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

therapist and biomechanist Irene Davis from the University of Delaware's Running Injury Clinic. "Your threshold could be at 10 miles a week, or 100, but once you exceed it, you get injured." Various studies have identified injury thresholds at 11, 25, and 40

the key running muscles, joints and ligaments. Your easy pace is equivalent to your 5K race pace, plus 90 to 120 seconds per mile. (If you race 5Ks at eight-minute-mile pace, your EZ pace is 9:30 to 10:00-minute miles.)Run a weekly long run that amounts

't prevent injuries or improve performance, so there's no reason to do it. The time to do your stretching is after your run, or even later in the evening." Stretch (without straining) your calves, quads and hamstrings for a total of 10 to 15 minutes. Expect a

toward home. Two hours, nothing to it. When I want to increase my training prior to a marathon, I just add another 9/1 segment on the outbound trip. Now the session lasts two hours and 20 minutes, and I hardly notice the difference. Two weeks later, I do

miles 10 miles 5 10 x 400m 5 miles 14 miles 6 5 x 1200m 5 miles 15 miles 7 7 x 800m 8 miles 17 miles 8 3 x 1600m 10 miles 13 miles 9 12 x 400m 3 miles 18 miles

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

’s trying to make it around the block four times, as well as the 36-minute 10K runner who’s training for a first marathon with long runs that stretch to 12 miles, then 16, then 20.The gradual-adaptation principle is deeply rooted in human physiology, and has

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

the result.“I covered 18-23 miles in my long training runs,” says Strand, “and I did the last 9-14 miles at marathon pace or faster. That was much faster than my previous long-run efforts of 17-22 miles at whatever pace I felt like running.”This kind