An evidence-based approach to Victory

"The will to win means nothing if you haven't the will to prepare."

Juma Ikangaa, 1989 NYC Marathon winner

I often find myself justifying too far back. When I started writing this post I ended up backtracking through my own reasoning to a point where I had to justify the use of evidence. I shall take the utility of evidence to be self-evident.

So, I know there are some tried-and-tested methods for preparing to marathon.

I have only experienced a half-marathon and my immediate training was negligible (starting less than a month in advance, and consisting of 9 progressively longer runs); my fitness level was relatively high after running with periods of some intensity for the previous 18 months.

The suggested training plans on MapMyRun (the app is the way I record all my workouts) involve 12 weeks of either 16-42 or 35-52 miles per week, for beginners or intermediates respectively. A variety of different running distances and speeds combined with workout days and days off make these schemes rather complicated. If there is one thing I can not be bother with, it's a complicated training plan.

In terms of real scientific evidence, I have previously found information of good training practice (specifically the benefits, or otherwise, of barefoot running) pretty hard to find. That which I could locate was questionable due to funding coming from vested companies (I seem to remember it was a Nike-funded study discovering how great barefoot running is prior to the release of Nike barefoot running shoes).

If I'm honest with myself, I think there is probably a wealth of information out there. It's just in the daunting form of gargantuan databases of papers with contrasting ideas of minute and specialised aspects of running: basically tl;dr. Review papers are really the only way to go...

• Nutrition: This was the only abstract that pointed in the right vein in terms of nutritional information, I'll have to read the whole paper when I get back on uni intranet. In summary, eat carbs, drink water, caffeine might be helpful, other supplements are probably not. Not much that wasn't known already then.
• There are several papers on heart damage and the general consensus appears to be that it's too early to have any clear consensus. I take that to mean there is no obvious and startling connection between running and heart attacks. I think it's safe for me to assume I'll be ok as I am in a pretty low risk group for heart attacks as it is.
• Studies looking at other injuries don't give a lot that I could change beyond training well before an event to avoid muscle injury and, as far as I could glean from the abstract, the more you run the greater your risk of damaging your legs or possibly visa versa ("Among the modifiable risk factors studied, weekly distance is the strongest predictor of future injuries").

And that's about it for real evidence I could find. It may be the case that PubMed is not the place to go for this, I may try Web of Knowledge at a later date.

I think my best approach is to aim for common sense healthiness until I am about three months away from the big run when I can start taking training seriously. That should take me to... May/June.

Until then, let's us go with 10 miles a week and lots of gentle running; working out to build some muscle mass; not eating like an idiot; not smoking; not drinking too much too often (everything in moderation, including moderation).