coach reedy’s Sydney marathon musings

Reviewing athlete data from marathon day some quick points I thought might be worth considering ….

1) In the super shoe era, it’s interesting how the trampoline shoes really extend stride length especially on downhills compared to your stride length in training shoes. Check out your stride length compared to training shoes if you have that data and you’ll see the difference is substantial. This can contribute a lot to muscular break down early on if the bounce and launch is not controlled with a higher cadence.

2) Very fit triathletes are rarely limited by their aerobic capacity in marathon events. Muscular durability/resilience is the real challenge.

If you’re training for cycling and swimming it’s tough to fit in the same amount of kms as a dedicated marathoner. The aerobic cross training means many triathletes get a lot more hourly volume (without injury) leading to excellent aerobic conditioning however, the downside is the lack of running miles can lead to less-than-optimal muscular resilience.

For any athletes who felt like they fell apart on the marathon due to quad break down, please take heart. It’s very easy to build muscular resilience over 4-6 weeks while it’s very hard to lift aerobic capacity by anything meaningful over that time.   So, if your aerobic capacity was not a limiter then you can change /tweak a few things for your next marathon and you could have a very different experience.

3) I’m always fascinated, as a broad generalisation by how both triathletes/runners give little thought or attention to the details around their hydration and fuelling in a marathon event but will do so for 70.3 and/or Ironman event. In a half marathon, I get it. Most fit athletes can take on very little and finish at moderate depletion before the point of serious performance impairment. For a full marathon however, especially on a warmer day, basic physiology cannot be defeated and anyone running at more than 2% dehydration for too long and/or under fuelling (unless you’re running sub 2 hours in cool conditions) and you get these details wrong, you can pace perfectly but still be well short of your potential.