So you want to run a marathon?
During the first running boom three decades ago, aspirants embarked upon a six-day regimen of arduous runs hellbent on crossing the finish line in the fastest time possible. Hollow cheeks, hobbled feet and an overuse injury or two were badges of honor for the mostly middle-class men who tackled the 42.2km challenge. Their icon was Frank Shorter, a Yale-educated lawyer whose victory in the 1972 Olympic marathon ignited the mass running movement.
Things have changed.
Today's marathoner is less likely to have been motivated by an Olympian than by Oprah Winfrey. Her slow-but-steady completion of the 1994 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington is considered the start of the second marathon boom, one that has dwarfed the first, and is far more democratic in nature. Winfrey was one of 277,000 marathon finishers nationwide in 1994; last year 410,000 runners crossed the line, said Running USA, a nonprofit organization in Ventura, California, that keeps track of participatory running.
The marathon has become an "everyman's Everest," said Amby Burfoot, the executive editor of Runner's World magazine.
Men, women, fledglings and fossils of varying girth are marathoners these days -- in part because of the proliferation of training programs that make it, if not easier, at least less time-consuming to prepare.
During his training for the Boston Marathon, which he won in 1968, Burfoot ran twice a day, seven days a week. Emil Zatopek, the great Czech runner who won the 1952 Olympic marathon (along with two other gold medals in the same Games), prepared by running mountain trails near his home in Moravia while carrying his wife, Dana, on his back.
Contemporary marathon programs require neither twice-a-day workouts nor spouse-hauling. Indeed, the new watchwords of marathon training are moderation and specificity. Gone -- for beginners, at least -- are the six days a week of running routinely recommended in the 1970s. Absent, in most programs, are even consecutive days of running.
Today, some popular schedules involve as little as three days a week of pounding the pavement.
"It's gone from being excessive training for what many would consider to be an excessive event to a very trimmed-down, less-is-more approach," said Toby Tanser, a marathon coach in Manhattan and the author of The Essential Guide to Running the New York City Marathon.
One of the leading less-is-more programs for running the marathon involves walking. It was developed by Jeff Galloway, a 1972 Olympian who believes that regularly timed walking intervals increase the likelihood of covering the marathon's 42.2km. Last year, it worked for 18,000 Gallowalkers (as his followers are dismissively called by some old-school runners) who ran-walked their way to a marathon finish.
At least half of last year's marathoners used a minimal-mileage training plan, said Ryan Lamppa, a spokesman for Running USA.
"The expectation has changed," said Bill Pierce, chairman of the health and exercise science department at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and the creator of a popular three-day-a-week program. "It's OK now to walk. It's OK to finish over five hours. People have a completely different approach to the marathon."
Those people do not include the Kenyans, Ethiopians and other elite athletes from around the world who will be running in and perhaps winning the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 4. The best will not be following a less-is-more approach.
"This type of program is designed to get you to complete, not compete in, the marathon," said William Roberts, the medical director of the Twin Cities Marathon in Minnesota.
Roberts endorses minimalist approaches.
"They offer a lower risk for injury," he said.
Whether covering as little as 20km a week or as much as 100km, the primary goal of all marathon programs is the same -- to build your endurance to the point where you can finish the race. Hence, the common denominator of every program is the weekly or every-other-week "long run" -- a slow-paced run that starts at whatever distance you can now complete and, over months, grows longer.
"The long run teaches the body how to deliver and utilize oxygen more efficiently," said Carwyn Sharp, an exercise scientist with Wyle Laboratories, which conducts research on behalf of NASA.
As the runs lengthen, the body adapts by creating more blood vessels to transport oxygen-rich blood to working muscles, by manufacturing more energy-producing mitochondria and by more efficiently repairing the microscopic tears to muscle fibers that result from the extended effort.
The long run is the one element, experts agree, that cannot be red-penciled out of a marathon program. But how long is long?
Here, experts disagree. Many say 32km is sufficient. Others, like Galloway, recommend conquering at least the full marathon distance in training. Still, whatever the distance of the longest long run, novices can't go from zero to 41.8km overnight, which is why most plans are at least 12 weeks long, and some last up to 30 weeks. What's more, most coaches and exercise physiologists recommend against even starting a marathon program until you have regularly run shorter distances for a couple of years.
Most programs also include at least one day of shorter but faster-paced running to improve efficiency; hill work not only to build leg strength, but also to prepare for steep elevation; and plenty of rest to allow the body to recover and rebuild.
For many people, finding the time to train may be harder than actually training. Gordon Bakoulis, who competed in the US Olympic Trials marathon four times and now works for the New York Road Runners, the New York marathon's organizers, says she has noticed a pattern among those who drop out before the race.
"It's not that they failed in the training," Bakoulis said. "It's just that they couldn't manage the logistics. There were too many early-morning meetings at work, too many Saturday-morning soccer games. You can't fake marathon training, especially the long runs."
But you can be reasonably certain that if you reach the starting line in one piece, you'll finish: In last year's New York City Marathon, 38,368 runners started and 37,869 finished -- a 99 percent completion rate.
Other major marathons, including the Marine Corps and Chicago's, have similarly high finisher percentages -- and it's been that way for most of the last decade.
What does that say about the various training programs?
"It says that they all work," Bakoulis said.
Bill Pierce subscribes to alternating running and cross-training.
Most pared-down marathon programs promise only to get you to the finish line in one piece. The so-called "First" program claims you will get faster, too.
The catch? "It's a `run less,' not a `train less,' program," said Bill Pierce, one of its creators and an exercise scientist at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.
"First" stands for the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training.
The First regimen is the subject of the book Run Less, Run Faster by Pierce and two of his colleagues.
The streamlined regimen requires three workouts that many coaches say are essential to marathon success: A long run; a medium-distance run at a faster pace and a speed session on the track. But two or three days of cross-training -- be it in the pool doing laps or on a bike -- is also key, proponents say. The thinking is that minimizing mileage reduces injuries, while participants receive the maximum physiological benefits of the plan's strenuous, speed-oriented running.
Some coaches argue that for serious marathoners, riding a bike for an hour, for instance, is no substitute for time on your feet.
"The key to running the marathon is feeling comfortable on your legs for four or five hours," said Toby Tanser, a running coach in Manhattan.
"It takes the body a long time to get used to that," he said. "I don't think that cross-training prepares you for it."
Still, the idea that minimal running might be rewarded with a personal best attracts followers.
One wrote a letter to Pierce, which reads as if he had told the student he can do half the reading and still earn an A in the course: "Thank you for showing me that 100 to 120 miles a week is not required to reach my running goals!"
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