living sounds said:
I'll keep out of the politics this time, but let me say that for health or body fat or general fitness reasons a marathon is not the best thing you can do. Intervall training is much more effective for improving all of these measures, it's faster and it takes far less time and exerts less strain on the body. There's a ton of good studies out there to back this up. For women it's even worse than men, since frequent long-distance running (or equivalent strains) will result in downregulation of thyroid activity, thus a lower basal metabolic rate and very often - paradoxically - weight gain.
Yes, unhealthy if pursued to excess. I recall reading about some guy who ran 50 or more a year... bat sh__ crazy. But i expect running one marathon a year is not going to shorten your life. I've only recently heard about the thyroid issues, I think they supplement some olympic athletes for that, with suspicions about performance effects.
The human body generally adapts to increase capacity beyond previous stresses, which is why weight lifters can lift more weight and distance runners more distance, but with distance running there are natural limits. The well known "wall" that marathon runners hit around mile 20. This is probably too much medical mumbo jumbo but our body burns both sugar and fat, we store months worth of fat, but only modest amounts of sugar (a couple thousand kCal of glycogen), when we run out of sugar even our brain gets cranky, so distance running is all about training our body to preferentially burn fat. Our brain can run on ketones when fasting (a non-sugar energy replacement). But yes, extreme distance puts extreme stress on the body and consumes a lot of time. The thing I like about running is you can get a decent workout in less than an hour and be done. However if you are training to run a marathon, you need to log the miles and that takes hours.
JR
@ thermoinic... running marathon on less than 45 miles a week is unhealthy.. ooops guilty. While I only trained to finish, not win, I trained up to marathon distance only running once a week on sundays, since finding the time to run lots of miles during the week is not easy. I started from my normal 5 mile Sunday run distance (I still run 5 but not on Sunday) and increased it 2.5 miles per week, until I got up to around 25 miles a week before the marathon, my time 4:40 was nothing to brag about, except to people who never ran a marathon. 8) . I finished better than many who tried that day that I jogged past slowly, while they were walking. Note: While I only ran once a week, during the week I was playing racquetball at lunchtime and basketball a couple nights, so I was active.
Running injuries... Use good equipment. Modern running shoes are remarkably better than they were decades ago. If you are heavy invest in good cushioned shoes. Running form makes a difference, while generally you will find an efficient geometry. Shoes can compensate for pronation issues. Re: a heavy runner blaming padded shoes I won't argue, the knee can see huge force and foot plant and roll can spread out and modulate that force, a padded shoe with crappy foot plant geometry could do harm. Another thing about knees, leg extension exercises are useful to keep the muscles around the knee strong which maintains good knee joint alignment. If the knee is not in proper alignment and force of foot plant is not spread out joint damage can occur. Losing weight will help in many ways. And listen to your body, it will tell you, with pain when you are doing it wrong. Form matters.
Fast-slow... Distance training can actually convert fast twitch to slow twitch, or allow the fast twitch to atrophy so if you want to run quick, you need to train quick. Funny story (funny to me), There was a period in the late '70s when I did zero exercise, but I had a dog and I would walk him without a leash. One game that I would play with him near the end of our walk maybe 25 yards from my house, I would wait until he wasn't looking then break for the house to get a head start and race him back (I never won). I was doing no exercise, but these short sprints a couple times a day. My older brother was a serious 10k runner and I was the fat slob in the family. At one family get together I challenged him to a foot race between the two telephone poles in front of my house. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, because he was the "runner". I blew his doors off. Then I grabbed another beer. 8) (now I am the slow guy, but he doesn't run any more so I can probably still beat him) :'(
re: bombing,, I don't think anybody has said what their "point" is yet. Killing and maiming innocents is just painting a target on your back, not making a point. Not to make light of the bombing, but maybe they just didn't like the "better than other runners" attitude of marathoners. ;D
@SSl re cycling.. Yes this is less stressful on body joints. Uses different parts of leg muscles too. I recall getting a health assessment at the gym and they tested me on an exercise bike, and advised me that I was in poor aerobic shape. While at the time I was running half marathons, so I disagreed with their assessment. You can't run a half on guts, you can't run any distance more than yards without training at distance. I have entered a few dual-athalons, and tried to bike for exercise when I suffered from plantar fasciitis (in both feet two different times). There are no bike paths in Hickory so sharing back roads with no shoulders, and bubbas in pickup trucks trying to see how close they can come, was not fun. And on a bike you have to pay more attention. While jogging the world goes by a lot slower and you can let your mind wander.
It i good to hear so many forum members are active exercisers. I have slowed down a lot as I get older, but don't want to ever stop.
