on the back of an envelope. In 1886 a British man, Walter George, ran a 4:12.8 mile. The mile record dropped by a little more than 13 seconds in the 68 years leading up to Bannister's 3:59.4. In the 50 years since Bannister, the record has dropped another 16.3

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

training on Thursdays and a long run on Sundays. For interval repetitions, he runs 12 x 400 metres or 6 x 800 metres at slightly faster than his 5K race pace. On tempo days, he runs four miles at a pace that’s 10-20 seconds per mile slower than 10K race

, plus 20 to 40 seconds per mile, or your 10K race pace, plus 10 to 20 seconds. (Both formulas should result in about the same pace.) Most top coaches believe you should regularly do 20- to 40-minute runs at your LT pace; these sessions are commonly

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

. If your BMI drops below 18.5, you're at risk of becoming weaker and slower. WEIGHT LOST 5K 10K HALF-MARATHON MARATHON 900g 12.4 secs 25 secs 52 secs 1:45 2.3kg 31 secs 1:02 2:11 4:22 4.5kg

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

Even though I’ve been reading up on hyponatremia for almost 20 years, I was surprised last April by The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Five days before the Boston Marathon, it published research showing 13 per cent of the 2002 field might

’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

’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