training for their first marathon, the long run might start in the 10- or 12-mile range and gradually progress over several months to distances approaching 20 miles.Also, some race experience at the 10-mile and half-marathon distances can serve as dress

1.041 50 1.128 60 1.222 70 1.324 80 1.494 Click here to use Ray Fair's age-and-pace calculator

crashed. He now believes he did too many hard 20-milers in the heat. "I was exhausted from the first step of the marathon," he says. He finished 15th in 2:14:19.HydrationEveryone knows drinking fluids is supposed to help you run faster. But you have

this first-hand on a 1998 trip to Kenya. One morning, I joined a handful of marathon runners who were being coached by Dr Gabriella Rosa as they tackled the infamous Fluorspar Hill that rises nearly 4000ft in 13 miles.I managed to hang on for only 10 minutes

’m hovering around 108,000. That distant October turned out to have been my only serious encounter with runner’s high. It might have been vivid, but it hasn’t happened again. By my maths, this means I have experienced the rush on 0.00185 per cent of all my

medicine groups, which have generally advised endurance athletes to drink 600ml to 1,200ml per hour. This is more or less where things stood before the NEJM publication last spring. A trio of triggersAfter the NEJM article appeared on 14 April, I waited a

the gym, where no one would see me collapse after single-digit press ups and pull ups. The running went better, though I found the 15 minutes at 10K pace rather monotonous. My heart rate climbed to 159, about 88 per cent of my maximum.The Progressive

15 to 20 minutes after your workout. Don’t dilly dally.Having won the post-training skirmish, John Ivy moved into the big war zone. In 2003, he published a performance study that argued for C+P while you exercise. He gave his subjects a three

was already a marathon runner, and most of my runs were long and slow. My cross-country conqueror took a different tack. He focused on hard 1,200m intervals, subjecting his muscles to the kind of stress he’d face in competition. At times he also ran 400m

of the participants running a 62-mile race consumed 14,000 millilitres of liquid; another who ran only 26 miles, drank only 280 millilitres. The latter runner, not surprisingly, showed the most loss of vascular fluid, resulting in thickened blood plasma and impaired