This past weekend I did the Houston Marathon. Afterward, my quads were pretty shredded. I hopped on my tri bike for a the last few days for a spin and noticed that my hamstrings are in pretty good shape even though I can hardly walk down stairs due to quad pain.
For a while I had a suspicion that I wasn’t fully engaging my hamstrings / glutes enough while running. This appears to have confirmed that this is the case, or perhaps that I don’t use my quads enough while cycling. Either way, my question is does it matter? I tend to think i should be looking to engage the whole leg and need to work on being less quad dependent when running. Thoughts? exercise workout recommendations.
If it helps, Im a forefoot striker with a high cadence and short stride. (around mid 190s at 6:35 pace). This was also the first open marathon outside of a full triathlon for a decade.
I broke a femur in 2013 and for years after that I had trouble engaging the glutes / hamstrings on my left side.
The surgery really just compounded what was almost certainly an existing back-of-the-leg tightness, weakness, and low ability to even activate those muscles that’s a common result from a line of work that involves a lot of sitting.
Being quad dominant like this leads to extra stress on the knees and also generally holds you back from a full training load, as your quads tend to get more beat up than they need to. Most people can get by for a long time like this but age, high training loads, and injuries can make this unsustainable.
It doesn’t take long to start seeing a change with some strength / activation work. Also stretching the hamstrings, and calf’s while you’re at it. Not too hard, but 1 minute minimum each stretch.
Changing your running form work outside of necessity and/or professional guidance with measurements and follow-up is always sketchy, as you can easily create more problems than you fix. So take the following with a giant grain of salt.
In addition to doing the strength and flexibility work (once every week or 2 seems to do it for me), some key changes that have helped me keep my hamstrings & glutes active during runs, and taken me from injured-all-the-time to running worry free:
add a slight lean forward at the hips, supported by a forward chest and balanced by shoulders back
send foot higher towards your butt as sort of a follow through with each step… NOT powered by activating any muscles in the back of your knee (this will quickly cause a strain in those muscles) but as a follow through powered by your glutes… you can do drills for this one, where you send your shoe all the way to your butt
get your knees higher on each stride… high knee drills should get you there
Whatever you do or don’t decide to do, good luck!
This past weekend I did the Houston Marathon. Afterward, my quads were pretty shredded.
holy crap this is a weird coincidence. I did Houston too - was well on track for sub 3 and my quads absolutely packed in around mile 11. Like debilitating. Nothing like that has ever happened before. I put it down to being sick (24h bug) the week before, but just strange that you had a similar issue.
The one thing I would ask is how adapted to you on running your marathon race pace for that long? Typically that is what I would think is the issue. My typical benchmark workout would be 5 x 5k at marathon race pace and you should have a good idea on quad soreness after that.
It’s just weird with Houston being so flat, usually quad pain is high on marathons with a lot of downhill.
This past weekend I did the Houston Marathon. Afterward, my quads were pretty shredded.
holy crap this is a weird coincidence. I did Houston too - was well on track for sub 3 and my quads absolutely packed in around mile 11. Like debilitating. Nothing like that has ever happened before. I put it down to being sick (24h bug) the week before, but just strange that you had a similar issue.
The one thing I would ask is how adapted to you on running your marathon race pace for that long? Typically that is what I would think is the issue. My typical benchmark workout would be 5 x 5k at marathon race pace and you should have a good idea on quad soreness after that.
It’s just weird with Houston being so flat, usually quad pain is high on marathons with a lot of downhill.
++For another coincidence. I didn’t run Houston but, rather, ran the Louisiana Marathon (Baton Rouge) this weekend and my quads were shredded. Calves and hamstrings are good and were actually pretty good even right after the race. I found it odd and even did some googling on it then was happy to see this thread today saying exactly how I felt.
I feel like - for me anyway - your point about adaptation to running marathon pace is part of it. I did do several runs where I incorporated 10+ half mile repeats at MP as well as an OTB run each week at MP but maybe it wasn’t enough. Being a decent cyclist I figured quads would be the least sore.
What was your time/pace? What intensity do you usually train at?
I ran a half marathon over the weekend and my quads/glutes are completely shelled. Is just because certain muscle groups aren’t shelled, does that mean they weren’t used enough (or does it mean they were prepared better than other muscle groups)? I guess my thinking goes to, how do I improve my training and strength so that those muscle groups are better prepared than thinking other muscle groups were not utilized properly, but maybe that is an improper view.
So I ran a 2:55 and faded pretty bad in the last 4 miles. This is probably reflective of my true current fitness in that the pace isn’t overly difficult for me from a HR perspective but I probably lacked the actual mileage at that pace required to sustain in a full marathon. My build was short and not ideal as I had a couple of crap long runs. Had I been better trained, closer to 2:50 was my goal. I do think my decline and soreness was a lack of true marathon fitness, but it goes back to my original question of why just the quads…As mentioned, it wasn’t a hilly course. For shoes, I was in Nike Alphafly Next% (not the 2, but a new pair of the older model).
I definitely think that the most likely cause was lack of “number of miles at specific race pace”. Your decline was less dramatic than mine (I was running 6:45 pace then walked the whole 2nd half). Interestingly I was also in AlphaFlys. I’ve run a lot in Vaporflys which are great at long distances (I’ve done Ultraman in those), and the Alphafly has more cushioning, so I would be surprised if they were the culprit but still interesting that we were both wearing them.
My best guess is your problem was caused by not enough fast miles in training, and mine was somehow related to the flu body aches I had a few days before. I’m doing the LA Marathon too in March, so will be interesting to see if I emerge unscathed in that one. Do you have another coming up? If so, try the protocol of repeated 5ks at race pace and see if that helps. I start with 2 x 5k and then build up with another one whenever I am able to (typically every 1-2 weeks) until I can execute 5x5k at race pace with no drop off in pace or increase in RPE.