PODCAST - i ran a marathon without training - here’s what happened
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host, Johnny Havey, an ultra runner, endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone 100K ultra, I proved them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned, from breathing techniques to mindset shifts, to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals despite limitations, let's get started.
A little over a week ago, a very good friend of mine approached me and asked me if I wanted to join him in running 26.2 miles. Well, actually, he was planning on running 40 miles. Well, he knew that I like challenging my body and that I have not ran [00:01:00] marathon or ultra-marathon distances in over a year. Well, after winning the internal mental game with myself over the next seven days, I showed up at 6:30 in the morning and joined my friend for 26.2 miles.
And today on the show, I'm gonna share with you exactly what happened. Well, to start, if you are viewing this video or listening to this podcast episode because you have never ran a marathon before and you do not wanna train for it, I warn you, I have ran dozens of marathons in the past, and even though I took significant time off, there's a reason why I was able to run 26.2 miles without training.
With that being said, I do believe that if you find running very boring, and if you don't want to put in the miles that are typically expected of you in order to prepare yourself to run a marathon, then I do believe that you will find some value from this episode today. Because [00:02:00] I do believe there is another way to get you ready for your next marathon.
Before I take you through how I did it Here's what happened. I finished in five hours, which, let's put this in perspective. The first marathon I ever did, that I actually trained for, it took me six and a half hours. A mixture of running on sidewalk, asphalt, and trail, six and a half hours was my first marathon ever.
And it was a similar situation, because my first marathon was not an official marathon. I just put on my running shoes, I grabbed my Camelback with water and electrolytes, grabbed a couple of snacks, put my running shoes on and left my house, and ran 26.2 miles. Stopping back at the house when I needed more fuel.
That's how I ran my first marathon ever. That's how I ran my most recent marathon. Now, in between, I have ran dozens of unofficial marathons, and only two official marathon races. One is the Colfax Marathon in Denver, Colorado, where I [00:03:00] finished in four and a half hours, and the other is the Honolulu Marathon, which I finished in five hours.
Both of these marathons I trained for, and I did a specific training protocol which I have shared on this channel and on my podcast. I highly recommend that if you have a goal to run a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon, a marathon, or beyond into ultra territory, I have a very valuable episode linked in the show notes and in the YouTube description for you to check out.
But if you wanna hear more of a non-traditional route to getting to that 26.2 mile finish line, and th- the fact that I ran a five-hour marathon pretty casually and didn't really, at any point, think I wasn't gonna finish it, then stay tuned. So first, I did run it with my friend, and, uh, that was awesome. I
This is my first time actually running an entire marathon with a friend. I've ran parts of marathons before with friends, and I've definitely [00:04:00] signed up for the same marathon races with friends, but I've never actually ran every mile, 26.2 miles, with a friend. So think about this. If you're running a marathon for the first time, no matter if you're planning on doing a very structured 18-week training regimen like I recommend in the description and in the show notes, running with a friend who is in marathon shape, who is trained, who has ran a lot, who is a better runner than you, can really help elevate you to the next level.
It's also safer because they know what is going on. If you've never ran a marathon before, running with someone who has, and has experience with it, and who is willing to stay with you while running it, not going ahead of you, but actually staying with you, can be very helpful. So what was the aftermath?
Because it's one thing to say, "Oh, yeah, I ran a marathon without training," and then not walking for a couple of weeks, then getting injured, all these different things. Well, for me, I walked 2.5 [00:05:00] miles that evening and felt fine. Little sore, legs are a little heavy. I felt fine. We walked two and a half miles.
And the next day, took a hike, played tennis for two and a half hours. This was the next day. It's reasonable to think that you can run a marathon, and the adrenaline is still in you, and you could potentially walk two and a half miles the same day. But being able to play two and a half hours of tennis, but being able to hike and play two and a half hours of tennis the next day, and today is the day after that day, and I ran two and a half miles, went to the gym, and worked out for an hour.
The point is, I didn't just complete a marathon in five hours without training, I did it without injuring myself. And now I'm gonna share with you how I was able to do this. Will this work for you? Potentially. But really what I want you to do is tune into the theory here of how this worked and how you could potentially integrate this theory, this [00:06:00] mindset, this thought process into your goals of completing a marathon.
Now, back in 2024, I completed my first 100-kilometer ultramarathon, and I won first place overall male, second place overall. And really, I was able to do this not just because of me, but because of the team around me. Because of all the help my fiance gave me in crewing, making sure that I had all of the nutrients, water, electrolytes, all these things.
All the support she gave me leading up to the race, during the race, and after the race. The training from my amazing coach. Well, I share all this because my coach and her husband are both my friends, and her husband is the friend who a week ago told me, "Hey, do you wanna join me for 26.2 miles?" So it wasn't just a friend who had this crazy idea of running and then roping me into it.
So you gotta be careful of that. You may have a friend out there who really just wants to go do the thing and isn't considering how big a task it is. Well, 26.2 miles [00:07:00] is not easy. It is very tough. It's mentally and physically tough, and you gotta be really careful because if you go from doing zero activity to all of a sudden being like, "I'm gonna run 26.2 miles 'cause my friend Jimmy over here says it's a good idea," this is not that situation.
My friend knows my fitness level. We run together once a week, eh, three to five miles. But the point is, this was done very safely. Here's how I did it. I work out every day. This is just how it goes. Yes, I take, quote-unquote, "rest days." What I mean by that is I don't run every day. I don't go to the gym every day, but I do do something every day.
And when I take an actual rest day where I don't go on a run, don't go to the gym, don't do a HIIT class, I tend to walk. And I don't just walk a little bit, I walk a couple of miles. So I work out every single day. My base fitness level is very high. So if you're coming into your first marathon and [00:08:00] you don't exercise at all, please don't try and do it without training.
You need to build up a base first. I actually have a whole podcast episode and video on my YouTube channel about why I work out every single day. There are so many reasons, one of them being I'm always ready. If a friend hits me up and says, "Hey, I wanna go climb a 14er next weekend." I don't have to be like, "Oh, you know, I need to train."
I'm ready. Another friend says, "Hey, you wanna go do a Hyrox simulation?" Great. Let's go do it, and I'm gonna do really well at it as well. The point is, when you work out every single day, at least walking... And this is what I like to share with my coaching clients. Everything we do is all about progressively overloading our body consistently.
Consistently building strength in our lungs. I'm an athlete with asthma, so one of the reasons why I work out every day is because by working out every day, I keep my lung capacity. I keep my strength, and that just empowers me to do more in life. Empowers me to do things like run a marathon on a [00:09:00] whim.
Part of all this is I have been running, I just haven't been training. When I'm training, I'm running 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 miles a week. Instead, I've been running about 15 to 25 Miles per week. Which, depending on what marathon training program you look at, your really peak week of training, you're gonna be around 35 to 40 miles.
Now, if you're looking to PR or set a personal record for a marathon, then you're probably running more 50, 60, 70 miles a week. Even, like, the best runners in the world are running 100 mile a weeks to even train for marathons. But 15 to 25 miles is below the recommended amount that you do training for a marathon.
Best case, 10 to 15 miles less. Worst case, 25 miles less. The point is, I still have a running base, and if you're looking to run a marathon, I do recommend that you have a running base as well. Doesn't have to be the 35 to 40 miles per week running base. But you need some [00:10:00] sort of running base, 'cause part of how we prevent ourselves from getting injured is by showing our body, telling our body, training our body to use specific muscles to get us to that 26.2 mile finish line.
By doing this 15 to 20 miles per week for the past year, I have been reminding my body how to run and training my body to know how to do the movement that I need to do to get to 26.2 miles. Now, the interesting thing is the longest run that I did in the past year before my marathon was somewhere in the 13 to 15 mile range.
I don't even know if we did 15 miles, but it's somewhere in here. So I basically doubled that this past weekend. Next, I've been doing HIIT, so high intensity interval training, and I really do think that this is the key. So if you want to run less miles and still complete a marathon, and what I mean is less miles in training.
If you want to only have to run a smaller base of miles, then the key is high [00:11:00] intensity interval training. High intensity interval training, I've been doing one to three times per week. On top of running 15 to 25 miles, I've been doing HIIT one to three times per week. And specifically, 60 to 180 minutes per week.
This means I've been getting my heart rate into the higher zones. Now, there's five zones. Depending on what zone system you're looking at, there's different number of zones. But to simplify this, there's five zones. You have one, two, three, four, five, and between zone three and four we have something called threshold.
This is where your body goes from aerobic to anaerobic. Aerobic means with oxygen. Anaerobic means without oxygen. So until we pass over threshold, our body is producing energy using oxygen. Once we pass over threshold into anaerobic here, your body is no longer producing energy efficiently with oxygen.
We are starting to go into without oxygen energy [00:12:00] production. When you're training for a marathon, you're spending most of your time here. So when you're running 35, 40 miles a week, this is where you're spending your time. You're doing that zone one, zone two. You might go into zone three a little bit, but this is where you are.
In HIIT training, we're spending our time here. With dips into zone two. This is interesting. My theory, this is based on my experience, is that by spending more time HIIT training, we are condensing the amount of time we need to spend training for a marathon. But it's because we're training differently. 60 to 180 minutes a week, I was spending zone three, zone four, zone five, some dips into zone two for recovery.
This helped me have the cardiovascular capacity, helped my body feel the intensity, 'cause this is hard on the body. It's harder on the body. So it's just a different pressure on the body. HIIT, I highly recommend. I talk about this in my [00:13:00] actual marathon training program. If you wanna decrease mileage, do more HIIT.
If you wanna become a better and faster, more resilient runner, do more HIIT. Very important. Next, I've been going to the gym two to three days a week. Now, this is interesting because I have been doing conditioning and strength, but not really lifting. This has been my HYROX training. So I've been doing 15 to 20,000 meters on the rower, which, you know, which is probably about an hour on the row machine a week, and I've been doing all the other HYROX events, which HYROX is hybrid functional fitness racing, combining running with functional fitness exercises like this row machine, the SkiErg, burpees, et cetera.
So I've been going to the gym two to three days a week working on that stuff. Same thing, I've been not spending as much time in zone five, but I've been spending a lot of time in zone two, three, and four. Remember, marathon, you're spending most of your time here. So yet again, [00:14:00] spending a little higher intensity time.
Next, I've been playing tennis one to two times per week. This has been for hours, probably equating to two to four hours per week. Now, I'm probably spending most of my time here while playing tennis with bursts here. And I know if you're listening to this, this is a podcast, you can't see this, but I've been spending most of my time in zone one and zone two, and then I've had instances of zone three and zone four.
High intensity interval training once again. Time on my feet. That's another thing here. I have been walking/hiking almost every day. Not a lot, but we're talking one to two miles per day. That's more time on my feet. So when you combine all of this, I was not training for a marathon, but I was ready to dive in and run one because of my lifestyle.
So if this looks like you, you might already be doing something like this, and then the big takeaway is you [00:15:00] are not far from being ready to run a marathon. And if running all those miles to run a marathon just sounds terrible to you, then I invite you to integrate this into your life. Build a lifestyle of working out and exercise like I have, and then you will be even closer to be able to run a marathon safely.
without training. Now, I wanna thank you for spending this time with me today, so I have my Three Pillars of Healthy Living guide just for you. It's linked in the show notes and in the description, or you can go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy today. In this guide, you will learn how to integrate the three pillars of healthy living, movement, tracking, and accountability into your life today.
I'll see you in the next episode
Thanks for tuning in to The Athlete With Asthma show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey [00:16:00] isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals. And if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible
