How Does a Strength Coach with MS Train for a Half Marathon? Part 1 – High Level

by Mitch Hauschildt, MA, ATC, CSCS

mitchfightsms.com

I recently shared with you my quest to run the United NYC Half Marathon in March and raise money and awareness for the Tisch MS Research Center of NY.  In case you missed it, I am coming up on my 10 year anniversary of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and I am challenging myself to do something that I have never envisioned possible for me.  I never describe myself as a runner.  Rather, I am a person who runs.  There is a distinct difference and a quick glance at pretty much anyone who is running down the sidewalk will tell you which camp people fall into.  This endeavor is challenging me physically, mentally, emotionally and professionally.

I have been asked multiple times about how I am training for this event, so I thought that I would share what I am currently doing that seems to be working well and will hopefully continue to keep me healthy and advancing my performance.  While I don’t typically make this blog about me and I also don’t pretend to be an expert on MS patients, I do think that there are some training principles here that can be applied to a variety of patients and clients, so I’m laying out my thoughts on a subject that I have spent a lot of time refining.  

The challenges that I have in training for a half marathon are:

• I was an offensive lineman in college.  I am genetically designed to pick up heavy things and put them down and do it over short distances.  This is mileage that I have never even considered running.  Training my aerobic capacity to perform well in a 13 mile race is definitely a challenge for me.
• Because I have never run this kind of mileage, I have concerns about developing stress related injuries.
• As my nervous system fatigues, I develop foot drop and experience control issues throughout my entire right leg.  When I was initially diagnosed, I developed foot drop in less than a mile.  Slowly over the years I have increased that number to be in the 4-5 mile range, but now I have to manage my nervous system to allow me to maintain control under a fatigued state.  If I try to run through my foot drop, I develop hip pain as I attempt to compensate.  I have to continue to feed my nervous system to minimize foot drop.
• If I push too hard with my training, I run the risk of burning out my central nervous system.  If I do overload my CNS, I could have a MS relapse or just have to shut down my training overall.  

To counteract these issues, I am taking this approach with my training:

• I started early.  I had an idea that this might be a possibility last summer, so as I finished up my cycling training for RAGBRAI, I immediately moved to running.  My goal was to keep as much aerobic capacity as possible and start laying the ground work for a longer run.  I spent the fall slowly increasing my longer runs until I was able to get to a 5 mile run without any issues.  Once I was officially invited to join Team Tisch, I became more systematic with my training approach.
• Running 3 days per week.  One run is typically a long run, increasing the mileage by approximately a half mile per week.  In addition to a long run, I use a shorter (2-3 miles) recovery run and a middle distance run (3-5 miles) for time.  This approach allows me to steadily increase my mileage while also training my anaerobic metabolic system.  Training all metabolic systems is always important.
• Recovering 1 week per month.  I have built into my training program a week of recovery per month (approximately).  I am still very active in this week, but I am reducing my running mileage in an effort to allow my musculoskeletal system to have a break and rebuild as necessary.
• Lifting 2-3 times per week.  I will share specifics on this in my next post, but the high level overview is that I am lifting weights in an effort to remain stable and strong under repetitive loads.  Every load is a percentage of your max strength, so the stronger I am, the lower the odds are that I will sustain a stress injury because I will be able to handle higher and higher loads while keeping them a low overall percentage of my strength.  This includes lower extremity strength work under moderate loads (I’m too old to really load up these days) and low volume with a variety of exercises that includes both single and double leg exercises in all 3 planes of motion.  I am also including power development exercises such as box jumps and contrast training and working on landing and deceleration exercises to train load dispersion.  With core training, I am focusing on both frontal plane and transverse plane movements.  Many people ignore rotation exercises for runners, which is a mistake.  Training rotation is a HUGE component of staying healthy and handling repetitive loads.
• Swimming 1 day per week.  This is another effort to train metabolic while minimizing load.  I keep my swims short (20-30 minutes) and oftentimes use a pull buoy to unload my legs to allow them to recover.  Intentionally mixing in the occasional swimming, biking, and rowing workouts allows me to stimulate my CNS in a novel way, hopefully preventing it from burning out.
• Performing regular self care.  I am using all of the tools at my disposal to aid in my recovery whenever possible.  This includes Normatec boots, IASTM, Vibration, Cupping and Dry Needling to manage soreness and discomfort.
• Fueling appropriately.  I am trying hard to monitor my food consumption and bodyweight to maximize my energy and unload my body.  While I’m not overly concerned with my bodyweight, I do keep a pretty close eye on it because if I allow it to creep up during this training, it will continue to add stress to my body and decrease my performance.  I also don’t stress about my diet, but I do make it an effort to get plenty of lean protein and fruits and vegetables.  This allows me to feel energized while keeping my bodyweight manageable.  
• Integrating CBD.  I have been pretty skeptical of CBD over the years (anything that I can buy in a gas station automatically gets questioned in my mind), but after using the water soluble CBD from Fringe in the fall, I find myself sleeping really well (recovery) and my knee pain and general soreness is kept to a minimum.  Their water soluble CBD is odorless and tasteless and very easily digested and tolerated.  

I still have quite a ways to go with my training, so we there will likely be some adjustments to my training as time goes along.  So far, I am feeling good and plan to continue this training plan.  In my next post, I will dive deeper into my lifting program, as I do think that there are some nuggets of information in there that can be useful for all kinds of movement specialists.  

If you want to follow my progress or support my efforts, please visit mitchfightsms.com.