A Brief Chat With Lisa Weightman

THX to Runnersworld

On April 18, Lisa Weightman of Australia won Japan's Nagano Marathon in 2:28:48. It was her fourth marathon and her first time below 2:30. Weightman's marathon debut was a 2:32:22 in London in 2008. She was 33rd in the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 18th at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. Weightman, now 31, is a full-time consultant with IBM in Melbourne. She has personal bests of 32:20 for 10,000 meters and 1:10:42 for the half-marathon. In 2009, she won the Gold Coast Oceania Half-Marathon in Australia and the Christchurch Half-Marathon in New Zealand. Weightman was 20th in the 2008 World Cross Country Championships in Scotland, helping Australia's women earn a team bronze. She was 17th in 2009 World Cross Country in Jordan. Lisa Weightman is coached by Dick Telford, a former mentor of Lisa Ondieki, who was a New York City Marathon champion, a 1988 Olympic silver medalist, and, before Weightman, the only Australian woman to win a marathon in Japan. Lisa Weightman's own journal at "Runner's Tribe" can be found Here

Nagano's 2:28:48 was the highlight of your marathon career so far. Were there things going on in your build-up that indicated you were ready to do that?
Lisa Weightman: Absolutely. My mileage definitely increased for this one. I had a series of seven stress fractures from age 19 to 27. For each marathon, I've increased my mileage, but particularly for this one. And I've been able to change coaches and I'm looked after by Dick Telford. His training regimen has been just fantastic. Each session has just shown that I've got the ability to take the marathon to the next step. So I was gathering confidence with each session I was doing, to know I could keep improving my PB (personal best).

Other than increased mileage, what is there in the nature of things that Telford did differently? Can you characterize a couple of things?
LW: The two main sessions would be the 20-miler on Sundays, where we would start out at a pretty comfortable pace - myself and my husband Laclan (McArthur), who trains with me - and then we would by the end of it be clipping along pretty nicely at a not-so-comfortable pace and getting the average pace faster with each Sunday run, instead of just running slow long miles. The other thing is on a Thursday we do a combined session, adding 25 by one-minute efforts, doing 15K, and then coming home hard for an 8K and then finishing off with a couple of easy warm-down kilometers. That session really tested all of the energy systems and has given me a lot of confidence for the marathon. It's pretty specific to what you experience in the marathon - trying to keep it easy for the first 5K or 10K in the marathon, and then starting to change pace and make things harder.

How many 20-milers in the build-up did you do?
LW: We started around Christmastime, and I missed a couple of weeks. I had a stomach bug and ended up in hospital. But about 16 of them, I think.

You mentioned "energy systems." Have you and your coach made some changes regarding nutrition and fueling?
LW: Absolutely. Dick's a sports physiologist. He's renowned for his work at the Australian Institute of Sport, and being one of the founders of the sports physiology program out there. He's very focused on science and I quite like the science. It's a bit like studying for an exam. I understand it and I can basically apply it and have something concrete that creates confidence and belief when I get out on the starting line for the race. That's been one of the key things.

I have a drink plan that Dick set out for me when I did my (marathon) debut in London, when he was acting as my mentor. It's been a good program. It's never left me feeling unwell or with any problems during the race, and I haven't hit the wall yet in any of the marathons I've done. At World Champs last year, he was with me through the lead-up and took me out to eat my meals. Say the race was on Sunday, then Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday was a low carb diet, and then Thursday-Friday-Saturday was an increased carb diet. He taught me what to eat for that for Berlin and that worked very well, and then I applied the same thing for Nagano and that seemed to work pretty well, too, so I definitely wouldn't change any of that.

What's the carb of choice? Is it pasta or rice or what?
LW: I tend to like rice a bit more than pasta, but I try to do a bit of variety there.

You talk about the stress fractures early in the career. What have you managed to do with Coach Telford, or through your own experience, to put that problem behind you?
LW: It was a pretty tough nine or so years going through that because I wasn't really advancing very fast. I was continually getting injured and not able to do mileage that I wanted to do even to do cross country and road races. But massage and rating my body better are probably the two key things. I get more massage on my shins than I did back then because back then I didn't understand what I had to do and didn't have access to the medical people and the mentors who could have told me that I needed to have this done. I think backing off when I have any sort of tightness, and having my shins totally massaged out, have really helped keep all that (the stress fractures) totally away. And if I feel slightly off, having two days off has saved me quite a lot in the last three to four years, rather than running through things and letting them develop into something else.

Some of my biomechanics were checked and I do have a really good podiatrist who redid my orthotics and has looked after me in that regard and that's helped as well, because that's stopped me from pronating. But back then (when she was getting stress fractures), I was lucky to be able to run 90 kilometers a week and now I'm doing 180 and not getting sore at all.

In the race at Nagano, did you have a real battle with other runners most of the way or was it a race you dominated early on?
LW: Luckily, I can say that I ended up dominating it early on. It wasn't actually what I thought would happen. I was ranked eighth (in the Nagano field) by PBs at the time, but I knew I was in better shape than what my PB was suggesting. With a couple of the girls having 2:25 PBs, I thought that I'd be pretty much racing to the line to come close to winning. Yeah, it played out differently from what I expected. I ran with a pack of the lead girls and about five or six elite girls in the first five to 12k, and some of the women dropped off as early as 5K. We did a u-turn at about 23K (slightly past halfway) and I saw that I had a break of 100 meters or so on second place and I felt really good so I just kept running on with the faster men who were ahead of me. Some of those dropped off and I ran a bit of it on my own and then finished off pretty well.

Did you negative split it?
LW: No, I didn't. I ran 74:08 halfway and ended up running 40 seconds slower in the second half. It was pretty flat. It went through the city for the first half and there was a little bit of downhill and flat road, and the second half went out into the country area, so shade or shelter from wind of anything out there. And then there were some small hills to break up the monotony of the flat road in the second half.

Do you know what you want to do next? Are you going to do a fall marathon? Would you want to do the Commonwealth Games marathon (in October in India)?
LW: We'd had some great success in Australia with the Commonwealth Games marathon in the past. Dick coached Lisa Ondieki, who won a medal at the Games, and we've had Kerryn McCann do exceptionally well at the last couple of Games (the late McCann was a marathon gold medalist twice). Yeah, I've been selected for the marathon for the Commonwealth Games so I'll be training for that in October and then looking towards doing one of the big marathons, perhaps Paris, next year. And also I would love to come and do Chicago or one of the big American marathons later in the year next year.

When you get to your level in the sport, you get to travel. You've been to Japan a couple of times. You get to see the world a bit, don't you?
LW: Yeah, absolutely. I've been to World Cross Country three times as well, so I've been to many different parts of the world - Kenya, Scotland. And Japan, with Ekiden. And World Half trips to Italy and Hungary, and some track races in Oregon. It's been a fantastic few years of travel, seeing the world and doing something that I'm passionate about.

You have a full-time job with IBM. How do you fit the running in most of the time?
LW: We get up pretty early, 5:20 in the morning, my husband Lachlan and I, and do our morning run. And then we finish work around 5:00 (p.m.) and head out for our second run or session in the evenings. And then we obviously try and get a little extra sleep on the weekends and start a bit later on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It's quite tiring trying to fit everything in, but we manage to make it work and I think that's all part of our great marriage and passion for running, because we get to enjoy that together and do it all together. That makes it all easier, getting each other out and ready to go so early in the morning.

What is the job, exactly?
LW: I'm a managing consultant for their global business services practice. I'm working on an Internet banking solution with a major Australian bank. There's a broad range of job roles I've done within IBM. They're a fantastic company. They've helped me a great deal; they've been extremely supportive. When I got home from Nagano, they'd set my desk with balloons and streamers and congratulations signs. It's pretty amazing how wonderful people can be and how supportive some people can be.

Some elites are just runners and nothing else but others like a job that's something else in their lives so they don't have to think about running 24 hours a day. Do you think that's beneficial, getting your mind on something else?
LW: Absolutely. In Australia, there isn't a great deal of opportunity to make a living with running. Obviously, I put my study and my work first for that reason. To go off and to my day job and meet clients and spend time using my brain and not think about the run I've got to do or how well or badly I've done it or if I've got a sore spot and I can't run for a few days - I just throw myself into work and enjoy that. It definitely has its advantages. I quite like having the balance. I've actually never been a full-time athlete other than on trips for three or four weeks at a time. I can't say what it's really like to do it full-time because it's always a novelty when I get three or four weeks off.

You were 17th in World Cross country in 2009. That's quite a good result. What have you observed and learned from a field like that - so many good runners from all over the world, just running quickly from the gun?
LW: The confidence you get from running World Cross in amazing. I ran my first one in Mombasa, Kenya, and I finished 44th and although I'd been told how amazing it is with just sprinting off at the start, I didn't realize what it would really feel like until I was actually doing it. And then again, the next year, I was 20th in Scotland. Having the experience of running the previous year, I knew that pretty much where you are in the first 500 meters is generally where you are when you're finished, or 'round about it. You can push through some people, but if you're thinking about trying to finishing top 20, you need to be in the top 20 pretty much straight away. So I had that focus in mind (in Scotland) and we actually stole the (team) bronze off the U.S. in Scotland. It was a great experience being part of that team and winning that medal, and that then gave me confidence to do my first marathon in London two weeks later.

That just built from there, and then running in Jordan (at World Cross the following year), I once again just got myself in a good position and managed to finish 17th. It gives you confidence that you're out there with the world's best and you start to realize that you belong there. I guess when I ran the Olympics is Beijing, I was just new to the marathon and almost felt like I didn't belong because it was so fresh. But now I actually feel like I belong in those races.

In the next few months, before the Commonwealth Games, what might you be doing on the track or the roads?
LW: I'm definitely thinking of doing a half-marathon, and trying to go under 70 minutes. That's one of the goals. We have a big race in Australia, the City to Surf (in Sydney), which is quite a prestigious thing to win, so I'll probably do that in August (the distance is 14K). Our track season is finished, so unless I head over somewhere else to do some track, it's a bit hard, so I probably won't think about that. I'll just do some time trials here in the lead-up (to the Commonwealth Games).

Can you imagine being a sub-2:25 marathoner in the next couple of years?
LW: It's definitely not beyond the realm of possibility. I finished really strong and felt great in Nagano. I haven't quite hit the training mileage and sessions that are going to be my max yet, so I've definitely got a big chunk of improvement to do. Yeah, I definitely wouldn't put any barriers there, in the right races with people to compete against.

You obviously have a good amount of professional success (at IBM) and a great marriage, but running obviously still adds an important and fulfilling dimension to you life.
LW: Yeah, absolutely, it's been part of my life for half of my life anyway. It's been great fun meeting people and achieving. Life would be boring if I just sat on the couch and didn't achieve things. The marathon is just that, a big challenge. And running just gives you not only the health benefits but an opportunity to challenge yourself and achieve. It's a big part of my life that I'd like to make sure I make the most of while I can.