Kimberly Underwood: From 3:38 to 3:11 Marathon in Under 2 Years With A Few Changes to Training and Mind Set
(Part 1 of 2)
Matt Fox, Founder of Sweat Elite had the privilege of speaking with renown insta-runner Kimberly Underwood about all things running training. Kimberly recently dropped her Marathon personal best time from 3:38 to 3:11 in under 2 years with a few simple changes under coaching guidance of Elite Half Marathoner Ryan Vail. Kimberly and Ryan have taken a much more relaxed approach to training in many ways: they no longer count mileage, they no longer shoot for PR’s in every workout and they make sure they train with other runners as good as them.. something Kimberly learnt from talking with elite African athletes.
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Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Hi Kimberly. Thanks very much for joining me today. You’re over in San Diego, in California right now, and I’ve asked to chat with you today because you have plenty of excellent running training advice coming through from your Instagram account, which relates very closely with, I guess, the experiences we’ve had talking to a lot of the elite athletes we’ve been meeting with and talking with over the last couple of years. So, thank you very much for joining us, and… Yeah. I’m looking forward to the conversation about your training and many other things that you’re, sort of, aiming towards in the future.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Thank you so much for having me, Matt. I’m super excited to chat!
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Cool. So, right now, you’re training towards the California International Marathon this December. Is this the first time you’ll be running that event?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): No. I ran it last year, after I basically took a 22 month break from the marathon, and it was my first marathon after almost two years. I ran it in December, and that’s where I had my breakthrough race, at the 3:11 marathon.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Awesome. And that’s your personal best to date?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yes! It was my personal best, and after… I’ve had a string of 6 marathons in 23 months, and my last three were 3:47, a 3:39 and a 3:38, so after that last one, I was, like, ‘I need to take a break and I need to regroup.’
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: And you really came back and improved a lot on that.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Definitely. I’m really grateful that things finally turned around.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Awesome. So, I guess this is a perfect time to talk about what you changed in your training, or mentality, or whatnot, to see that sort of improvement. Because that’s a massive jump. As I’ve already said at the start – for anyone that isn’t already following Kimberly, whose Instagram handle is @trackclubbabe. It would be really cool to speak a bit more about, yeah, what you’ve changed in your training, your mentality, to allow that sort of improvement to happen.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah. So, you know, I… I had one tough marathon, and then, after it, I was just, you know… ‘I need to get back out there and do this again!’ And it’s really tough, coming into the next marathon cycle, kind of, with, like… I don’t want to say ‘loser’s mentality’, but just, like, trying to prove something and kind of…
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Sure.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Feeling really defeated. And I basically went into three full cycles with that mentality. And, after the last though marathon in Tokyo, you know… Initially, after the race, I said ‘I’m not doing another race for a really long time, I need to get things… Like, something needs to be sorted out.’ And then, like, the next day, I told my husband – ‘You know what? I’m just going to sign up for this marathon in two months because I need to prove that I can do Boston again.’ Because I already qualified for Boston two times, but then I started regressing and doing poorer performances than I had done, and, luckily, Tyler – my husband – said, ‘Nope, you’re not signing up for that race. You’re doing the break you said you’re going to do. We’re going to get, like, you back on track.’ You know? And… You know, sometimes, when you’re second day of the cycle, it’s easy to try to, like, keep trying to put yourself out there, to try to prove yourself again… But I think it was really helpful for me to, you know, just take my pride and ego out of it, and just say, ‘I’m going to just sit back for a while and not do any marathons, and not feel the need to prove myself…’ And, so, just having a more patient and humble mindset with my running really helped me to take that step back. And then, from there, I… I just, literally, changed everything about my training, everything about the way I thought. Some of the main things that I changed were: I started running with people, you know, in all those training cycles before, I pretty much isolated myself and ran alone because of… Like, I was embarrassed because I felt like my running was poor, so I kept my running poor because I refused to be challenged by other people. But that was, you know, tough and…
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: I think that’s something a lot of people experience, as well.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Totally. It’s a really tough cycle, because you’re, like, feeling insecure and embarrassed about how your running is, but, in order to get better, it’s ‘Iron sharpens iron.’ So, if you’re not putting yourself out there in the mix and challenging yourself… You know,the first couple of times, it might be tough, you know? And you have to really check your ego, because… Because you’re running with other people, who are at different levels, and… But the way you get better is by throwing yourself into the mix. And so, you know, putting myself… Running with other people just made the process so much better, and it made me become a quicker runner, it made me enjoy the process more, you know… I learned so much from them, so that was something that was huge. You can’t… I mean, you can do it alone, but I just don’t think you should.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. And one of your Instagram posts from a couple of weeks, or potentially about a month or two ago – sorry – you said, ‘The piece of advice I heard most often from the Ethiopian runners was that it was impossible to improve on your own.’ And the quote you’re mentioned there is, ‘Training alone is just for health. To be changed you must learn from others.’ And I really agree with that, having spent quite a bit of time in Africa, with some elite running groups, it is absolutely… What they do there, they train in groups, and I think a lot of people listening or reading this would definitely relate to that, and… I guess, I’d like to know: how did you solve that in your own mind? To go from running on your own to going, ‘Right, I’m going to join a group and actually train with people.’ It must have been a big step.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): It really was. Honestly, my husband had told me for a while that I needed to do it, and then I had a friend who really was, like, ‘You need to be running with people. You can’t be doing these workouts alone.’ And so, then, one day I finally got up the courage to text my friend, Shambra, and just say, ‘Would you want to do a workout with me?’ You know, and that’s, like… It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was a huge deal for me then. And, you know, we got some other girls, and, you know, our training cycle towards the CIM was just amazing because of the synergy of our group, and… You know, I think that taking that first step and just putting yourself out there, and finding people to train with… It’s just so amazing for your running.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. And which is the group that you train with there, in California?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Well, right now, my husband belongs to a sub-elite team called Prado Racing Team, so I’ve been doing all my workouts with them, and they are so quick and all so talented, so I’m fortunate to even just be able to get my training in with them.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: For sure. And I guess this is a good time just to briefly touch on the sort of training that you have more specifically been doing, you know, whether it’s mentioning the training program that that group does, or probably, more specifically, what you’ve been doing. Because of, linking back to that improvement, it would be cool to hear what you do on a weekly basis – what your typical Monday looks like, typical Tuesday, because you have seen this massive jump, and, although a lot of it is psychological, you’ve probably – as you’ve mentioned already – you’ve changed your training a lot. So, it would be cool to hear a bit more about that.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah. So, I also started working with a coach last November, October, I believe. Ryan Vail – he actually just ran 1:02:19 at the Great North Run, which is amazing, such a fast time.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Wow. That’s very quick.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): But he’s, you know, he’s a phenomenal elite athlete, and I love his approach to training. It’s super conservative. When I started working with him, I kind of told him my parameters. Like, when I had to regroup two years ago, and take a break from the marathon, I changed everything. So, I went from just, like, overtraining and running way too much, and just doing all of these miles that were not… They are counterproductive. And I… My boundary was, I wasn’t running more than five times a week. So, going from doubles to only five runs a week was a big shift for me. And, you know, I could have made the choice to add more days as I got better, but my philosophy has been, like, ‘As long as it’s working, let’s keep it here.’ You know? And so, we kept my training at five days a week, because I think that this works for me and I don’t want to overload myself. So, basically, Monday is an easy day. Tuesday I have off. Wednesday I do a track workout, and Thursday is another easy day – you know, just running, like, six miles. Friday I take off and do strength, so my off days, I to strength work, just with, like, weights. And Saturday, I do a tempo long run combo. So, I did twenty miles this Saturday with, like, five mile warm up and eight by one mile repeat, and then finished it off with a cooldown. So they get to be pretty big days, and then Sunday is another medium long easy run.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Sure. Yeah, I did see a post on your… A really good post on your Instagram, about the twenty mile day that you did recently. It was very well explained, and if anyone is interested in hearing more about that particular workout, I would recommend going to check that out. It would be good to hear a little bit about the Wednesday, when you said you do… I think it was Wednesday you said you did track.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: What are a couple of key workouts that you’ve been doing, or maybe some of your favorites, on the track?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah. So, I’ve been really enjoying the track, it’s fun just to be out there with all the girls, just running fast. I think one of my favorite workouts, just because it’s been so… They’ve gone so well when I’ve done them, has been four by mile on the track, and the most recent time I did four by mile a couple of weeks ago, I did, like, a ten second mile PR as my first mile in the workout, and it’s just the synergy of running with these really incredibly talented girls, just pulls you along, and just helps you find your own potential. So, yeah. I really enjoy mile repeats on the track, or, you know… I also enjoy the short intervals, too, because I like running fast.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Yeah, absolutely. And when you’re doing these mile intervals there, are they around, I guess, maybe, a half marathon, or 10K half marathon to marathon pace? Somewhere in there?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): No. The mile intervals are all at mile PR pace. My training is just a little bit different, because my husband, like, laughs at… Like, when we try to, like, describe pacing for my workouts, because… I think, because of where I am, which is not extremely fast, that my speed workouts can be a lot faster than, say, an elite athlete would be paced at, if that makes sense. So, just because, like, the more amateur the runner, the more spread out all of those times seem to be. So… Because I’m improving so quickly, it’s also, like… If I say ‘half marathon pace’, it’s kind of, like, ‘Well, I had to run a half marathon to make capability, so which pace are we talking about?’ It kind of makes everything a bit confusing.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. No, I understand. That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing that. Another really good post of yours, which I’d like to briefly touch on – because this is something that we’ve definitely learned from speaking with athletes such as Eliud Kipchoge over in Kenya [more info here], and from Mo Farah’s training group [more info here].. the header of the post is ‘Why every workout isn’t a PR workout?’ You briefly talk about… one quote from there is, ‘I’m realising I need to relax my standards for a good workout, and not limit good workouts to ones where I can run faster than I previously ever had in a workout, because that’s not necessarily the point of them.’ I think this is something that a lot of people, again, do accidentally. They really try, and maybe it’s not an accident, but they try and push themselves too hard in every single workout. So, it would be really good to know how you discovered this kind of idea, and what you think about this topic…
Continue to Part 2 of Interview with Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe)
