Dr. Jeff Conrad competes in the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 18, 2016! He qualified at the First Light Marathon in January. Dr. Conrad’s story is inspiring and he gives a tremendous amount of credit to his biggest cheerleader, his dad, who lost his battle with leukemia in September 2014. In February, we shared a feature story from Al.com about Dr. Conrad’s emotional journey to Boston. You can read it here.
As Dr. Conrad begins his travel journey to Boston, you can read about Dr. Conrad’s training regimen and the challenges he has faced while training for the most thrilling journey of his life.
“I definitely wouldn’t consider myself a runner. I have been competing in triathlons since 1994. I have completed six Ironman triathlons, which consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 run. I am used to training for long distance triathlons but focusing on just the run has been difficult for me. First, I am not built like most runners. In my younger years, I focused more on my bench press and squat max than my 10k times. Another issue is that I am not as young as I was when I started my endurance training and do not recover as easily as I did in the past. I have had to start following the same as advice I give many of my patients. The quote “doctors are the worst patients” definitely applies to me!
While training for triathlons, I try to complete three to four runs, three to four bikes and one to two swims per week. I have an active family with many activities and responsibilities and I also have a busy orthopaedic sports medicine practice. Therefore, I perform 90% of my workouts early in the morning because this is the only time I know is mine except when I am on call.
Training for Boston has changed my distribution of workouts. I have tried to complete five to six runs, one to two bike rides and one swim a week. Obviously, my run miles have increased significantly. The impact of running on the road has definitely taken its toll on me. After long runs or faster pace runs, I have to be sure I recover or I could place myself at increased risk for injury.
Currently, I am 3 days away from the Boston Marathon. I began the taper down phase of my training about 5 days ago. This is the part of the training where one tries to recover and absorb all the training completed over the last several months. Although it sounds like it’s the easiest part of the training it isn’t as easy as one might expect. For someone as OCD and full of energy as I am, it’s hard to pull everything back when I have been training so hard for so long. My training plan has me cutting back on the miles while still maintaining some intensity training to help maintain the fitness I have built while training.” – Jeffrey M. Conrad, MD
