Marathon

Competitive Marathon runners are completely insane. I say this with the utmost respect, but the people who run Marathons professionally have a screw lose. In order to run well for any amount of distance you need to be as small as possible. Small is the wrong word, you need to be as light weight as possible. In running, much like Auto Racing, weight is the enemy, so in order to run at your peak performance at all times you must be as small as your body will allow you to be while maintaining a muscle structure that is still capable of running 3-5 hrs straight. These people, these marathon people, they have body fat percentages in the low single digits, I'm talking 3-6% body fat. An athletic and healthy male age 18-30 will have a body fat percentage around 10, where a female in the same position will be just around 20%. It is however, not uncommon to find perfectly healthy men around 15% and healthy women up are 25%. These people are not runners. Runners are light weight calorie burning machines. In a normal full Marathon, 26.2 miles, a 120lbs competitive male can burn as many as 3500 calories. 3500 calories in under 4 hours, 1/2 of which will come from fat storage while the second half comes from muscle and blood glucose (carbohydrates).

This sounds appealing at first, but when you really get down to it its kinda gross. Skinny gross.

This guy is Kenya's (and the worlds) top marathon runner, Paul Tergat. Tergat holds the world record for fastest marathon completion with a time of 2hrs 5 min and 44secs. 26.2 miles in 2 hrs is roughly 13mph. His competitive mile pace is under 5 min. In my life I have never run a 5 min mile, not one. The closest I have even been to that is a 06:20 when I was in 10th grade. Paul Tergat is a maniac, but this is what he does for a living, he runs marathons.

I am not a small person. I am also not a very big person. I, age 24, am 6 feet tall and weight (today) 167lbs. All my life I have had a body fat percentage of just above 5, my lowest calculated % was at the age of 17 were I was 3.6%. Today, January 2nd 2008, I may be at one of the highest fat percentages in my life, maybe 9%. I do not have a way to measure myself right now, but I promise to get a real number here very soon.
I am not doing this to lose weight. I do not have nor have ever thought myself to be a fat or an over weight person. I feel that I need to say that right away, this isn't about me getting skinny. These numbers are merely a point of reference, something to base future information off.

Because its a new year and because this is what you do for the new year, here is the goal:
June 21th, 2008 enter and finish the Grandma's marathon in Duluth MN.

I do not expect to win, in fact I really don't even expect to place in a conventional sense, I want to enter this race and finish in the time allowed while at the same time not coming in last. Any idiot can finish last. What I want to to prove that you don't need to be a lifelong runner and that 1000's of hours of training isn't necessary. I will build a run plan including many different lengths, tempos and time guild lines but have only 5 months to finish. The advantage I have over many people is that I am (rather have been) and athlete, so I'm not starting at the bottom. I have run before, but never more than 10-15 miles per week and in reality I only ran consecutive 15 mile weeks twice and since then its been more or less 5-7 miles a week.

So as the Bandit would say, I have a long way to go and a short time to get there, so just sit back and watch old 'runner' run.



"Running is a very simple thing, once you have shorts, a pair of running shoes, you are off - you can become a champion" world marathon record holder Paul Tergat