Marathon Training Round 2: The One With Boxing

Run your first marathon and one of two things happens.

Either you say to yourself “Welp, I checked that off my bucket list and never have to do that again.” Or you’re like me and you‘re hooked, constantly in pursuit of that incomparable high that comes with crossing the finish line.

In my case, I’m running two marathons within three weeks of each other — Chicago on October 7 and Marine Corps in Washington, DC on October 28. A big part of it is to raise money to help kids in hospitals. The other part of it is, well, I just want to see if I can do it, to challenge myself to run 52.4 miles in a relatively brief time frame.

That’s why this year, the boxing gloves you see above are almost as integral to my training as my running shoes.

That doesn’t make sense on the surface, so I’ll try and explain.

Running a marathon is essentially a series of mental and physical battles that you’re fighting until you get to mile 26.2.

The mental uphill climb of getting up before dawn to head out on yet another training run while everyone else is still asleep. The physical soreness of your knees from all the miles racked up during training. Your body revolting against you in new and strange ways, such as your toenails occasionally peeling off.

Your blood pumping right before you cross the starting line as you see the crowd and the city out in front of you, and you try to rein yourself in from charging into a full sprint straight out of the gate because you’ve got another 3–6 hours of running in front of you. Your mind starting to desert you somewhere around mile 19, with the sun beating out and your body losing an ungodly amount of sweat and electrolytes, and suddenly the seven miles that you have left seems longer than any seven miles you’ve traveled in your life.

And then…then, well, the end.

Just about every marathon training program on the planet recommends incorporating some sort of cross training in with your marathon training. It makes sense — You need more than just strong legs to cover all that mileage. Your arms have to continue pumping to generate momentum, while your core and your back have to be strong enough to keep you upright. Cross training also tends to be the one area of marathon training that most first timers don’t take seriously enough, skipping it regularly if not skipping it altogether in favor of taking an extra rest day in between runs.

So why incorporate boxing classes as part of training for a marathon?

Here’s how I came to my decision, and why I’ve continued going to boxing classes regularly even though the marathon training is in full swing:

1. It makes you realize how out of shape you really are — When I took my first boxing class, I figured it would be a breeze since I was able to run at least a half marathon at the time. I was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Boxing classes are actual full body workouts, lasting around an hour. Title Boxing’s program features a 15 minute warmup, followed by eight rounds/30 minutes of hitting a heavy bag, wrapping up with 15 minutes of core work.
2. It works every muscle in your body — About that whole feeling out of shape thing — Within the first seven minutes of the warmup, I was gasping for air and sweating like I had just finished my eighth mile on the lakefront path thanks to a series of burpees, jumping jacks, lunges, squats, more burpees, more lunges…you get the picture. It was unpleasant, but I felt myself getting stronger with each minute.
3. Stronger arms equals more momentum — The warmup is one thing — hitting a heavy bag for a half an hour straight is totally another. I found very quickly that the heavy bag rounds, broken up neatly into 2:30 sessions with 30 seconds in between devoted to more burpees or lunges, do a fantastic job of preparing your shoulders and arms to keep pumping through the later stages of a longer race. I really noticed the difference during the half marathon that I ran in Indianapolis in May of this year, when I got to mile 10 and my arms felt like assets propelling me forward, rather than dead weight holding me down.
4. The mental aspect — Putting your body through a boxing workout or two each week helps break up the mental monotony of the regular long runs by simply giving you something different to do. Plus, hitting a heavy bag for half an hour once or twice a week is incredibly cathartic and much more productive than drinking or some other self destructive behavior that you could engage in to make the stress go away.
5. You cut fat, fast — One of the immediate side benefits that comes with mixing in boxing classes with long runs is you burn a lot of fat, and fast. On your upper body, your lower body, you’ll become leaner and like your reflection in the mirror a lot better.

Would I recommend taking boxing classes to other runners training for a marathon? Absolutely, but take my advice with a grain of salt given that I’ve run exactly one marathon in my life.

Whether or not regularly taking boxing classes is going to result in cutting 30–45 minutes off my (admittedly slow) time in the 2017 Chicago Marathon remains to be seen. But for now, it’s challenging, it’s cathartic, and it’s a nice change of pace from running, so it couldn’t hurt, right?

To learn more about Open Heart Magic, which has more than 120 volunteers that go around to Chicago hospitals and teach kids how to do magic tricks and is the charity that I’m running the Chicago Marathon for, please click here and consider donating.