APRIL 4, 2024 xx
Peak Right: The Ultimate Marathon Taper Guide
For marathon runners headed to Boston on April 15, it’s time--or maybe past time--to begin a solid marathon taper. Others heading to London or another spring marathon will have to do their own calculations.
But the goal is always the same: to find and follow a taper plan that will yield the kind of marathon performance you’ve been hoping for.
While there’s no single answer for all runners, the accumulating data is leaning toward a longer-rather-than-shorter taper. Many marathon training programs now recommend a three-week taper after your last long run. This article summarizes much of the best advice about a marathon taper.
You don’t stop running when you taper, or even stop running hard. You simply aim to reduce the long, fatiguing workouts in your program. You continue to do tempo runs or even speedwork, but you make them shorter and/or do fewer repeats.
The idea is to keep the legs and cardio system accustomed to race pace while allowing the body to freshen up with less volume. As coach Jason Karp says: “You want to decrease fatigue without losing fitness.”
Also, stop strength training 2 weeks before your marathon. Aim for totally recovered legs on marathon day.
Research also indicates that you’ll fare better if you follow a detailed, written taper plan. In other words, don’t taper haphazardly. Have a plan for every day, and follow that plan.
As for reductions in days of running and weekly mileage, a good rule of thumb is to maintain days, but reduce mileage by 25 percent for each of the 3 weeks. If your highest week (probably during that last long run) was 40 miles, reduce the following weeks to 30, 22, and 16. But continue running the same number of days each week. Your body will appreciate the consistency. More at Marathon Handbook.
What To Drink For Long Life (And What NOT To Drink)
Runners drink more than non runners. I don’t mean alcohol, though that could also be true. But one way or another, we drink more water, tea, coffee, juice, sports drinks, etc, to replace the sometimes-large amounts of sweat we lose during regular training.
So it’s interesting to us to know how daily consumption of certain beverages correlates with cardiovascular (heart) mortality in humans. This paper investigated that question with regard to 6 common beverages: 1) tea; 2) coffee; 3) sugar sweetened or artificially sweetened drinks; 4) alcohol; 5) fruit juice; and 6) energy drinks.
Most previous studies of this kind have ooked at beverage consumption during just one specific time-point in subjects' lives. This systematic review and meta-analysis (with free full text) differed in only considering “prospective studies that recorded beverage consumption at more than one time.” Hence the researchers call it a report on “long term” beverage consumption.
Results: Tea was the best overall beverage for males and females combined; it reduced cardiovascular mortality by 19%. Coffee gave men a substantial mortality advantage, but the same was not true for women. This difference could be caused by the relatively small number of studies with women.
Sugar-sweetened beverages increased mortality by 31%. There was no clear effect from artificially sweetened beverages. Alcohol was linked to higher CVD mortality and stroke risk in both males and females.
With regard to energy drinks and fruit juice, the researchers were unable to draw a conclusion “owing to the limited number of studies available.”
The present paper did not look at basic water consumption, per se. However, another recent study found that total water intake “was associated with lower mortality risks” overall. This probably resulted from the fact that increased hydration is linked to “lower blood pressure, increased body temperature, diluted blood waste materials, and protected kidney function.” More at Frontiers in Nutrition with free full text.
Unlock The Power Of Self Massage For Your Leg Muscles
If you don’t own a massage gun, and don’t enjoy commiting time and funds to a massage therapist, you can still use self massage for those battered leg muscles. If you do, you’ll likely have more success with certain leg muscles, and less success with others.
We know this from a new systematic review and meta analysis titled “Self-Massage Acute Effects on Pressure Pain Threshold, Muscular Electrical Activity, and Muscle Force Production.”
The paper investigated 5 previous studies of self massage (SM) and pain threshold, 7 studies of SM and electrical activity in the thigh muscles, and 15 on lower leg strength after SM.
Result: Self massage worked well to reduce pain in the quadriceps muscle group, and also helped the quads regain strength. However, SM was not useful for the hamstrings or the lower legs muscles that contribute to plantar flexion.
Also, “self massage pressure volume application seems to be a determining factor.” You might have to press down hard, and do many massage repeats. More at J of Strength & Conditioning Research.
The Truth About Sleep And Performance
Since sleep is a key component of good recovery from hard training, you’d think the best athletes would also be good sleepers. But that’s not necessarily the case, according to a new report on sleep habits of 1600 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
In fact, nearly 40 percent of them reported “poor sleep” in the International J of Sports Physiology & Performance. This caused Alex Hutchinson to wonder the following in his Outside Online column:
Does it mean that Olympians have a lot of room for improved performance if they can develop better sleep habits? Or does it mean that sleep isn’t quite as important as all the articles we read?
Those are the right questions, and Hutchinson has a solid answer. Sleep is important, but it’s probably not worth “relentless self-optimization.” One sleep expert told him, “If you get what you need, that’s as good as it gets.”
On the other hand, if you’re competing in an ultra-endurance event that requires one or more nights of sleep deprivation, you should focus hard on your pre-competition sleep. That’s the conclusion from a new paper that investigated sleep and performance of 15 runners who competed in one of those “Backyard Ultras” where you have to run a 4.167-mile loop every hour for as many hours as you can.
The results showed--are you ready for this?--that running through the night and beyond does indeed “impair cognitive performance.” Not exactly a big surprise.
But it also yielded another “novel finding.” The runners who reported good sleep quality in the week before the competition suffered “a smaller decline in cognitive performance” than those who hadn’t slept so well. You could think of this is carb loading for the brain.
The paper didn’t say anything about the race results, so we don’t know if less cognitive decline produced better endurance performance. But that would seem reasonable. More at PLoS One.
Hey, Look: Some Positive News About Negative Heels
Many runners experience knee pain of some kind during their training and racing through the years/decades. So of course we would like to find a relatively simple solution that could provide relief. And also to allow for continued training.
This study tested the value of negative drop shoes for runners with knee pain. Most shoes have a raised heel. In other words, the shoe has more cushioning material under the heel than under the forefeet. Typically, the heel is 6 to 10 millimeters higher than the toes. This is called the “heel-toe drop.”
But shoes can also have a negative heel drop, meaning that the toes are higher than the heels. In this case, 16 runners with knee pain were tested while wearing a shoe with a 5 millimeter heel-toe differential, and another pair of shoes with a minus 11mm drop. The research team measured various forces and biomechanics, and also asked the runners to report their perceived pain in the two shoes.
Some things changed from one shoe to the next, and some didn’t. Reported pain was one of the unchanged measures. The researchers nonetheless noted that, “Compared to positive heel running shoes, running in negative heel shoes decreased the foot inclination angle of knee-pain runners.” This in turn led to lower peak forces at the knee.
Conclusion: Running in negative drop shoes “may decrease patellofemoral joint loading, thus reducing the possibility of further development of PFP.” Other studies have shown that changing your footstrike from a rearfoot to a forefoot/midfoot strike could also reduce knee-pain issues. Negative drop shoes are one way to assist his footstrike change. More at J of Foot & Ankle Research with free full text.
Heatstroke--A Runner Fear Factor That’s Not Easy To “See”
Running and heat-stress experts from the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute have spent many years studying heat-related issues at the Falmouth Road Race on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, every August. Temperature and humidity are often high at Falmouth, and there have been notable heat stroke cases over the years.
Decades ago, the Korey Stringer researchers helped develop the best road-race treatment for runners with heatstroke: Toss them in a plastic play pool filled with ice water.
There remain other areas of running and heat illness worth studying, and this new paper describes one. It’s notable for 2 reasons: 1) the runners used several very different digital devices; and 2) the researchers did not find what they were expecting.
First, the runners. Before the race, 20 runners (half female, average age 48) swallowed an “ingestible thermistor” to measure their internal body temperature. They also wore sensors that recorded various “biomechanical assessments” during the race.
The folks from Korey Stringer hypothesized that if runners’ body temperature increased, they would also suffer from notable changes in biomechanics. In other words, you could perhaps spot a heat-threatened runner by his/her running form near the end. This would help medics identify and treat those runners quickly.
Result: Over the course of the 7.1-mile Falmouth race in 2022, runner body temperatures increased significantly, and runner biomechanics changed significantly. But the two were not related. Thus, the researchers had to reject their hypothesis.
Conclusion: Changes in body temperature are most closely aligned to heat and humidity. Biomechanical changes, on the other hand, are most likely aligned with muscular fatigue after running a long distance.
Clinical recommendation: Medical personnel at a road race finish line can “not expect changes in biomechanical movement patterns to signal thermal responses.” More at Sports Health.
RLRH note: Of course, gross changes in movement (wobbling, staggering, collapsing) may indicate significant heat distress, and such runners should be evaluated immediately at the finish.
The Mysterious (But Super Important) Science Behind Endurance “Durability”
There’s an exciting race being contested in the running-science Olympics. That’s not an actual event, of course … but I think you get the idea. Researchers are just as eager to make breakthroughs as marathon runners.
The current competition focuses on muscle “durability”--also called “fatigue resistance.” Endurance experts now believe it’s a real thing, and they’re hoping to understand it better.
Here’s how muscle durability works. No one runs very fast at the end of a marathon. For example, Eliud Kipchoge has a best mile time of 3:50. But in the last 6 miles of a marathon, he’s happy if he can hold a 4:35 pace.
Kipchoge’s got plenty enough speed for that. The question is: Can his leg muscles still manage 4:35 pace after 20 miles? That will depend on his muscle durability.
Durability also comes into play in super-shoe discussions. Some believe super shoes have improved marathon times by increasing fatigue-resistance. In other words, they prevent the leg muscles from getting torn up so badly after 20 miles.
Okay, sorry for the long intro. Here’s why. A new paper has become one of the first, if not the first, to “prove” that durability exists as a muscle function. That’s a nice step forward. However, it was unable to identify how durability works.
Here’s how the research was structured. Thirteen well trained cyclists performed a 5-minute time trial on two separate occasions: once while fresh, once after completing a 2.5-hour bike ride at moderate intensity. After each time trial, they “donated” a small chunk of quadriceps muscle for biopsy.
First finding: The cyclists performed significantly worse at the time trail after the 2.5-hour ride. You’re thinking: Doh. But this did at least show a loss of “durability,” which was an important first step.
Second finding: The researchers couldn’t identify anything in the biopsy to explain the durability difference. They looked at several amino acids and enzymes in the muscle, but … nada.
Importantly, they were able to rule out increased fax oxidation as an explanation. This has often been used to explain outstanding endurance performance, particularly by women athletes.
So here’s what we’ve got. Yes, durability is a real thing. And It’s apparently not a result of fat-burning differences. We don’t know what the underlying factors are yet.
So the running-science Olympics will continue to seek podium winners in this new event. More at European J of Applied Physiology with free full text.
How to Fight Harassment Against Women Runners
We will have many reminders this year that it’s the 40th anniversary of Joan Benoit’s epic win in the first women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984. And here’s a big and insightful, anecdotal update on her, along with Nike’s plans to relaunch a Women’s Race Series in 2025. (I wonder why they mistimed the relaunch by a year?)
Something more important began 10 years later, roughly coincident with Oprah Winfrey completing the Marine Corps Marathon (4:29:20) in 1994.
That’s when the women’s running boom began in earnest--about 30 years ago. That social-cultural phenomenon--women discovering the pleasures, benefits, and competitive challenges of running--is the biggest and best thing that has ever happened in running.
It is also, if we are honest, fraught with potential issues. There are greater eating disorder rates among runners, especially those during the key teen years and early 20s when they need to maximize bone growth; possibly greater injury rates due to female anatomy; and, of course, harassment and worse on the run.
Women face far greater safety problems than men, as was recently clarified by a paper titled “Public Harassment of Runners in the United States: Differences by Gender and Sexual Orientation.” The outcomes were based on questionnaire responses from more than 1600 runners, “primarily cisgender women.”
Result: “Most participants (84.2%) reported at least one form of harassment while running.” It was no surprise that cisgender women reported more fear and had to make more behavioral changes than cisgender men. Also, “sexual minority cisgender women” runners, including LGBQ+ runners, “reported significantly more lifetime and past-year harassment than straight cisgender women.”
Conclusion: “This study, the largest investigation of harassment among runners, highlights the need for prevention campaigns to make public spaces safer for all runners.” No doubt.
Women can also help themselves by running defensively. In fact, they must. This isn’t a case of blaming the victim. It’s just common sense, and common safety. Whenever possible, women should run with others, avoid darkness, gravitate to heavily-trafficked parks, trails, and neighborhoods, and stay away from remote locations. More at Psychology of Women Quarterly.
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