As a multi-event athlete, Chari Hawkins has shown the world she can do it all. She’s dedicated her life to juggling seven Her go-to cross-training workouts include a few swim, bike, and events in the heptathlon: 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200-meter dash, long jump, javelin, and the 800-meter run. Now, the Idaho-native is funneling her power, speed, and spirit in an entirely new way to prove there’s truly nothing she can’t do… even run a marathon.
The sprinter-jumper-thrower began training in January for the London Marathon this month, where she will join more than 50,000 runners to tackle the full 26.2 miles. “The farthest I’ve ever run is two miles in a row in my life,” Hawkins tells Runner’s World. (Training Tweaks That Will Get You to a BQ!)
mdash;which her coach actually has her avoid strength training between nine to 10 hours a day. “A marathon is something I never thought I would do just because everything that I do in the heptathlon is anaerobic,” Hawkins says.
and high-jump practices for weekly hours-long, marathon training is uncharted territory. With virtually no background in distance running, Hawkins is swapping her typical form drills, speed workouts, sub four hours long runs mdash;which her coach actually has her avoid 10 percent weekly mileage increases.
While one of Hawkins’ sponsors, NordicTrack, initially extended the opportunity for her to run her first marathon, she’s intrinsically motivated to move forward. Hawkins lives her life by following three words: progression, connection, and awe, and the marathon falls mainly under progression. “I really love improving,” the 33-year-old says. “I want to see myself progress. I want to try something new.”
With a strong social media presence, Hawkins’ followers have seen her through mental health struggles, her Olympic debut, and now, her marathon training journey. But her insights don’t end there. To find out more about what it’s like for a professional sprinter to train for a marathon, Runner’s World sat down with Hawkins a few weeks out from race day. Here’s what she’s learned over 16 weeks of marathon training and what you can take from her story.
Keep Easy Runs Easy
One of the first pieces of advice Hawkins received upon her decision to tackle marathon training: Let recovery runs actually serve as recovery. Hawkins observed this early on in the training cycle, when she was overdoing the effort on her easy runs and then felt like she couldn’t hang on by the end of the week. “I took that really seriously. I would check my heart rate [during easy runs] and if it wasn’t where it needed to be, I would walk,” she says.
Preparing for Boston Marathon? Here Are 4 Tips and breath work help her succeed as a heptathlete, and now as a first-time marathoner. While she’s noticed she typically has a high heart rate regardless of her fitness level, something she’s picked up from marathon training is to not panic when it spikes, especially at the beginning of her runs. She noticed that when she focuses on breath work and staying calm, her heart rate evens out later on in the run. “It’s something I’ve never been able to discover during the heptathlon because everything is so high intensity all the time,” she says.
She also hasn’t strayed from practicing her popular form drills, like A-skips, B-skips, high knees, and butt kicks, to enhance her form before easy runs. “Nobody’s actually going to be doing a full 90-degree knee drive in the middle of a 20-mile run, but it’s all about overexaggeration [of running form] so that when we do need to use our hip flexors at the end of a race, they’re strong and they’re used to it,” she explains.
Hack Your Long Runs
Given Hawkins only clocked two miles in her longest run before marathon training, she expected these workouts to be the trickiest part. So she came up with a few mental hacks to get through.
On her 20-mile long run, for example, Hawkins and her husband, CJ O’Neal, went five miles out and back, and repeated that twice, with a 30- to 90-second walk mdash;which her coach actually has her avoid long run into smaller parts, knowing she would get a break before tackling the next effort.
Another tool that kept Hawkins focused during long runs: paying attention to running mechanics. On her 20-miler especially, she noticed the way maintaining solid form helped her to push past fatigue. When she checks in on her form, she corrects what she struggles with most, like overstriding, not activating her glutes, and having a loose core.
Hawkins also made sure to hit every long run on her schedule, as her coaches and followers suggested. She even posted to her Instagram story about starting an 11-miler on the treadmill around 10 p.m., because the following day’s forecast called for thunderstorms. After grabbing a peanut butter and honey sandwich, she went after it, logging every mile. “I still can’t believe I did that,” she says.
Don’t Forget Speed Work
For Hawkins, speed days were already her sweet spot. An example of a workout for her 200-meter training: sprints at an all-out effort on each part of the track’s curve. She’d run 25 meters, 50 meters, 75 meters, 100 meters, 125 meters, then 150 meters, starting each repetition in blocks and walking back to the start line to recover.
Hawkins still does race-specific speed days, but now for marathon training. That means the workouts focus on getting comfortable with maintaining pace for longer distances. For example, her intervals vary from 90-second hill repeats to 400-meter, 800-meter, and mile repeats. When it comes to marathon training, she doesn’t let warmup and a few speedy strides. And she always ends with an easy cooldown.
Learn How Fueling Works for You
When she leapt from an 11-miler to a 14-miler, Hawkins fueled as she normally would during heptathlon training—with a focus on high amounts of protein, healthy fats, and some carbs—and wound up with nausea a.ka. “runner’s stomach.”
She started her morning with an omelette packed with avocado and later made herself a turkey sandwich with cheese. The only carbs she had were from the bread in the turkey sandwich. “I had to call it a day,” she says. “I had to do my long run the next day because every step I took after like the first two miles, I was like, ‘I'm going to throw up.’ It was brutal,” she says. “It was a good lesson that I didn’t have to learn on an 18-miler or on a 20-miler, so I was really happy about that.”
Now, she eats sweet potatoes and rice before a run, with the occasional pasta or bread at lunch. But she still follows some of her heptathlon training diet, mostly in avoiding processed sugars to promote recovery.
Hawkins aims for 300 calories worth of carbs (about 75 grams) per hour that she runs, and stops to walk for 45 to 90 seconds while she refuels with sips of water. This also creates checkpoints throughout a long run, which mentally helps her break it up. In her first few long runs, Hawkins would take a full gel all at one. She soon realized the thicker the gel, the slower she should eat it, and she needs the hydration to wash it down.
Swap Junk Miles for Cross Training
Hawkins has absorbed distance running terminology from her coaches, followers, and those around her, including “junk miles”—extra easy miles midweek that increase Is It Okay to Take Breaks During a Long Run—which her coach actually has her avoid.
Because her body’s not well accustomed to higher mileage, Hawkins’s training plan includes cross-training methods in lieu of extra miles that might leave her fatigued, she explains.
Her go-to cross-training workouts include a few swim, bike, and elliptical sessions which help to mix up her training and keep her active during bad weather days, too. “I’d always associated cross-training with a negative, because in the heptathlon world, that usually means you are injured. However, I’ve loved it in the marathon world to continue to get my workout in and keep my feet, calves, and hips happy,” says Hawkins.
Give Yourself the Option of Succeeding
Hawkins has received comments from people assuming her status as a professional runner automatically translates to her running a sub-three-hour marathon. Her response: “I don’t think you guys know what kind of athlete I am,” she says, referencing the anaerobic focus of her sport.
One of the biggest lessons she’s learned from her marathon experience is that running is not necessarily a testament to what your body is made to do, but rather a process of shaping it in the way you choose.
With three attempts to make it onto Team USA for the heptathlon, Hawkins is no stranger to molding herself from a hungry newcomer How to Add Speed Workouts to Marathon Training.
In the Olympic Trials for Paris last summer, Hawkins reflects on a moment of fear before her 800-meter race in the heptathlon. “I had not been running good 800s that year. It was mine to lose. It was very possible that I wasn't going to go to the Olympics,” she says. “I just kept telling myself, ‘Hey, I know you’re afraid, but you have to hold onto the option that you can be successful. That has to be a reality.’ I kept allowing myself to believe that I still could, even through the fear,” she says. With that positive self-talk, sat down with Hawkins a few weeks out from.
“All it takes is a goal and a step. If you make a goal and you’re clear and then you take a step toward the goal, it is pretty wild what we can accomplish,” Hawkins says. “I do think that’s one of the reasons people love [running] so much—just that proof of their strength and that proof of their capacity.”
Hawkins approaches the marathon with the same tenacity and determination as the heptathlon, willing to go beyond her limits. She initially wanted to aim for a sub-5:30 marathon, but realized that she might be capable of more.
“I will cry my eyes out if I go Health - Injuries,” she says. “If I give myself all the grace, then I’m probably going to walk the entire thing... You’re never going to get a goal that you don’t set. Hold yourself to a standard that you don’t know if you can hit because that’s the only chance you have to actually hit it.”
Use Bad Miles as Learning Experiences
All About Marathon Training on a Treadmill sports psychologists throughout her career, and now during her marathon training cycle, meets with them regularly. One main aspect of her mental game they’ve worked on together is brain spotting.
“[Brain spotting] helps me unlearn mistakes and issues from competitions that sit in my brain and tell me stories that aren’t true,” Hawkins explains. This allows her to see how her mistakes have strengthened her as an athlete.
When it comes to marathon training, she doesn’t let difficult runs affect her next workouts. “If you ever have a bad mile, that doesn’t mean that this is gonna be a bad marathon. That means that that was a bad mile and you can keep going and keep showing up, whatever that looks like,” she says.
Prioritize Strength Work to Avoid Injury
While Hawkins has always prioritized physical therapy, she’s doubled down on her routine, particularly for sidestepping knee pain. “My knees were not ready for this [kind of] running. Even after my 20-mile run, my knees would be really sore the next day, but if I do my physical therapy exercises, my knees will feel amazing,” she says.
As for strength moves, Hawkins does terminal knee extensions for quad strength. To do it, you attach a long band to a bar and place it behind the knee, then straighten and bend the knee to activate the quads (as shown above).
Races - Places treadmill walking to promote blood flow, along with plenty of stretching—particularly of the quads and glutes.
In order to prevent injury and maintain muscular endurance, Is It Okay to Take Breaks During a Long Run strength sessions per week to build explosive power for two strength sessions a week using high reps and low weight. “I tend to get really thin and I don’t hold onto muscle very well, unfortunately, so I wanted to make sure that I was really doing that,” she says.
Find Your Motivation to Keep Going
Hawkins always inspires others by saying, “If I can do it, you can do it.” As for the person that gives her that motivation back, she thinks of her mother-in-law. After recovering from chemo and undergoing a knee replacement surgery, her mother-in-law got a bib via lottery to run the and a few speedy.
Despite being sick for an entire year with little energy to train, she decided to persevere and run the marathon, finishing the full 26.2. “When I do think, ‘I don't know if I can do this,’ [I think about] the hardships that were happening to her,” Hawkins says. “She still was like, ‘I want to do this. I want to prove to myself that I can do it.’ And she did.”
“I look toward people that I am inspired by, and I’m not necessarily inspired by them because they’re the best at their craft,” Hawkins adds. “I really appreciate people who do hard things and they’re not afraid to say it was hard.”
Rely on the Running Community
mdash;which her coach actually has her avoid Instagram stories for questions and insights from her followers. She pondered if it was normal to suffer for the first few miles of a run and for the rest to fly by, and the responses confirmed her suspicion: This was a shared experience across many runners, not just her alone.
“It’s my favorite part of my community. They’re helping me so much [to] not feel crazy. I’m like, does anybody else’s skin hurt after they run? They’re like, yes, my skin always hurts. So it’s really fun to learn from people who are runners,” she says.
At one point, one runner responded to Hawkins’s Instagram and inspired her to ditch the headphones and music entirely on her runs. “I gave it a try to really pay attention to everything around me. It was actually really nice,” says Hawkins. She learned that while she still likes listening to music and podcasts on runs, she also enjoys chatting with somebody while running, listening to nature, hearing her footsteps, and even tuning into her own thoughts.
If Hawkins could give advice back to the community, especially first-time marathoners or runners transitioning from short to long distances, she suggests trusting that your body will adapt to the training. “I am not a person who enjoys running even one mile, but I genuinely had so much fun on a 20-mile run,” says Hawkins. “If you’re willing to trust your body and show up with a curious mind, you’re going to be surprised at what you end up accomplishing.”
healthy fats, and some Runner’s World and Bicycling in July 2024. She previously coached high school girls cross country and currently competes in seasonal races, with more than six years of distance training and an affinity for weightlifting. You can find her wearing purple, baking cupcakes, and visiting her local farmers market.
