In last week’s Feature Article How Many Weeks Before Your Marathon Should You Run Your Last Long Run?, we concluded that it is best to conduct your last long run four weeks prior to your marathon.
Without a long run during the last four weeks, won’t you lose fitness, compromising your ability to run the marathon at your true potential?
Don’t worry! These four weeks provide the opportunity to continue high quality training. As you recover from your last long run, incorporate a variety of speed workouts (assuming they were part of your training program) that will result in improving other factors that will affect marathon performance, e.g. running economy, speed and VO2max (maximum capacity of an individual’s body to transport and use oxygen during exercise).
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Many marathoners run their last long training run two or three weeks before race day. Doesn’t it make sense to run your last “biggie” reasonably close to your race to derive maximum benefit and bolster your endurance? After all, you recover during your taper.
Running your last long run this close to race day is a crucial training error. During a long run, leg muscles sustain considerable damage. Contractile fibres get damaged or destroyed. Until the muscle tissue has repaired itself, the propulsive force that your leg muscles can exert is decreased, hindering your ability to maintain running at race pace over long distance.
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Why does running a half or full marathon increase susceptibility to colds?
There is a large body of research that shows that moderate exercise reduces the incidence and severity of a cold or flu but intense or prolonged exercise increases the risk and severity of infection.
The research we found most relevant to runners and endurance athletes was conducted by noted exercise immunologist, Dr. David Nieman, Director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University. (Lance Armstrong has worked with Dr. Neiman and has been tested in his lab. If he’s good enough for Lance, he’s good enough for us). Dr. Neiman found that running or cross-training 30 to 90 minutes a day several times a week strengthened the immune system. However, exercise longer than 90 minutes increased risk of infection.
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Conventional wisdom among runners is that dehydration is to be avoided at all costs. After all, doesn’t dehydration cause overheating? Doesn’t dehydration often result in heat distress? Doesn’t dehydration severely impair performance? Aren’t runners who collapse near or at the end of a race severely dehydrated and should be treated with rapid hydration?
Most of the running community will answer these questions with a resounding “yes”. This all seems very logical and commonsense……….but it is not true!
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by Dr. Cathy Fieseler
For years, distance runners have been told to drink as much as possible. Lately, I’ve heard about runners dying from drinking too much water during marathons. I’m a bit confused; if I don’t drink enough, isn’t dehydration a problem? Do sports drinks protect me from the danger of too much fluid?
For years, the medical community has been concerned about dehydration associated with prolonged running, such as marathons, especially in warm weather. This concern has led to the plentiful aid stations in races and the development of sports drinks. It was felt that consumption of fluids while running would decrease the degree of dehydration.
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Are intervals more beneficial to distance runners than other workouts, such as steady state runs or tempos?
(Intervals consist of short bursts of high intensity runs separated by a recovery period of slow jogs. Tempos are run at a “comfortably hard” pace, about 85% of max heart rate or an 8 out of 10 on the perceived exertion scale. Steady state runs are run slightly slower than tempo runs).
An article written by Alex Hutchinson in the March/April issue of Canadian Running reported on a recent Danish study that attempted to answer this question.
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This past February 16th, the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) announced a new registration process and qualifying criteria for the Boston Marathon.
During last year’s registration fiasco for the 2011 Marathon, the race filled in eight hours, leaving many qualifying runners out in the cold. It took most people 90 minutes or more to register online and penalized those who could not spend that amount time during the day to register.
The B.A.A. has decided to change the 2012 registration process and tighten the qualifying times for the 2013 marathon. Click on New Boston Registration Process for details.
(Editors’ Note: The above B.A.A. article’s headline is misleading. The new admission process favours qualifiers who beat their Boston qualifying (BQ) times by larger margins,
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In the Dec 15th Feature Article “How Many Weeks Before Your Marathon Should You Run Your Last Long Run”, we concluded that it is best to conduct your last long run four weeks prior to your marathon.
Without a long run during the last four weeks, won’t you lose fitness, compromising your ability to run the marathon at your true potential?
Don’t worry! These four weeks provide the opportunity to continue high quality training. As you recover from your last long run, incorporate a variety of speed workouts (assuming they were part of your training program) that will result in improving other factors that will affect marathon performance, e.g. running economy, speed and VO2max (maximum capacity of an individual’s body to transport and use oxygen during exercise).
Read more »
Many marathoners run their last long training run two or three weeks before race day. After all, doesn’t it make sense to run your last “biggie” reasonably close to your race to derive maximum benefit and bolster your endurance? You recover during your taper, don’t you?
Running your last long run this close to race day is a critical training error. During a long run, leg muscles sustain considerable damage. Contractile fibres get damaged or destroyed. Until the muscle tissue has repaired itself, the propulsive force that your leg muscles can exert is decreased, hindering your ability to maintain running at race pace over long distance.
Read more »
We are pleased to announce the first annual IAWR Women’s Running Telesummit. This unique event will be held November 29th – December 2nd, featuring five presentations from guest experts over the course of four days.
You can phone in and listen to each presentation from the comfort of your home, office or car. And – registration is free!
Learn how to:
- Train more efficiently and effectively so that you can improve your running without spending extra precious time
- Practice optimal nutrition for performance and maintaining your ideal weight
- Prevent, diagnose and treat injuries so that you can avoid frustrating layoffs that derail your progress
- Improve your running performance as you age
Join other women who share your passion for running and discover:
- Practical strategies for busy women to carve out time to get in your daily run
- How the women’s running community is revolutionizing both the running industry and fundraising
And more!
Click on Women’s Running Telesummit to find out who is speaking and when!
"Pre-Race Tips for Race Day Success" Report - Download Your FREE Copy Here!
