November 14, 2024

To receive the full-text edition every week, Subscribe Here.

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

>>> Good to the last mile: Running the Western States 100 had “few negative effects” on heart health of finishers.

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

November 7, 2024

Here's the free but abridged version of this week's RLRH newsletter. I hope you enjoy it, and learn something new. You can SUBSCRIBE HERE to begin receiving the full-text version every week in your in-box. Amby

Race Faster By Running Like Hannibal Lecter

Two of the biggest trends in endurance performance are heat training and cold racing. They are obviously flip sides of the same coin.

In training, runners are using multiple layers of sweat clothes as well as saunas, hot tubs, hot baths, and relatively low cost “sauna blankets” like this one (not an endorsement; I haven’t tried it.)

In racing, elites have turned to pre-start ice vests along with plenty of ice during events (under caps, in shirts, in bras, in shorts, etc). This is especially true in some of the hotter, ultra runs.

Here’s a new one--the Hannibal Lecter approach. It’s a cryo-facial mask--an ice mask.

A paper titled “Effects of Cryo-Facial Mask on Running Performance in Amateur Middle-Distance Runners” used a randomized, cross-over design to test the effects of an ice mask on running performance.

Result: After wearing the ice mask vs no mask, runners lasted 13% longer in a time-to-exhaustion test. In a second, “constant load” test, they had a lower heart rate after wearing the ice mask. 

Conclusion: A pre-run ice mask potentially lowers “the negative effects of heat stress during running.” Therefore, it could “offer a practical and convenient method to optimize performance and enhance overall training outcomes.”

An Internet search turns up many ice mask products that seem mostly intended to reduce face wrinkles headaches. Take a look on your own. I can’t wait to see who becomes the first runner to wear a Hannibal Lecter ice mask during a race. More at Cryobiology.

Ironman Triathlete Kristian Blummenfelt Sets Total-Training Record 

Five years ago, a research report garnered a lot of attention when it postulated an upper limit to human daily energy expenditure (calories burned). This wasn’t a topic much explored previously, and the paper argued that humans couldn’t exceed about 2.5 x our basal metabolic rate. At least not over long time frames.

The research included an analysis of participants in the Race Across the USA (six marathons per week for 20 weeks) and other endurance feats. 

Some exercise scientists didn't accept the upper-limits theory. Now a Norwegian group has published contrary findings based on 3 years of training data from top triathlete Kristian Blummenfelt, both an Olympic champion and an Ironman champion. They used the gold standard “doubly labeled water” technique to assure the accuracy of their findings. 

Result: Blummenfelt’s daily energy expenditure ranged from 7,019 to 8,506 calories per day as he trained anywhere from 1308 hours to 1,480 hours per year. That’s 25 hours per week to 28.5 hours per week.

Conclusion: This amount of training “likely exceeds the proposed metabolic ceiling for sustained total energy expenditure.” Therefore, “This not only questions the validity of the current metabolic limits but also suggests a new perspective on what is physiologically achievable in world-class athletes.” More at J of Applied Physiology.

Ladies: Build Your Strength At Every Age

Here’s a simple, powerful study that measured knee flexor strength of women runners vs nonrunners, and also of women under age 50 and over 50.

I’d argue that knee flexor strength is one of the most important muscle measurements we’ve got. Your knees get you up and down, and move you around. Also, the stronger your knees, the better your balance and stability. What’s more critical than these functions, especially in midlife and beyond?

The study included 147 women. Among them, 85 were runners.

Result: In both groups, younger women had stronger knee flexor muscle than older women. This is what we’d expect. However, whether under age 50 or over 50, the runners “had greater strength and higher muscle quality than inactive women” relative to body mass. 

That is, the runners might not have had more total muscle, but they had more for their relative weight. This is “a better predictor of physical function than absolute muscle strength” and hence “more practical than absolute strength data.” 

Conclusion: “Continuing an aerobic and strengthening training routine is a viable choice for improving muscular strength and quality in both young and old women.” More at Geriatrics.

SHORT STUFF You Don’t Want To Miss

>>> A new tool for Achilles pain: Simple saline injections with corticosteroids produce “greater, early improvements in pain and function.”

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​

# Training breakthroughs from Northern Europe (mostly Scandanavia)

# Why you should be eating more oat bran

# Are you built for speed or endurance?

# Can a running-form change boost your running economy?

# Listen to your brain. Mostly. (But not always.)

# Deena Kastor’s advice about finding the cheerleader in your brain

# How exercise can reduce alcohol addiction, and improve physical & mental states

# The smart way to add more miles to your weekly schedule

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. See you again next week. Amby

October 31, 2024

Here's this week's free-but-abridged version of the "Run Long, Run Healthy" newsletter. Click SUBSCRIBE HERE below to receive the full text edition. Thanks. Amby

Biology Of Training: Do You Need More Miles Or More Speed?

Most runners like daily workout plans. They tell us what we’re supposed to do today.

We also appreciate the importance of tomorrow, the rest of the week, and next month. They help us see where we are headed, and the path to get there.

But sometimes it’s helpful to zoom up to 10,000 feet where we can see the larger forces at work. The biological forces. 

For example, two primary aims of endurance training are: to increase muscle mitochondria, and to increase blood vessel capillaries. It would be nice to know the “Effects of Exercise Training on Mitochondrial and Capillary Growth in Human Skeletal Muscle: A Systematic Review and Meta‑Regression.” Hence this mind-boggling paper.

Let’s simplify a bit. More mitochondria lead to greater and more efficient energy production. More capillaries lead to greater oxygen delivery. Put them together, and you can run farther and faster. 

Next we ask the ultimate training question: What kinds of workouts boost both mitochondria and capillaries? That’s the question this paper digs into.

Let’s look at capillaries first, as we’re going to abandon this pathway quickly. Why? Because: “Gains in capillarization occurred primarily in the early stages of training (the first 4 weeks) and were only observed in untrained to moderately trained participants.”

If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably not a beginning runner. So you should narrow your training focus to mitochondrial gains.

However, if you’re advising someone on how to increase capillarization in their beginning running efforts, tell them to take it slow and steady. That sort of effort “is more effective in increasing capillary density” than hard intervals.

Now, let’s move to your own quest for mitochondrial gains. Should you increase your weekly mileage or put more emphasis on speedwork?

The answer, essentially, is both. In any given 60 minutes, the more speedwork you do, the greater the payoff in “mitochondrial content.”

However, the same can be said about more training. Higher training frequencies were also “associated with larger increases in mitochondrial content.” Six training sessions a week were superior to 4, which were superior to 2. 

Where does this leave us in putting together a training program rather than a biology lesson? Bottom line: “Training load (intensity × volume)” is the “most suitable predictor” of a successful approach. This means “that higher exercise intensities can compensate for lower training volumes, and vice versa.”

The more you run and the faster you run, the greater your chances for improvement. But you can’t run long and fast all the time, so you have to find the balance that's most effective in your own life and training. More at Sports Medicine with free full text.

Planks Are Great For Core Strength, But More Variety Is Better

It’s hard to argue against planks as a great core-strength exercise: They’re simple, they’re safe, they’re effective. That’s why I do them every day.

Now I’m thinking I should add more variety to my routine. As this article points out, planks don’t do much for the dynamic stability you need when running over uneven surfaces or perhaps getting thrown off balance.

To increase dynamic stability, you need to move while you’re maintaining a strong, balanced position. Extra points if you can do this while standing on one leg, as in exercise number 7, the “Kettlebell Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift.”

Here are 9 exercises, with clear illustrations, that can help you build your dynamic core stability. More at Outside Online.

RIP: Barrier-Breaking 108-Yr Old Julia Hawkins

We all have a few age-group heroes--runners in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond--who inspire us. We hope to be as energetic, youthful, and joyful when we reach the same landmark decades.

But Julia Hawkins stood alone. When she entered USATF Masters Track Championships in recent years, she forced the organization to recognize a new age-group: 105+.

Hawkins died last week at 108, receiving a full-fledged obituary in the NY Times, and articles in many other media. One listed her 5 “longevity tips.”

I particularly appreciated the last two: 1) Find the "magic moments" in life ; and 2) Marry the right partner.

Older individuals need to have “magic moments and passions to look forward to, something to be ready for, something to care about,” she said. 

Julia and her husband, Murray Hawkins, were married for 7 decades. She met him on her first day in college, and later said, "As soon as I saw him, I knew that was the person I wanted to spend my life with." More at Business Insider.

You can learn more about Julia Hawkins from her memoir, It’s Been Wondrous.

SHORT STUFF You Don’t Want To Miss

>>> Great speed, amazing endurance: Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha just ran a half marathon world record, 57:30, in Valencia, Spain. He also holds the world record for the indoor mile at 3:47.01.

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​. Thru Substack.        SUBSCRIBE HERE. Thru MH

# Run hard to reduce hangover effects

# Build stride strength for more stamina, fewer injuries

# 11 rules of marathon recovery

# Women face fear & violence. Some safety strategies can help

# Are veggie burgers good for your health? What about planetary health?

# 5 strategies, one quite surprising, to boost your endurance

# A post-lunch nap increases performance & cognitive function

# A great Albert Einstein quote about moving onward 

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. See you again next week. Amby

October 24, 2024

Here's this week's free-but-abridged version of the "Run Long, Run Healthy" newsletter. Click SUBSCRIBE below to receive the full text edition. Thanks. Amby

Yes, There Is A “Free Lunch:” The Miracle Of Muscle Cross-Education

Cross education has got to be one of the most amazing aspects of human physiology. Not only that, but it’s simple and useful too. I’m currently using it for a minor shoulder injury, but it works just as well for the legs.

Here’s the simplest statement of “cross education:” When you exercise one leg or arm, it also strengthens the other limb--even when you don’t exercise that other limb.

This is marvelously easy to test. You just enroll a bunch of subjects, and give them a 4- week program of strength exercises for one limb or muscle group only. The other limb doesn’t do any work at all.

Then you test both limbs to see if they have changed since baseline. Of course, the limb that has been exercising has gotten stronger. That’s why we train.

What about the other leg or arm--the lazy fellow? Surprisingly, it also gains strength, or at least resists a strength decline when subjects are old and losing muscle.

In effect, the non-exercised limb gets a free ride. It violates that old adage that there’s “no such thing as a free lunch.” In this case, there is.

Knowing about cross-education can be enormously helpful when you’ve got a leg injury on just one side, or after a knee replacement, etc. 

Don’t give up. Don’t quit exercising. Simply train your healthy limb; the other one will get stronger as well.

That’s what happened in this study where subjects exercised the wrist flexor muscles of one arm, but not the other.

Result: Those who exercised their free wrist lost only 2.4% of their strength in the other wrist (which had been put in a cast). Those who did no wrist exercises lost a whopping 21.6% of their strength in the casted wrist. 

Conclusion: “Eccentric training of the non immobilized limb can preserve size of the immobilized” limb.”

You might have an injury on one side. But there’s still much you can do to prep for a successful return: Exercise the other side. More at J of Applied Physiology with free full text.

Staying On Top: How To Sustain Health-Fitness Excellence

Most of us want to stay fit and healthy as long as we can. Sure, we strive for a peak when we try to qualify for Boston, or when we enter a new age-group category.

But we also realize that maintaining a consistent fitness level for many years is more important than one or two big races that are followed by a long decline.

That’s why we look for advice that can help us sustain our health and fitness. Here are 10 such “rules” 

I like them all. But especially: “Focus on consistency over intensity.” And also: “Simple does not mean easy (beware of online gurus).”

I recommend you check out all 10. And also incorporate them into your lifestyle and performance routine. More at The Growth Equation.

Peel Back The Benefits: Bananas And Running Performance

I don’t have to tell anyone that bananas are by far the favorite fruit in the world of runners. Especially marathon runners.

In big marathons, you have to be careful not to slip and fall on tossed-away banana peels. As well as those icky gel packets and discarded water/ade cups.

Bananas are loaded with carbs and potassium--nutrients that runners love. They’re also fascinating in ways I had never thought much about. Until I read the article linked below.

For example, do you know why bananas are curved when most other fruit is circular or oval? I didn’t either. Only now I do.

Quick: What’s the word for a cluster of bananas? Answer just below.

There’s an actual world record for eating a banana with no hands. It’s faster than Usain Bolt’s 100-meter world record. Also, the largest known bunch of bananas included 473 bananas.

When it comes to carbs and potassium, a typical, medium size banana contains 27 grams of carbs, or 108 calories. It’s got 422 mg of potassium--about 9% of your recommended Daily Value.

More interesting banana facts at Interesting Facts (where else?) Answer to above question: A cluster of bananas is called a “hand.”

SHORT STUFF You Don’t Want To Miss

>>> Never too late: He started training for triathlons at 75, and is still going strong at 80. “These results further support the benefits of endurance exercise among octogenarians.”

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.​

# The secret of micro-dosed speedwork

# How to beat those aggravating marathon muscle cramps

# Two strategies that, when combined, fight knee pain

# Which types of exercise combat chronic inflammation?

# 20 training tips to help you run stronger

# Systematic review: Probiotics lower muscle stress and damage

# Paula Radcliffe explains the power of laughter

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. See you again next week. Amby