pacing strategies affect race results. They asked 11 experienced female runners to run 5K on a treadmill to determine their average for the distance. The runners were then asked to run 5K again, but tackling the first 1.63K at different speeds: once

100m at race pace. CYCLE 20 minutes, checking gears, tyres etc.Evening RUN: 15 minutes with 3 x 30 seconds fast strides, alternating with 60 seconds recovery jog. Sun CYCLE: Warm-up: 10-15 minutes steady. Main: 1 hour 15 minutes easy spinning

hard, 1M easy; or speed session (eg 4 x 1K with 200m jog recoveries) RUN 1M easy, 3-4M hard, 1M easy; or speed session (eg 10-12 x 400m with 200m jog recoveries) RUN 1M easy, 4M fartlek, 1M easy Wed SWIM 16-20 x 1 length steady, with 10

© Getty Images The two Olympic marathons held last August in Beijing were literally races for the ages. Kenya's Samuel Wanjiru, then 21, broke more than an Olympic record with his 2:06:32 win; he crushed long-held conventional

pacing strategies affect race results. They asked 11 experienced female runners to run 5K on a treadmill to determine their average for the distance. The runners were then asked to run 5K again, but tackling the first 1.63K at different speeds: once

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