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At Last, The Amazing Truth: How Average Runners Train For Marathons
We have long known how elite marathoners train, because they are fast and famous. Everyone from journalists to exercise physiologists clamors to write about their training. They run 100+ miles per week, mostly slow, but occasionally at race pace or slightly faster.
In contrast, we know next to nothing about the training of midpack marathon runners who finish in 3 hours, 4 hours, or 5 hours. They aren’t famous, and no one bothers to write about them.
Fortunately, the accumulation of GPS watch data is changing this picture. If you can’t write about one very famous marathoner, you can attract attention by covering hundreds of thousands of not-so-fast runners.
That’s what the big-data team from the University of Dublin has been doing for a number of years. Now, they’ve completed their most complete and informative paper on marathon training of midpack runners.
The paper analyzes the training of more than 150,000 marathon runners who uploaded 16 weeks of their pre-race training to Strava. The researchers then correlated the training data to the runners actual finish times.
In other words, they show that if you train X miles a week, you’ll likely finish your marathon in Y:yy hours and minutes. Some of the findings will amaze you.
For example, runners finishing between 4:00 and 4:30 averaged about 20 miles/week in training. They had an average age of 40.
This isn’t the same as suggesting you only need to train 20 miles a week to break 4:30. But it does show that it’s possible, because 27,000 runners did it.
I’ve put some of the other weekly mileages and finish times in a Table at the bottom of this newsletter. We’ll hope to learn more soon when the complete paper is published. More at University of Hertfordshire.
Probiotics Boost Endurance & Lower Inflammation In Runners
I have mixed feelings about probiotics. They are promoted everywhere as a fix to just about everything. That doesn’t inspire confidence.
Also, you know the old saying: If something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. .
On the other hand, I have no doubt that gut health is a vast, little understood, and significant contributor to system health. And perhaps particularly to brain health. I’ve been down that path personally, after a debilitating gut-brain illness a decade ago.
So I follow the topic closely. Here’s a new probiotics paper that caught my attention because it’s a systematic review that focused on inflammation and fatigue in athletes. These are concerns to all of us.
The researchers located 13 studies with 513 participants (351 male). All studies employed a double- or triple-blinded placebo-controlled design. Subjects used the probiotics from 12 to 90 days.
Result: Ten of the 13 studies reported “ improvements in various parameters, such as, enhanced endurance performance, improved anxiety and stress levels, decreased GI symptoms, and reduced upper respiratory tract infections.”
In addition, several of the studies demonstrated that “probiotic supplementation led to amelioration [lowering] in lactate, creatine kinase (CK), and ammonia concentrations, suggesting beneficial effects on mitigating exercise-induced muscular stress and damage.”
Conclusion: “Probiotic supplementation, specifically at a minimum dosage of 15 billion CFUs daily for a duration of at least 28 days, may contribute to the reduction of perceived or actual fatigue. The authors claimed no funding or other conflict of interest. More at J of the International Society of Sports Nutrition with free full text.
Marathon Training Of Average Midpack Runners (Continued)
Here’s a small Table showing the relationships between weekly training mileage (in red), days of running per week, and final marathon finish times of more than 150,000 marathon runners of all ability levels. The analysis comes from big-data experts at the University of Dublin who had access to Strava data from 2014 to 2017.
When considering all 150,000+ runners, they had an average age of 39.5 years, an average finish time of 3:50, and an average training mileage of 28 miles/week. They ran 3.6 days/week, and completed an average long run of 12 miles.
SHORT STUFF You Don’t Want To Miss
HERE’S WHAT ELSE YOU WOULD HAVE RECEIVED this week if you were a subscriber to the complete, full-text edition of “Run Long, Run Healthy.” SUBSCRIBE HERE.
# Surprise! When “negative splits” are not the best race strategy
# When you NEED to toss your old shoes, and buy new ones
# Ultra running is booming … and raising many concerns
# Cryotherapy in training limits muscle damage & may boost performance
# How an 88 yr-old marathon runner chopped 20 minutes from his 2023 finish time
# The two runner metrics Dr. Peter Attia believes “most significantly associated with longevity.”
# What sometimes dark humorist-writer Oscar Wilde observed about the gutter below and the stars above
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. See you again next week. Amby