Podcasts Health & Fitness Fitness The E=MC2 of running Marathon build up blues

Marathon build up blues

Published: Feb. 7, 2023, 8 p.m.

What happens when you are training for a marathon and you get injured or sick? I've often heard people say that it won't have a big impact on your overall performance in the marathon. But is this true? Maybe that's the case if you just need to take off a couple of days, but what about a week or two weeks? Is it OK to take this much time off from marathon training or will that actually impact on your finishing time?

A study by Feely et al looked at Strava data from 300,000 recreational runners. They found that about half of marathon runners had a break in their training. However, they were able to identify runners who had run at least 2 marathons, one with a break in training and one without to compare the impact of the break on the overall time achieved for the marathon. In this episode I look into what they found.