As a resident of Western Pennsylvania, my local birdcage liner included separate fold-out coverage of the Pittsburgh Marathon today – won, of course, by a couple of Africans with unpronounceable names, male and female, as it is every year.
Like climbing Mount Everest, running a marathon is a significant accomplishment that is best left undone. In fact, all things considered, it’s kind of a dumb thing to do.
First, you have to look at the conditioning aspect of training for, and running, a marathon. Running does NOTHING for muscular strength anywhere on your body – not even your legs. The leg muscles do not get stronger by repeating the same motion over and over millions of times. It is like doing 10,000 repetitions of a bicep curl with a 5-pound dumbbell. The first time you pick up a 10 pound dumbbell you are over-matched. Furthermore, over-conditioning the legs causes the upper body muscles to atrophy. A quick look at a group of world-class marathoners shows how withered and pathetic their upper bodies are. Compare that with sprinters, for whom body development is total.
But the hope is that running a marathon will condition your heart and lungs, eh? Not so much. It has long been known that the best conditioning for cardiovascular fitness is INTERVAL training, not long-distance training at the same level of intensity for hours on end. Here in Pittsburgh, most running involves hill training by necessity, so there is some interval-like training, but basically marathon running is not really so great for your heart and lungs. Competitive marathoners do interval training in preparation for races, but for the average person who is just keen to complete a marathon, it’s all about distance and endurance…and that is OK, but not great for your heart.
Running long distances places a terrible burden on all sorts of lower-body bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments, especially the feet, knees, ankles, and hips. Women are also vulnerable to long-term deterioration (and movement) of reproductive organs due to running. I personally had prostate problems much earlier than I would have due to running…problems that involved BPH symptoms with no indication of disease. Like smokers, there are far more EX-distance runners in the U.S. than there are distance runners, since most rational people eventually stop doing things that are harming them. But until you get into your 40’s and start experiencing the constant injuries you just laugh it off.
And you can’t ignore the time involved in training for and running a marathon. If you have that much time to devote to physical conditioning, there are scores of other combinations of activities that can do much more to enhance your conditioning and appearance than pounding out the miles on the road or treadmill. You can get a great interval workout in 20 minutes, and half an hour is sufficient for a great weightlifting or machine workout, so your entire workout is less than an hour – and it’s a far better workout overall than running for an hour.
Running burns calories, that’s for sure, but not a lot of them. For most humans you are looking at 35 miles of running to burn a pound’s equivalent in calories – and that’s assuming your calorie intake doesn’t increase because of the exertion.
Other than as children at play, humans evolved to run under only two circumstances: when running after prey, and when running to escape a predator. In both cases, the running is at maximum speed for short distances. Distance running as part of the culture (as in parts of Africa) did not occur until we were fully evolved. Distance running ain’t for humans.
So pat yourself on the back if you have trained for, and run a marathon. But if HEALTH is the objective, do a little research and shift to a healthier fitness regimen, where interval training replaces most of the running and the upper body is not totally neglected.
Like climbing Mount Everest, running a marathon is a significant accomplishment that is best left undone. In fact, all things considered, it’s kind of a dumb thing to do.
First, you have to look at the conditioning aspect of training for, and running, a marathon. Running does NOTHING for muscular strength anywhere on your body – not even your legs. The leg muscles do not get stronger by repeating the same motion over and over millions of times. It is like doing 10,000 repetitions of a bicep curl with a 5-pound dumbbell. The first time you pick up a 10 pound dumbbell you are over-matched. Furthermore, over-conditioning the legs causes the upper body muscles to atrophy. A quick look at a group of world-class marathoners shows how withered and pathetic their upper bodies are. Compare that with sprinters, for whom body development is total.
But the hope is that running a marathon will condition your heart and lungs, eh? Not so much. It has long been known that the best conditioning for cardiovascular fitness is INTERVAL training, not long-distance training at the same level of intensity for hours on end. Here in Pittsburgh, most running involves hill training by necessity, so there is some interval-like training, but basically marathon running is not really so great for your heart and lungs. Competitive marathoners do interval training in preparation for races, but for the average person who is just keen to complete a marathon, it’s all about distance and endurance…and that is OK, but not great for your heart.
Running long distances places a terrible burden on all sorts of lower-body bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments, especially the feet, knees, ankles, and hips. Women are also vulnerable to long-term deterioration (and movement) of reproductive organs due to running. I personally had prostate problems much earlier than I would have due to running…problems that involved BPH symptoms with no indication of disease. Like smokers, there are far more EX-distance runners in the U.S. than there are distance runners, since most rational people eventually stop doing things that are harming them. But until you get into your 40’s and start experiencing the constant injuries you just laugh it off.
And you can’t ignore the time involved in training for and running a marathon. If you have that much time to devote to physical conditioning, there are scores of other combinations of activities that can do much more to enhance your conditioning and appearance than pounding out the miles on the road or treadmill. You can get a great interval workout in 20 minutes, and half an hour is sufficient for a great weightlifting or machine workout, so your entire workout is less than an hour – and it’s a far better workout overall than running for an hour.
Running burns calories, that’s for sure, but not a lot of them. For most humans you are looking at 35 miles of running to burn a pound’s equivalent in calories – and that’s assuming your calorie intake doesn’t increase because of the exertion.
Other than as children at play, humans evolved to run under only two circumstances: when running after prey, and when running to escape a predator. In both cases, the running is at maximum speed for short distances. Distance running as part of the culture (as in parts of Africa) did not occur until we were fully evolved. Distance running ain’t for humans.
So pat yourself on the back if you have trained for, and run a marathon. But if HEALTH is the objective, do a little research and shift to a healthier fitness regimen, where interval training replaces most of the running and the upper body is not totally neglected.
