Discovered at last! Secrets of marathon training
For the last decade, Irish big-data mathematician Barry Smyth has been analyzing very large runner data sets obtained from Strava. From the beginning, he has been zigging and zagging his way toward the ultimate goal — to derive an interactive marathon training app.
Look at it this way: If 500,000 marathoners have trained in a certain way with a certain result, you’d be silly to ignore their proven path. Nothing is guaranteed, but this ought to be a better system than blindly following “cookie cutter” Internet programs. It might even be better than your result from a personalized coach. After all, no coaches have 500,000 marathon training programs and finish performances in their experience.
Smyth and colleagues are now very close to their goal. In thei newest paper, they even tease what the app might look like. Before releasing it, however, they want to do additional “prospective” testing and more fine-tuning of the user interface.
Here’s what you want to know about the app. First, the 500,000 results include about 6000 females. Participants had an average age of about 40 and an average marathon finish time of 4:00 (men) and 4:24 (women). Of course, with 500,000 results, there are also plenty of younger, faster runners and older, slower runners to base outcomes on.
And here’s how the app works. It begins by asking you for the date of your upcoming marathon, and the time you hope to run. This info is used to generate your training program. Then, as your training progresses, it gives you a simple weekly report that explains if you’re on target, lagging behind, or getting too far ahead of yourself.
The next move is yours. If you’re behind or ahead of schedule, you can make appropriate changes that the app will convert to training suggestions. It will tell you to run more or less, and faster or slower. Basically, you get hand-holding every week, and renewed confidence about where your training is taking you.
Through their big-data analysis, the Irish researchers have found that training pace is the most important factor in finish-time prediction, followed by total weekly distance, followed by appropriate recovery. They hope to eventually include heart-rate and injury data, as well other data that runners regularly report to Strava. But for now, they’re basing everything on the most-common runner metrics: How far should you run, and at what pace? More at User Modeling & User-Adapted Interaction with free full text.
Lose 2 pounds, run 4% faster
This week I carefully read the full print publication of Louise Burke’s study on the performance effects of a deep 9-day diet period on elite race walkers. They lost about 4.5 pounds during this time, but it didn’t improve their performance vs a control group. (RLRH first reported this from a preprint back in March.)
The outcome surprised me. I would have expected a performance gain for the weight-losing group. The experimenters themselves hypothesized “similar (or even superior) benefits” for the group.
On rereading the study this week, I noticed something I had missed before: The control group also lost weight, though not as much as the deep calorie cutting group. So the results weren’t really weight loss vs weight maintenance, but rather weight loss A vs weight loss B.
Here are the specifics. Prior to entering the experimental period, both groups of hard-training walkers were consuming about 4700 calories a day. During the trial, Group A group dropped to 3660 cals/day, and Group B to 2170 cals/day. All had raced a 10K time trial prior to changing their diets. The walkers had an average BMI around 21.0, so they weren’t carrying any extra weight.
Over the next 9 days, Group A lost 2 lbs, all fat. Group B lost 4.4 lbs, including 3.5 lbs of fat, the rest from muscle. Group B reported feeling lousy on the low-cal diet, but they got through it. The researchers noted, in a telling aside, that some appeared to complete their training sessions only because they knew their meals would be adjusted downward if their training also decreased.
After the 9-day diet period, all subjects were allowed to carbo load for 24 hours prior to a final 10K time trial. In that 10K, the Group A walkers improved their time by 4.5% and the Group B walkers by 3.5%. These differences were not statistically significant. Note, however, that both are greater than the effect of super shoes on running performance (about 2 to 3%), and represent improvements any walker/runner would be thrilled to achieve.
Conclusion: “Highly trained endurance athletes were able to achieve a small weight loss” that led to “an improvement in race performance equivalent to a cohort that had done the same training with high energy and carbohydrate availability.” [My note: But not high enough to maintain their weight.]
The authors also commented on “the puzzling lack of investigation” of various dietary-weight regimens “despite the overwhelming evidence of such practices among high-performance athletes.” Like the authors, I hope we’ll see more studies like this in the future.
For now, this one seems to show that some degree of dietary restriction before a big race produces a small weight loss and an improvement in performance. But more restriction and weight loss is not better. More at Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise with free full text.
Who’s got the best training program?
Trail running coach and podcaster David Roche has written a 2700-word summary of the history and evolution of training theory. He mostly covers the period from Roger Bannister onward, and he omits Jack Daniels, a personal favorite training theorist who will celebrate his 90th birthday at the end of the month. Still Roche covers a lot of territory, and it’s an interesting and informative read.
Roger Bannister did all interval training all the time, with a high week reaching just to 30 miles and many weeks at about 15 miles or so. Before him Emil Zatopek won Olympic gold medals in the 5000, 10,000 and marathon with fierce interval sessions that still sound amazing today. He also said, “Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to learn to run fast.”
A little more than a decade later Arthur Lydiard was pushing great 800m runners like Peter Snell to cover 100 miles a week in training. Much of this mega-mileage had to be relatively slow. There you have the extremes, Zatopek to Lydiard, in 10 years time.
Since Lydiard and Snell, there have been essentially no low-mileage advocates. Everyone believes in one form or another of high-mileage training. The differences between systems are usually too small to amount to anything significant, though we continue to be fascinated by various tweaks. This includes the lactate testing currently done by Norwegians on their occasional double-threshold days.
Roche invokes Moore’s Law about the doubling of computer power every 2 years in proposing that we are at a similar point with training systems. “I think we can expect non-linear growth in endurance training theory.” I’m not so sure about that, at least not if he expects non-linear improvements in world-record times..
We are certainly seeing an explosion of scientific testing and mobile apps that are supposed to revolutionize our thinking and training. And there’s no doubt that faster shoes, better nutrition, and more attention to stress/sleep/recovery have made a big difference.
But the question in front of us is: Have evolved training programs also contributed? Will they get better than the Arthur Lydiard approach? That remains to be shown. More at Trail Runner.
Talk to yourself, and run faster
Suppose that, on your next run, a team of sports scientists followed you, and encouraged you to verbalize every thought that came to mind as you were running. They’d keep saying, “Think aloud. Think aloud.” And of course they would record and later analyze what you said.
The results would show how different types of runners react to their running and the accompanying fatigue. For example, slower, more recreational runners would likely try to distract themselves from the process of running. At the other end of the competitive scale, faster, better trained runners would use “active self regulation” like “motivational self talk” to actually influence their running.
A few “Think aloud” examples from recreational runners (running a 5K at 90% of their max pace on a laboratory treadmill): “Miserable day outside today.” Or: “I think I’ll just keep to this pace for a bit.”
The well trained sound different. More like: “Make the second half count. Last K smash it out. Keep going.“ Or: “Keep those arms swinging, keep the cadence going. Look up.”
In general, “less experienced runners focused on internal sensations.” The better trained runners used “motivational and form-based cognitive control to impact performance.”
Conclusion: “It is not just exposure to running that develops effective psychological skills, but type of training background appears critical.” Those wishing “to develop effective cognitive strategies” should practice self talk during harder and/or longer sessions because it can “have a positive impact on physiological responses and perceptions of effort during running.” More at International J of Sport & Exercise Physiology with free full text.
4 simple but effective core exercises to improve your running
Here’s a great Twitter page with four easy-to-follow videos embedded. Just scroll slowly down the
page and the videos automatically begin playing. Best of all, these are core exercises that are actually doable by normal human beings. You don’t have to be a superhero.
I didn’t know that the plank is more effective when you actively tense all muscles while doing it.
I’ve added that small additional factor to my normal plank routine. If you’re not already doing much core work, this is a great place to start. More at Twitter/Dan Go.
For more explanation about the benefits of core training for runners, as well as additional exercises, check out this article at Sport Coaching.
Why you should avoid NSAIDS if possible
You’ve heard it before. Now the evidence grows stronger. Yes, NSAIDs like ibuprofen and naproxen sodium can mask muscle/joint pains. But, no, you don’t do your body any favors when you use NSAIDs for this purpose.
That’s the conclusion of a systematic review and meta analysis of NSAID use by subjects doing strength or endurance training. The effects were analyzed immediately after exercise, 24 hours later, and 48 hours later (the peak DOMS period — Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). In fact, NSAIDs proved “ergolytic” (performance-reducing) at the 48-hour period.
Conclusion: “NSAID use is ineffective in improving resistance performance and muscle strength, as well as exercise recovery.” The researchers recommend that athletes should not rely on “analgesic drugs as an endurance performance enhancer or as a muscle anabolic.” More at The Physician & Sportsmedicine.
Marathoners have larger hippocampal brain region
The hippocampus is the area of the brain considered crucial to learning and memory. The bigger, the better, which also offers some protection against Alzheimers. Here researchers used MRI imaging to compare hippocampus volume in 73 recreational marathon runners vs 52 healthy, matched controls.
Result: “We reported larger volumes of specific hippocampal subfields in the amateur marathon runners, which may provide a hippocampal volumetric reserve that protects against age-related hippocampal deterioration.” Okay, I guess it’s time to sign up for my next marathon. More at Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Wait … There’s an argument against “listening to your body?”
The familiar runner refrain, “Listen to your body,” has been passed along from runner to magazine article to book to web video about a billion times since Dr. George Sheehan first expressed it in the late 1970s. And I’m responsible for about a half-billion of those pass-alongs.
Now, however, a surprising article from an unexpected source, The New Yorker, cautions us not to be too literal about our listening. It turns out there’s a technical name for such body monitoring — interoception, or “sixth sense” as it is sometimes labeled.
According to The New Yorker article, interoception isn’t universally good or helpful. For example, people who are too deeply tuned into their bodies may suffer from anxiety and depression. Also, one psychiatrist is investigating if eating disorders arise from “interoceptive mistranslation.”
While some interoception can be helpful, you also have to be listening to the environment around you — the weather, the season of the year, your friends, your blood pressure, your cholesterol, etc.
That is, you should be listening to many forms of feedback. “You don’t want to be focused too much on your body,” says one neuroscientist-researcher in the field. “You want to be focused on the world.
More at The New Yorker.
SHORT STUFF you don’t want to miss
GREAT QUOTES make great training partners
“Sweat is the lubricant of success.”
— Lord Byron