting thought about the warmups that I think a lot of listeners might be surprised with.
I actually think an athlete like you who is lifting weights regularly, five days a week and and has that long history with weightlifting you are getting in so many different ranges of motion, of different movements.
You know you're loading your muscles in different ways and, and you know when you're lifting heavy you're recruiting so many muscle fibers that you know if you're just using body weight that you're simply not doing.
I actually think the warmup before a run is less important for a runner like you.
So you don't necessarily have to go through a lengthy dynamic warmup before every single run.
You know, like you mentioned, it's probably even more helpful before a more intense session, like a speed workout.
But I don't think you actually need it all the time for every run.
You know I wouldn't get in the habit of never doing it, but it is something that might be more secondary compared with another runner because of that experience.
Part of the reason why we do the dynamic warmup isn't necessarily to warm up for the run although that's a big goal for that but it's also just to get in a little extra work.
Let's get in some of those lunges.
Let's get in some of those dynamic flexibility exercises to improve our athleticism.
Well, you're doing enough strength work that the 50 lunges, for example in the standard warmup, aren't really going to do anything for you.
And you're already working on coordination and different ranges of motion.
So, even though I've sort of become known as the sandwiching your run guy you know the strength running guy who's always talking about non running things that's going to help you become a better runner.
For someone like you, it's actually not as important.
So that's just something I wanted to, to highlight, because I think it's, I think it's interesting.
And for any runner who might be in a similar situation as you.
You know they can be a little bit more lax with.
You know their dynamic warm ups.
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Now Corky.
I want to back up because not everything has gone perfectly over the last year and a half or so.
You are undoubtedly a fast, strong runner.
We have not been just notching PR after PR over the last 15, 16 months or so.
Can you talk to us about some of the setbacks that you've experienced in the last year or so, some of the obstacles in the way?
Because, You know, I don't want to have this conversation and leave our listeners thinking that everything has been rainbows and butterflies.
And this is a beautiful fairy tale story, because it's it's not.
You know, it's it's we're human beings.
Everything's messy.
And you've had some setbacks.
Yeah.
I think every runner is going to have setbacks, especially the longer that they're in this industry.
If this is a lifelong sport, life happens.
I would say I've had setbacks since 2019, actually.
I haven't up until spring.
My previous marathon hadn't been since February 2019, which is an insane amount of time for me because I've done over 20 marathons.
Um, since beginning my real runner journey, if you will.
So to have that kind of hiatus, um, felt really strange.
I kind of didn't feel like myself.
But you know, part of that was the pandemic and things being shut down and training and races being um deferred and then canceled.
And I had a weird freak injury preceding the pandemic, where I had a collision with a runner on a race course about a month before my goal marathon.
And so yeah, coming to you, it was a long time coming already then.
I was like, all right, I don't like how long it's been since I've done 26.2 miles.
I'm used to this feeling like a distance that I'm pretty familiar with.
It is without question my favorite distance.
So I was really eager in 2021 to get back to it.
We started off well, I think.
And, you know, like, yeah, like you said, nothing goes perfectly.
Life happens.
You know, we had targeted the Boston Marathon, which had been moved to October 2021.
And, yeah.
My training had a couple of weird hiccups.
In that July I found out that I was pregnant with a slipped IUD for the second time in three years, which is its own podcast.
I hope you've played some Mega Millions numbers because we're recording this before.
Like the 1 billion jackpot has been won.
So you've got to play that.
I've got to say I don't play, but I've been told now the two times where I've been in the emergency room where they're trying to figure out if it's ectopic and what's happened to me.
Anyway.
So that led to going to the emergency room um, having a medical abortion and the recovery, and luckily, this this time around which is really weird to say that, because I never thought I would have gone through it once, but twice um, the recovery this time around was much easier, I've got to say, than when I went through in 2018.
So I was back to running about a week after and so, while derailed marathon training um, you know, a pretty important part at that point, when you're about 12 weeks out or so from race day I bounced back, I think, relatively well.
And, you know, I tried to just like let it roll off my back and take it in stride.
And then two weeks before marathon day, I had a 20 miler.
And I felt great out there.
And then a day or two later I went for a little shakeout run and I couldn't make it around the block.
And I had this just stabbing pain in my right glute and my right hip felt weird.
And I was like, all right, we're shutting it down.
I think I emailed you and I was like, so...
So I can't run.
Shut it down.
Made an appointment to have everything scanned as quickly as I could.
Obviously, when you're two weeks out from marathon day, you're now into the taper.
So if you have to take extra rest, it's not necessarily the end of the world.
But I also know...
Well enough, you don't want to necessarily be sitting on your butt for two weeks going in a marathon day either.
So um Didn't end up doing the marathon.
It was kind of the advice I got from the PT because it looked like it was bursitis in the glute and I had a little tear in the labrum which honestly, I haven't even felt since then.
So I was shocked to hear there was really anything serious going on in the hip.
You know, he told me let pain be my guide, which is a great piece of advice, except it's not when you have a marathon.
That's like inching a day closer at a time.
And I found that when I did try to go for little test runs that it definitely did not feel good on hills going up or down them.
And Boston is downhill until it's uphill.
And I've done Boston numerous times.
It's my favorite marathon without question.
And I was like, I don't want to do more damage or prolong the recovery process.
I have already had a hiatus that's been longer than I want from the marathon.
I don't want to go to Boston and suffer the entire way, or to have to drop out and then have to take an extended recovery period.
So to me, and I know you were on board with my decision.
It was, all right, cut our losses and go into recovery mode and give my body what it needs.
And ultimately, that was the blessing in disguise because I didn't have to recover from 26.2 miles.
I think within a matter of weeks I actually felt pretty good and we were already starting to build back pretty well.
And that led us to a really strong spring which, depending on how Boston could have or couldn't have gone, who knows, I might've needed an extended recovery.
That might've put us in a different position.
I think that a lot of runners try to balance injury treatment and training as they are leading up to a big goal race.
And that is always one of the most difficult places to be, because you can either train or you can treat an injury.
It's really hard to do both at the same time, because if you're injured, you can't train and your training is obviously going to be negatively impacted by the injury.
You know, I think any PT who says let pain be your guide is obviously well intentioned.
But when you're lining up for a 262 mile race with an issue that could potentially get worse and worse and worse, when you're doing something as difficult as running a hilly 262 miles on the road,
That to me is you're playing with fire.
And I'm so glad that we came to that decision or rather you came to that decision because it just is so much in your best interest in the longterm.
And that's really, I think You were, I think, very wise in your decision-making about how to approach the injury and whether to race the marathon.
But just as an aside, I think that's the real value of having a coach, right?
That extra pair of eyes and that objective voice to say...
I don't think you should do the marathon.
I am not emotionally invested in you doing this marathon, but you are.
And that gives me this level of objectivity where I can say, I don't think you should do this.
And for a lot of runners...
It's like, Oh, God, I really want to, but, you know, okay, I'm going to listen to my coach.
But I'm glad we were on the same page about that.
Because, you know, that that is one of the most nervous times for me as a coach, when we have an athlete who has this kind of, you know, it's maybe it's more than a niggle.
It's not just, you know something that's a little bit sore and they have a big, difficult race coming up.
So yeah, that put us in a really great position where you were able to take a little bit of recovery but get back on the horse, figuratively speaking, pretty quickly.
And then we were targeting Rotterdam in the spring.
Is that right?
Is It's in April.
It's in April.
Okay, I was way off.
It was set for April 10th.
And I will say that I wasn't always that smart of a runner to make the decision to not do Boston.
I've had a DNF.
I've had... where I've done it injured and suffered the entire way.
I've learned my lesson sometimes the hard way.
So runners who do struggle with that, first off, know it's normal.
It happens to the best of us.
But ultimately, when you do have the ability to think big picture and let those races go, go.
Even when they're as special as something like Boston, there's going to be more Bostons.
There's going to be more races.
You only have one body ultimately protecting that.
No matter how much it hurts at the time mentally or emotionally, to do so, it's always going to be the right choice.
It's a hard choice, but it's always the right choice.
And again...
Didn't come to me naturally, learned it the hard way numerous times.
I'm older and wiser and I have those bad experiences under my belt, which makes it then, I think, that much easier to be at peace with knowing like yeah, this is dumb.
There's no way I'm doing Boston.
Despite my PT being like you know, like no sir, I know how far 262 miles is on a good day, on a bad day.
Oh, man.
No, thank you.
No, thank you.
Yeah, nobody.
Nobody wants to do that when they're not feeling good.
You know, it's crazy that people want to do it when they are feeling good.
I know, we're insane.
But I was really excited about Rotterdam.
I've had good experiences racing in Europe.
It's a pancake flat course, which is where I've run my 303s twice.
So I just mentally feel confident in that, knowing I have a history of my best times on a similar sort of course.
And, you know, I was really excited.
I was really excited to like look forward, let that Boston go and, you know, look towards 2022.
Yeah.
So we started training for Rotterdam.
You know, I would say sometime in December.
You know, we had a little bit of recovery and then we focused a bit on just some easy running.
Let's get your legs back underneath you.
Let's make sure you can do some workouts and some long runs and be consistent without any issues.
And then we started training for Rotterdam, but with I think it was the Omicron surge, with the pandemic that spring, we didn't actually do it, did we?
No, we did not.
Yeah, you know, April was, you know...
I feel like numbers in the US were somewhat okay, but it was right before the spring holiday season, where you have like Easter and Passover and spring break and all of that which the previous year there was a really big surge that came with that.
And The Netherlands and a couple of other countries were really changing their safety measures and so on and so forth.
And I started really getting in my head about all the things I can't control.
That though, might have a direct impact on my experience if I were overseas for a race.
Like what if I get sick from somebody that's in the corral?
And now I'm stuck in paying for a hotel in the Netherlands for the foreseeable future, with the cats back home and like pet sitters or you know all those things that.
I shouldn't have been wasting energy, putting into, and I know that.
But I'm also an overthinker and I want to find solutions for problems.
And it's really challenging when you think there might be problems, but there aren't necessarily problems.
But let's start thinking about how we'd fix those problems, while also preparing for a marathon.
So, as somebody who does get in her own head that way um, because again, i want to have a solution, i want to have a plan um, i think i started sending you a couple panicked emails, like i'm starting to freak out, not about the marathon per se um, but about everything else related to it, and so you know, i started looking at races that were stateside, that um were the week of or the week before.
That way it didn't really change the training plan very much.
And you're starting to comb through what's out there.
And then what kind of courses are they?
Are they super hilly?
Are they at altitude?
Are they in Florida where it's going to be humid?
And, I think, emailed you what I thought might be the best option, which was probably, to you, not the best option.
I emailed you about the Mount Charleston Marathon, which is outside of Las Vegas and And it is a 5000 feet net downhill from start to finish.
You begin at 7,600 feet.
So also air is a bit thinner up there for somebody who lives in New York like me.
And 5,000 feet downhill.
I was planning on a pancake flat course in the Netherlands.
I was not planning on all of that eccentric contraction for my quads.
I wasn't planning on dry heat potentially or thin air.
And so, yeah, I think I freaked you out.
You certainly did.
I do remember being very nervous about this, because I actually do get very nervous about these kinds of downhill races.
A lot of runners might think that they are very fast races.
But they can be, but they're usually not that fast just because.
They they do force you to incur all this muscle damage.
And that really comes back to bite you in the second half of the right in the race.
And so a lot of runners, you know, they'll feel great for 10 to 15 miles.
And then, all of a sudden, their legs are so shot that they can maintain their marathon pace forever, even on a downhill.
And so they end up running substantially slower.
And so I am very nervous about these kinds of races, just because of the extra demands that they put on your body.
And we didn't have a ton of time, did we?
At what point did we, or you, officially decide on this marathon?
Because we had I don't, I want to say like three or four weeks.
Yeah, I think it was like three or four weeks, because I think that we ended up cutting out one long run and kind of jumping into the taper slightly sooner.
Yeah, it wasn't a lot of notice.
I will say the good news and I knew this and trusted it, but you were taking my word on it is that I have done a couple of half marathons that were a thousand feet net downhill, which for a half marathon is pretty substantial.
But nothing near the same demand that 5,000 feet is for double the distance.
Luckily, where I live, it's rolling hills.
So, while I can't say I was hammering downhills for months preparing for this race, because that's absolutely untrue.
I am constantly going up and down.
I am sometimes doing my striders, going downhills, going uphills.
And again, the half marathon and marathon are two completely different beasts.
But I have had really big fast times on half marathons on this sort of terrain.
I've paid the price with how I feel days after, so I know what it does.
But I also know I'm a pretty good downhill runner in terms of form.
And I think all the strength training was that added thing that I've been doing consistently, which was the bonus going in.
Yeah, there were a couple things going for you that made me a little bit more comfortable with you doing such a different type of marathon on such short notice.
And the fact that you had been running hilly terrain, just where you live, just as part of your training, was okay.
That's a good thing.
That's going to slightly prepare her for this.
But I think your strength training was probably the biggest reason why I thought you were going to be okay on the course.
Because, you know, a lot of the times it's a strength issue.
You know, you're simply not used to the pounding.
You're not used to the eccentric contractions.
And that leaves you so sore with such muscle damage that...
You simply can't run as fast.
And strength training provides a great protective effect against the inevitable effects of running downhill.
And so I was definitely...
A little bit, you know, okay.
I was a little comforted by that fact.
We did change a couple things in the last few weeks of your training.
I just wanted you to get some experience running hard downhill so that we could basically give you a little bit of a shock to your body and spur that adaptation process, because you really do.
You know, this is one of those things for any runner who might be training for a downhill race.
You don't need to do all your training downhill.
Certainly not.
And you only need a little bit of that exposure to fast downhill running and your body adapts fairly quickly and provides a lot of protective effects against that, the downhill running which can be quite challenging.
So like you mentioned, I think we did a couple of downhill strides.
I think for some of your workouts I was like okay, I want you to do one to two of these repetitions downhill.
Was there anything else that we did to help prepare you for the demands of a downhill marathon?
I don't think so.
I don't think there was much time to really change too much.
No, we were rushing things a little bit.
I was booking flights to Las Vegas, canceling flights to Rotterdam.
It was like, go, go, go, get all the logistics in order.
Yeah.
And just trusting that my gut, with being able to trust myself to do it with the complete shift in what kind of race course and conditions we were going into was enough and that I was not going to blow up early and hammer.
I definitely did not hammer that course.
Boy, are there some miles where you could just, you know, some six minute mile, like without an effort.
And, you know, I was like, don't do it.
Don't be greedy.
Don't, there's no banking time here.
There's no banking time in the marathon.
There's absolutely no banking time in a downhill race.
If anything, it's gonna, you know, chew you up and spit you out big time later.
Yeah, I remember being very adamant about that.
Please, I remember begging you, please don't go out too fast.
The first five miles, you've gotta make that just feel so easy.
And even if you're a little bit slower than your eventual goal pace, you're gonna have opportunity to make that up later.
But if you make it up early, the you're going to trash your legs.
You know.
Just as simple as that.
So I'm glad that you took it very, very easy.
Walk us through the race.
How did it go from start to finish?
You know, you had a 303 PR going in.
So what was your goal going into the race?
And then how do you execute on that goal?
So the goal that I've been chasing since 2016 is to break three hours.
A 2.59.59 would have been totally okay in my book.
And I think there's something said about something that takes a long time to achieve.
Race morning was amazing.
It's super weird, by the way, to leave your Las Vegas strip hotel at 3 in the morning on a Friday night.
Saturday morning question mark walk through the casino to head out to your rental car while everybody else is out gambling and drinking.
It's a very strange, surreal thing to be in your Race kit under your throwaway hobo layers I had bought in Vegas rocking the fashion as I walked through the casinos, which is its own weird thing.
But yeah, you're up in the middle of the night.
Weather at the top was perfect.
It was like 40 degrees.
There was snow.
It's April.
It's crisp.
And to me, 40 to 45 degrees is the perfect marathon temperature.
No breeze.
But I knew it was going to be about 65, with abundant sunshine, by the time I got down to the finish line.
So We'd also talked about me bringing a couple of salt pills with me in addition to my mid-run fuel, just to think about sweat rate.
Because again, not only am I changing the course I'm on, I'm now going somewhere in the desert where my sweats can be evaporating.
I'm not going to feel it.
And I am somebody who's a heavy sweater.
I suffer in summer.
I drop weight really fast.
And so, having trained in winter in New York, I had to go into this race smart, understanding what the weather was going to do to me.
And man, if it didn't stay 40 degrees from start to finish that, That's the dream.
And so, yeah, I felt really calm at the start.
I went to the starting line being like, well, it's an opportunity.
In Frankfurt in 2017, I felt so good until like mile 20.
I thought I had it in the bag by mile 20.
And I didn't.
And things unraveled.
And so I went to the starting line of this one.
Never assuming anything was in the bag, never assuming anything about how it was going to go, other than I can control my decisions in this moment and don't make bad decisions.
And...
Sometimes that's hard.
And I did.
What I think everyone should do in a marathon is just relax early, get those early miles over.
Think of it as the warmup.
I did have some ups and some downs in the beginning stages.
I knew my oxygen was at its thinnest it was going to be at 7,600 feet.
And Just relax.
Don't overthink anything.
Take in your feeling appropriately.
And I felt really great for most of the race.
It's beautiful.
The sun is rising.
It's desert.
I love the scenery outside of Las Vegas and that part of the country.
It's just vast and dry and beautiful.
Stark, but I don't know, beautiful in its own way.
And so I'm leaving the snow and then entering the desert.
And my stomach acted up a little bit.
I think it might've been the salt pills, because that was something I hadn't been using in winter training.
It wasn't necessary.
And so things were going really great until about mile 18 or 19 where I did make a pit stop at a port-a-potty because I could tell my stomach was getting a little sour.
And it was like, do I push my luck with this or don't I?
And at that point, I was on pace for a 252 marathon.
So I was feeling good.
I was not charging the course.
And the miles were coming to me, essentially.
So pit stop felt a lot better, except for the fact that then my...
My right big toe became an issue and it felt like someone was hitting me with a sledgehammer on my toe with every step.
And, you know, this was my first race I had done in super shoes in my sock and knees.
I've always ever run in my Mizuno's for the past 10 plus years, like my trusty Mizuno's.
And, you know, I had done some training runs.
I did multiple training runs in my sock and knees.
But you know, downhill course there's a lot of force that goes into your toes, a lot of weight that goes into your toes, differently than on a flat course or say, an undulating rolling hill course.
And the Sauconys, maybe I should have gone up half a size larger than I expected in those shoes.
Point being, I was in the situation I was in.
By the time I got to mile 20 or 21, my form was starting to compromise.
It was like a limp run.
And I was like, all right, this is no good.
So I did something pretty insane.
I stopped on the side of the course.
I took off my sock.
I took off my shoe.
I grabbed one of the pins from my race bib, one of my safety pins.
And I tried to puncture what I knew was a blood blister underneath that large toenail.
So here I am, the crazy person with a very sanitary safety pin on the side of a marathon course, trying to stab my toe just to relieve some of the pressure.
While I wasn't really able to get to the root of what was underneath the toenail, I also had a blister that formed on the side of the toe, so I was able to deal with that and then put everything back on and keep going.
I knew my toe was fine.
I wasn't injured.
It hurt, but having had the opportunity to look at it and see it, I think it was like okay, you know you're not going to hurt yourself by continuing.
Let it go and keep going.
And so things went really well in that marathon until mile 18 to 21.
And then it's like any marathon.
There's always going to be challenges.
Nothing is ever going to be 100 perfect.
Start to finish when you're taking risks, and especially on a course that you weren't planning for and in an environment you weren't planning for.
Yeah.
But I got to that finish line in a 2.58.15.
So that sub three, mission accomplished.
It was messy towards the end, but I got it done.
And so you know, just goes to show you can still achieve your goals and still be a hot mess on the side of the course doing surgery.
Yeah.
Yeah, we all turn into our own personal EMT sometimes during races, right?
We're trying to diagnose and treat various ailments and issues, particularly with our feet.
It's so funny, marathoning.
But you finally got your sub three.
This is so exciting.
You've been chasing this for five-ish years and then you finally got it on a difficult course where you had some issues.
This is so exciting.
Was there any point in the race?
And I know you went into this race without any expectations and You had previously thought in a previous race that you had this sub three in the bag.
But was there a point, maybe after mile 20, somewhere in there, where you started thinking to yourself my God, I'm going to finally do it.
Because to me that's one of the most exciting times as a runner, when you're still in the race and you realize things could still go wrong, but I'm so close to my goal that I'm going to accomplish it anyway.
And that to me is such an empowering feeling.
I have so many race memories where I had that feeling, oh my God, I'm gonna do it.
I'm gonna do the thing that I wanted to do.
And then all of a sudden, it like gives you this strength to just keep charging forward.
So I'm just curious, did you get to that level at any point in this race?
No.
Because, you know, I felt really good like halfway through.
I was like, all right, you're doing it.
But like, don't don't overthink it.
You know, I think, because it was kind of like things got a little a little hairy between miles like 18 and 20, and then the pain never went away.
So, and I was like, all right, we navigated the porta potties.
Now we've navigated, you know, um, surgery on the side of the race course.
Um, like, what else might happen?
You know, I knew I had a buffer when all those things happened.
But I also told myself when I started taking my shoe and taking my sock off and, like You know, don't rush it.
Don't overthink the time.
Just be methodical about what you're doing.
Don't panic.
At that point in my head, I'm like, I don't know how much time is exactly passing.
I don't know how my turnover is going to feel.
Can I get my rhythm back without like a limp run?
Um, no, I never had that sensation in this race.
I don't think it was until like half a mile from the finish, maybe even then that I was like, is this going to happen?
Because you know, I think also to have been chasing for something so long that's been hard to come to you.
When it does happen, become a reality.
You're kind of like, wait, really?
Is this really happening?
But I will say I did have the experience you are talking about in my very first marathon.
Like I knew by mile 20, I had that big cue in the bag as long as I didn't mess it up.
Like with how good I felt and with how jazzed I was and how just, you know, how that day went.
I knew it was kind of like, just don't mess it up.
Don't roll an ankle and you have this BQ and you're going to finish this feeling amazing.
So I know what you're talking about, but no, I did not feel it this fast spring.
And honestly, it still feels surreal to me.
I don't think it's fully sunken in that that one target I've been chasing for a long time It's now a reality.
It's now my past.
And so I want it to happen again so I can be like, all right, that wasn't a fluke.
That wasn't a dream.
It did happen.
You did live through that.
Because I think I oddly need that reassurance because again I feel like I've chased it for so long and I've had so many weird setbacks either on race day or in life that didn't let me get to race day, that it still feels very surreal.
That's okay though, right?
I mean, all of our PRs are sort of these flash in a pan events.
You know, they are by definition, the one time that you ran your fastest ever.
And in my book, that's okay.
You know, it's funny.
Sometimes I'll talk to runners and they're like well, you know, that's my PR, but I only ran it once and I was really tired by the end.
So that's not really indicative of like how I normally feel.
I'm like, but that's how you're supposed to feel after a max effort.
So yeah, that's still really exciting.
Now, how did you feel after the race?
Because obviously 5,000 feet of net downhill, your legs were probably completely toasted to a crisp.
What was your recovery like?
Yeah, well, I actually felt really good on the race course.
I've got to say, I felt my quads responding, I think is the best way to call it.
Like, they weren't painful.
I never felt like they were fatiguing or burning out or cramping on me.
But I could tell around probably, you know, mile 15, like, oh... you're going to pay for this.
But, but not in a way that was like, you're going to pay for this in five miles.
Just, you know, Hey, don't plan on walking much on Tuesday.
You know, I felt pretty good.
Actually.
I, I.
You know I was able to walk around Vegas and Um not fast.
Sitting down and getting up was challenging, but you know I've run some trail ultras in the past with a lot of downhill.
And I would say I was in a similar scenario.
Definitely that question, the most beat up of any marathons I've done.
Um, but I think you know again, that course is just incredible, unrelenting in terms of what it's going to ask of your muscles.
So it took me a little while to recover, a little more than, I think, most marathons.
But we were kind of just gentle with that in the weeks following.
Yeah.
Do you think your strength training helped with your recovery?
Because I certainly think it helped with your performance on race day and your ability to navigate the downhill.
Was it also helpful for you bouncing back from a race like this?
Yeah, I'd say so.
I obviously wasn't going back to leg day a week after this race.
They were not ready for it.
I think it was probably a good 10 to 14 days after race day that I hit the gym for my next leg day.
And then it had felt like I'd never done leg day before.
It's funny how quickly that happens.
But yeah, I think fitness is fitness.
The stronger you can be going into an event, whether it's specific for that event or just fitness in general, it's always going to be to your, without question.
Um, all my time in the weight room helped me transition from a flat race to an insane downhill.
Um, it helped me with how I performed on the day.
And then I think it really also helped with my recovery too.
So I'm not quitting the weight room anytime soon, Jason.
That's fine with me.
And I love that you make lifting weights very easy.
One thing that we haven't talked about is the fact that you've converted your garage into a home gym.
You have a beer fridge in your gym.
You have fun like.
I don't even know how to describe neon lights, strobe lights, you know, you just have like fun lighting in there.
And what is I'll let you share this one.
What is the best feature of your home gym?
Well, I was gonna say it's my woodway treadmill, but I guess you were leading to the fact it's the big life size cut out of the rock.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the Woodway treadmill is pretty great.
And obviously we can talk about how they're such amazing machines and they're, you know, wonderful to run on.
But come on, you've got Dwayne the Rock Johnson giving you that motivation for every lifting workout.
And I like that.
You've made it easy to lift weights and i think that's one of the big obstacles in front of a lot of runners.
You know, oh i gotta go join a gym and i have to drive there, and you've set up your own home gym so that you can lift at eight o'clock at night or nine o'clock at night and you can crack a beer while you're lifting and your coach is going to be okay with that And I do all of those things all the time.
Yeah.
I'm in my training space and I don't have to deal with the weather.
I don't have to deal with usually other people, because if you're there at 10 o'clock the odds are good.
Nobody else is there.
And that, that helps with consistency.
And even on the days I don't feel like it, I'll just, you know, walk the 15 feet to my garage and turn the lights and say just start your workout.
And if you're really not feeling it, if you're really too tired, then leave.
But start it.
And the odds are good, 99% of the time, I always end up doing my full workout.
It's very easy for us to make excuses for ourselves.
And I think for me, consistency has been the number one ingredient to being mostly injury-free in the last 12 years, doing all these races and bouncing back pretty quickly.
And so I want to set myself up for success and it's important to me.
So I have put a lot of time and money and effort into the rocks hangout and making it a fun space that I want to be in.
If you want to be in the space that you're training, the training is going to happen.
For sure.
And I have to say I was thinking about you last night because I was thinking to myself I am pulling a corky right now.
I cracked a beer. because it was like, I think it was like 7.30 at night.
I was feeling a little down on myself because I had big plans.
I was gonna go for a run in the morning.
Then I was gonna do a bike ride in the afternoon.
I was like, yeah, I'm getting after it.
I'm gonna do a great double session.
I didn't do either of those workouts.
And so at 7.30 at night, I'm drinking a beer, throwing around a kettlebell.
And I'm like, Corky would be so proud of me right now.
I am getting the work in no matter what.
And I'm doing it in a way that... is actually fun for me.
And I'm not putting strength training on a pedestal, right?
I can sip a beer while I'm strength training, no big deal.
And I can just have fun while I'm doing it.
So I just want to let you know that you inspired me last night.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just want your listeners to know, you know, safety first.
If you're going to drink while lifting weights, make sure you know You're aware of your surroundings.
Don't drop anything on your feet.
I don't recommend drinking on a treadmill, by the way.
I do not do that.
Just have fun and lift weights, but stay safe.
Don't drop anything on those toes.
Yeah, I think I probably kept it to like half of a beer while I was lifting, but it's still.
It just makes it feel much more exciting because you get to like sip your beer during your recovery sets.
And I feel like there's a there's a lot to be said about that.
So, Corky, I think you're a great athlete.
I know I've said that before, but I'll say it again.
And I love the way you approach things.
You take your training really seriously, but at the same time it's almost like you don't take it seriously.
And it's that...
So contrast between I am going to go all in on my training but at the same time, I'm going to have fun with it.
I'm going to do it with a smile on my face.
And I think that's a big reason why you've had so much success as an athlete.
And the fact that you're a coach and you lift the way that you do uh, I think is just such an interesting way of going about the very high level running that you do.
So I just want to thank you for sharing your story.
And if you had any advice that maybe we weren't able to cover For runners who want to have the same level of success as you.
Just wondering if you had any parting words for our listeners.
Yeah, I think you know, being patient and trusting that your journey and the adaptation and maybe the amount of swings you might need to take at a specific goal matters.
It's going to be what it is.
Often we see somebody else that looks like an overnight success and sometimes they are.
And sometimes they're not, and they've been taking swings at something or grinding away at something for a really long time, just without a lot of fanfare.
Dream big, but also give yourself the timeline to do it the right way.
I think...
The hardest thing that I address as a coach and the thing I know as an athlete is we can't fast track adaptation without major potential for injury risk or setbacks.
And a lot of us want to achieve something tomorrow.
Like man, I would have loved it if I'd broken three hours, like five years ago, when I was able to either retire or move on to a different goal, or whatever.
But my timeline was what it was.
And I don't regret it.
I think it made it that much more sweet.
And I enjoy the training process.
So I don't get frustrated during it.
But if you're somebody who maybe does take a step back and think about why you have the goal you do and what it means to you.
And to have fun along the way.
Race day is one day.
There are so many miles that go into the training before race day.
Race day is like the bonus and the day to have fun and to see where your fitness is.
And I think when you run with joy and thrive in the training, no matter how race day goes, even if it's super disappointing, and you can deal with that on your own, in your own way.
You never look back with regret that you put in the work.
And that training cycle, no matter what it gave you, will build you to something else.
And so just to stay patient and to also trust that our bodies are incredible and that I'm a true believer that we can all really do incredible things that we may not think are possible right now.
So patience.
Patience.
I don't think I could have said it better myself.
So we're going to leave it there.
I'm going to include links to your website, coach Corky runs.com.
I'm also going to include links to your Instagram profile so folks can check out your amazing home gym and the rock cheering you on as you lift weights while holding a beer.
It's just amazing to see.
So folks can check out the article on strength running that goes along with this post for that.
Corky, thanks for your time, your wisdom, sharing your story.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having me on.
It's been so fun.
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