Monday, 28 February 2011

marathon training

Marathon running is an adventure in discovering how the various parts of your body work to travel a long way in a quick time.
My local run is mainly flat so I can stretch out.
This morning I stepped out. 100 metre walk to firm up knee and ankle muscles, then we're off and running.
My run starts at the bottom of a railway bridge - a quick way to fill up calf muscles and bring the breathing on line. At the top of the bridge, we shift gears, lengthen the stride, and start to focus on the hamstring and quad group of muscles. These muscles are the ones that are going to do it for us, over the distance of a kilometre, they fill up, and the heart rate increases. It takes me a kilometre to get my heart rate to 150. my heart sits on 130 for a slow run, 140 for a moderate run, 150 for a fast run and 160+ for a sprint run.
We change gears again and bring 'glut max and co' - behind muscles -  into play. Our stride becomes longer and we are running faster. At around about this time the core muscles are working hard to stablise and maintain our posture and form. It is not uncommon at this stage to experience a burn in the core muscles, it feels like you need to take a quick pit stop, if you know what I mean. So we have to back off a little bit.
It has taken me up to 2 kilometres to reach maximum running pace.
Body temperature has risen by this time and I am sweating. It's amazing how much weight is lost through perspiration.
At this point we start tweaking with the variables, such as heart rate, breathing, stride length,  preparing for and adding little bursts of speed. Ideally we want to have nothing left in the tank by the time we finish our run.
This morning I ran 10 kms in 55 mins. I have started a 3 run a week marathon training program, based around 10 km times. run 1) 10 kms at basic time plus warm up and recovery time. run 2) 10kms of speed work with rests. run 3) 10km of basic plus speed.

I'm really pleased that my weight has moved into a range suitable for running. I measure that range by subtracting 100 centimetres from my height, and using the figure as the upper limit of healthy weight. In my case, at 182 centimetres, the top end of my healthy weight is 82 kilos. Runners tend to be several kilos less than their top end figure.
I can feel another salad coming on!
Cheers Dears! 

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