“Our goal is always to provide the best running experience possible for all participants,” said Kari Logan, Event Director of the Rock N Roll San Antonio marathon and half-marathon. “We believe changing the start location to downtown will be a positive one for both runners and the local community.”

From the start line, the new race route will travel east down Market Street, before circling past the historic Alamo. The course then heads up North St. Mary’s Street to McCullough Avenue then passing through the King William Historic District. Both the marathon, half-marathon and relay will finish in the same location as previous years, adjacent to the Alamodome.

The new Rock N Roll San Antonia Marathon course is available by clicking here.

Also added to the bill is a new half-marathon relay, in which the first participant will start the race in normal fashion, bringing a special drumstick baton to the relay exchange point located just after 7.5 miles. After the exchange, the second runner will take the drumstick the final 5 miles to the finish line. Both relay participants will receive a race technical tee shirt, relay medal and a commemorative Rock ‘n’ Roll drumstick race baton. Relay registration is open online at san-antonio.competitor.com and entry fees are $75 per relay participant.

“We know runners will enjoy starting in San Antonio’s beautiful downtown,” said Dr. Susan Blackwood, executive director of San Antonio Sports, the city’s nonprofit sports commission. “Our volunteers look forward to welcoming everyone to the heart of the Alamo City and with the new half-marathon relay it’s not too late to start training.”

November’s event will also include the return of the popular kids race, Kids Rock! Presented by the YMCA. The event is a non-timed, non-competitive, one-mile fun run for children in grades K-5. It will take place Saturday morning, November 13 at Brackenridge Park near the San Antonio Zoo. All participants will receive a medal, t-shirt and free admission to the zoo after the race.

Also new for the 2010 will is the event’s partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure® as the official benefiting charity. Through the Marathon for the Cure® program, runners and walkers can join the fight against breast cancer by participating in the marathon, half-marathon or relay. Susan G. Komen for the Cure will host a series of Marathon for the Cure training and interest meetings throughout the month of August in the San Antonio area.

The Rock N Roll San Antonio Marathon web-site is located at: www.san-antonio.competitor.com.

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On this week’s episode of the The Rungasm we’re joined by another guest. Tiffany Zook from Phoenix had just completed her training for a half-marathon when we taped this episode. Tiffany started from square one at the start of the season and you’ll hear some of her story.

Today we look at:
– what kind of expectations can you have when starting a marathon training program from scratch?
– what are the hardest parts of starting a new training program?
– How is a coaching or training program helpful?
– How important are goals and support systems in starting a new program from scratch?

Our video series comes to you every week with topics about running the marathon. We thank our guests over the next few weeks from the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans for participating in the taping and appearing on these episodes.

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Click here to link to our video series home page:

To visit our video pages with links to all of the episodes in our last two season, go to:
Season 1 Video Page

Season 2 Video Page

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I usually just sort of nod and say something like, “well, it’s part of my training.” But in truth, I really want to put one hand on each side of their head and shake them a little and then say, “it’s not the distance, it’s how hard you run it!”

I’m thinking about this, because I ran in another 5K race this weekend and once again got these same quizzical inquiries from neighbors and friends that we’re sorting of asking ‘why bother’ with all these short races that I’m doing. But there is something important here that you runners can get from hearing me explain the answer as it really should be explained to them.

Let’s take this particular 5K race. It was small race with just 500 runners. But in that race the top 29 runners broke 16:00, which is 5:08 minutes per mile. That’s really moving. In fact, the top 74 runners completed the 5K with an average pace of less than 6:00 per mile. That’s a lot of people that were pushing really, really hard. Now, let’s factor in that the temperature was 85 degrees during the race and that ratchets things up yet another notch. For those folks, there was nothing easy happening out there in that 5K.

It all depends on what you’re putting out there. If I were to go out and do the race as as a jog or a walk, I would certainly agree that this would fall into the “easy” category and maybe “why bother” would come up. Or there might be some other reason for doing that easy effort, say running with a friend to keep them company.

What it comes down to is that the closer that we run to our physical limits, the more difficult the effort — no matter what the distance.

Coach Dean and I debated this in one of my favorite episodes of our video series. The episode was called “The Pain Episode” and in it we debate which is the more painful of two distances: the mile or the marathon. One of the questions that Dean throws out is whether any of the people that show up at my track workouts ever “look forward” to running timed one mile efforts. The answer is a big ‘no’. People hate running timed miles. Why? Because they are hard. They’re hard, because of the intense effort that is going into them, even if they only last a few minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We also talk a lot about picking the right marathon pace and how all of our pace capabilities are linked. As the distance doubles, we often say, we slow down by a predicted amount. What underlies that theory is that we are pushing as hard as we can at each of those distances, meaning that we are putting out say 95% effort at 5K and 90% effort the 10K and so forth.

At each of those distances the pace is going to inflict a qualitatively different pain on you as a runner. In a short race such as the mile, the intensity (or pain) might come on earlier and last only a short period of time, but it may be extremely intense. In a marathon, the intensity may seem low for quite a long time and then — even keeping the pace the same — may really start to increase as we begin to fatigue. Then in the marathon we may get to savor that pain for quite awhile during the last 10K of the race — and maybe even a few days afterward. In both cases, when we’re running near our red-line for that particular distance, we’re going to have an experience that mirrors the level of intensity that we’re putting out.

So the next time someone quizzically asks you why you’re bothering to do a 5K or mile, you now have two choices. You can do what I often do and just tell them that its part of your training, or you can key them into a little secret. You, the runner, make the race hard by the amount that you put into it. It’s really the intensity, not the distance, that makes the difference.

Happy running!

Coach Joe English, Portland, Oregon USA
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After passing the first mile in 5:04, Vega, Scott Bauhs (Chico, Calif.) and James Carney (Boulder, Colo.), separated from the pack that included Hall, Ed Moran (Williamsburg, Va.) and Sean Quigley (Philadelphia, Pa.). As the leading trio approached the turnaround point, Vega held a small lead over Bauhs.

Shortly before four miles, Vega began to pull away from Bauhs and looked to be on his way to his second USA title of the year but Hall, Moran and Quigley were working together to pass Carney and were closing in on Bauhs.

Shortly after passing five miles in 23:42, Vega was caught and passed by Hall, who quickly opened a five meter gap. From there, Hall cruised down the Brady street hill for his first U.S. title since the 2008 Olympic Trials. Moran and Quigley also overtook Vega to finish second and third in 33:00 and 33:05 respectively. Vega held on for fourth in 33:08, while Carney took fifth in 33:21.

In the women’s race, local favorite Koll, became the first woman from Iowa to win the Bix 7 since 1981 as she cruised to a decisive win for her first U.S. road title. Amy Hastings (Flagstaff, Ariz.) took the runner-up position in 38:33 with Andrea Walkonen taking third in 38:43. Rounding out the top-five were Blake Russell (Pacific Grove, Calif.) and Lindsay Allen (Flagstaff, Ariz.) in 39:23 and 39:57.

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I just completed my 2nd 10k using Hal Higdon’s 10k novice training program. I’m now toying with the idea of a 1/2 marathon in October. I’ve downloaded Higdon’s 1/2 marathon novice program. I’m a bit perplexed as to why the longest run during the training is a 10 miler the week before the half. Does Hal really expect me to add essentially a 5k to my longest run ever? His intermediate program has training runs up to 12 miles, but there is also a ton of speed work and other “stuff” that I’m just not ready to incorporate.

Here’s my question: When you lovelies were training for your half, what was your longest run before the race and how did you feel moving from that distance to race distance? Also, how in the heck did you find time to train, what with kids and families and jobs and all that other crap?

Good questions Bari. In my answer here, I’ll try to explain how long your longest run should be to get ready for a half-marathon. I won’t try to answer the second part of your question regarding finding time to train, other than to say that we all have to be creative in making the time to train. When it comes to taking care of the kinds that may mean using a baby jogger, a day-care service at your gym or swapping babysitting duties with another runner so that you can each workout. It can be a real juggling act to get in those runs. But the bottom-line is that if you want to make your half-marathon happen, the most important part is finding time to do that training. I’m sure that you’ll find a lot more on the Sister Hood of the Shrinking Jeans about those topics.

What is the longest run needed to get ready for a half-marathon?
To answer the question of the longest run needed to get ready for a half-marathon, we first need to start with the type of runner and the amount of time available. I would split first-time half-marathoners into three groups: a) first timers with very little time to prepare, b) first timers with lots of time to prepare and c) more experienced runners who are stepping up to the half-marathon for the first time and want to be more competitive in their first race at the distance. There are some interesting nuances that come about when you separate runners into these three buckets, so let’s look at each.

First-timers / little time to prepare – Many people training for a half-marathon don’t have the luxury of a lot of time to get ready. If you’re starting from scratch as a runner and trying to get ready for a half-marathon in less than 12 weeks, then the plan has to perform a careful balancing act in trying to increase your distance slowly enough that you don’t get injured, but get in a run or two long-enough that allows you to safely complete the distance. A good progression of increasing the mileage of the longest run about one mile per week is usually safe for runners in a rush, although some runners may need a couple of weeks of very short runs at the start of the plan to get started at only 1 or 2 miles. What this means is that in these short time frames, sometimes a training plan will top out at 10 miles before a first half-marathon and this is normally enough to get the job done.

You ask in your question, “Does Hal really expect me to add 5K to my longest run (in my half-marathon)”? In essence, the answer to this part of your question is yes. Many training plans will include a fairly significant bump at the end when they are dealing with a very compressed time schedule. As an example, with full-marathoners – even when we have lots of time – we only train them to run 20 miles in training and then they have to bump up 10K in their first race. Your body can do this under the excitement of race day conditions and the strong desire that you’ll have to push through to the finish.

However, I do take issue with Hal Higdon’s plan, because it combines both the progressive increase in distance over the last few weeks of the plan and then doesn’t give you a rest week to recover from those increases. In plans similar to these that I’ve created, I usually have people peak their distance two weeks before the race, to give them a time to mentally and physically prepare for that jump in distance on race day.

If you’d like a plan that you can follow that I believe will be safer for you, visit the half-marathon training plan that I created for the June 2010 issue of SELF Magazine.

First-timers / lots of time to prepare – Now let’s have some fun talking about some other cases. In your question, you asked about the ladies of the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans and how much they did to prepare for their first half-marathon. With their group, we had lots of time to train. I believe we had at least 16 weeks or more for their training. In cases like theirs, I took their distance to 12 miles and had them run a number of 10 and 12 mile runs to be ready for the race. With this level of training, they were all confidently able to finish the race.

Time is really the key factor: more time for training can enable more long runs. In my thinking an optimal amount of long runs is two 10 milers and two 12 milers and then 1-2 weeks recovery before coming into the race. If you have that kind of time, you’ll have no problem finishing and you’ll have great confidence coming into the event.

Now you might be thinking, “why not run 13 miles in training then?” and this really the fun part. For first time half-marathoners, it would be little anti-climactic to run the full distance (or more in a race). You’d have to tell people, “well, I did 13 this weekend, so I guess I should be able to finish…” I think people like a little mystery at the first half-marathon. If you can run 12 miles, you can run 13.1. At one race a person who had run 13 miles in training asked, “I’ve done 13, do you think I can finish 13.1 miles today?” ‘Yes’, I told her.

One year, I accidentally mis-measured a course and sent a whole team of half-marathoners for a 14 mile run, instead of 12, before their race. Thankfully this was before the advent of distance monitoring devices, so none of them figured this out. They were all very happy when they finished their half-marathons and many of them even excitedly told me that it was, “easier than our last training run!” (It was shorter anyway!)

More competitive runners – If you’re a more confident and competitive runner, then with the half-marathon you have even greater opportunities to prepare for the distance. For those that don’t mind running longer in training than in the race itself – those for example who are on their way to training for a full-marathon anyway – I usually suggest at least one or two runs at 14 or 15 miles to prepare for the half-marathon. These runs would be done at a slower pace than their anticipated half-marathon goal pace, but this “over-distance training” is a huge mental advantage coming into a competition.

So the bottom-line here is this often comes down to the amount of time to prepare for your first half-marathon. My preference is that runners get in at least one run at the 12 mile distance and get at least one week rest after that long run before the half-marathon. But the amount of time available is a key factor here and you’ll be surprised by what the body can do when asked to perform under the conditions of a race.

Good luck in your training!

Coach Joe English, Portland, Oregon, USA
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On this week’s episode:
- We look into the respective sock drawers of Coach Joe and Coach Dean
- How do you choose a running sock?
- What different kinds of running socks are out there?
- What do your sock choices say about you?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to link to our video series home page:

To visit our video pages with links to all of the episodes in our last two season, go to:
Season 1 Video Page

Season 2 Video Page

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In a recent note from a friend named Kim, Kim told me about her experience with a disappointing result that has since given her even more resolve to work harder and try again. I saw Kim on the course three times and she describes the pain and agony of that race something like this:

Kim at Mile 3, Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon

There’s something to be said for being stubborn. Not that I’m advocating pushing through an injury or doing anything stupid, but marathons are often a test of wills. The test of wills starts with you setting a goal, having a picture about how the day is going to go, and then watching everything drop on the floor. It seems this test of wills is between you and God, because sometimes the roadblocks seem a little more than divinely placed in your path. It is only through your ability to persevere through these tests that your find a deeper meaning in completing your goal.

You may have missed your finish time and not had the day that you planned, but think about the great stories in your life that come from things not going as planned. I often tell the story of the time that I had to change my clothes, so I went into a bathroom to change and midway through I realized the hard way that I was in the women’s bathroom. Would I have asked to experience that humiliation? Not a chance. But it has become one of the most entertaining stories that you will ever hear me tell.

On the race course, the glorious flameouts are often the ones that breed the greatest stories. I tell the story of Ironman Arizona in which the sound that emanated from stomach right at mile 65 on the bike was loud enough to be heard by the guy on the bike behind me. That was the start of a very miserable battle with diarrhea that was won by me drinking enough water to stay hydrated that I then had to pee 25 times on the marathon course (once at every aid station). Again, one of the most educational stories that I can share with people in talking about the ways to deal with unexpected circumstances in races, but not the way I pictured the day or would have asked for it to go.

Sure, it’s nice to have a plan and watch it unfold exactly as scripted. But sometimes it’s just plain anti-climatic and it rarely happens anyway. The experiences that really teach us about ourselves are the ones that don’t go as planned and that pit us against the unexpected, the difficult, and the torturous.

Marathon running is really a mirror of life that gets encapsulated into a few short hours. We are running or walking down a long path and obstacles get thrown in our way. If we want to get to the finish-line, we have to adjust, compromise, learn and endure. It is through our perseverance – or shall we say stubborn bitchiness – that keep on the path and keep going when the going gets tough.

There is a saying – that Kim also quoted for me in her note – that “pain is required, suffering is optional.” I love the spirit in those words. The marathon is in some ways a hand-hewn torture test, designed to push us beyond our limits. Going beyond those limits out there at mile 22 is where we find a deeper meaning and the marathon really moves from being something we do to something we experience. Dwelling on the pain is a sure way to turn the marathon into a very negative experience. But feeling the pain, learning from it and stubbornly moving through it are exactly the ways that we turn the marathon into something more than a footrace.

So to Kim and all of the stubborn bitches out there – good on ya’. While an individual race may not go the way we plan and may turn into a big pile of pain, each race is just one step along a longer marathon path called life and each one becomes part of your collective marathon experience. Keep doing them. Keep trying and keep being a bitch. It will serve you well in this sport.

Coach Joe English, Portland Oregon, USA
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You see, my training has been going sort of up and down lately. I’ve been so busy that I’ve managed only a bare minimum of runs each week – perhaps three or four. The runs themselves have gone fine and I’ve been making sure to do the runs that count. So in a given week I make sure to do my speed work, a tempo run and a goal-paced run – but that’s about it. ‘No junk’ we often say on the blog and video series. Ain’t no junk here.

And the month of June was particularly killer in terms of travel. I spent three weekends coaching marathons, putting in an average of 35 miles – very slow miles – on each of those race days. That pretty much wrecked me and took away the time that I had for my own long runs.

So when I went into my most recent race, I really didn’t know what to expect. Usually I have a very specific plan, as we always encourage you to have. And having only done two goal paced 10-milers in preparation for this particular half-marathon, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was a little under-prepared. Or so I thought.

When I told Coach Dean about this race and described what happened, he said, “yep, that’s when breakthroughs happen. When you least expect them.” I’ll come back to that later.

Let me first emphasize something. Although I hadn’t been running a lot, I was doing all of the important stuff. I was turning out few miles, but turning them out at faster speeds than I’ve ever run. In fact my two 8 and 10 milers we all at personal best paces. But like I said, there wasn’t much more than that.

Race day
Starting line time and I’m surrounded by people that I know. I talked to two of my friends who were planning on running approximately 10 seconds faster and 10 seconds slower per mile than I was thinking. I remember saying to them, “OK, so I need to stay right between the two of you.”

The gun went off and we went out en masse as normal. I kept myself right on the shoulder of my friend Dan, who was the one that was supposed to be going out 10 seconds faster than my pace. I committed to myself, “don’t pass Dan. Stay on his shoulder.” I also remember saying something along the lines of “this pace feels fast too me,” which is an unusual thing for me to say out loud to other competitors during a race.

In fact, the pace was a little fast, because Dan was right on his pace. The pace was supposed to be 10 seconds faster than I was planning on running. This was actually right around the pace that I’d been training, but I really didn’t think that I could hang onto it for the entire half-marathon.

In those first few miles, I concentrated on working with Dan and two other runners to keep a small pace group together. The pace felt hard, but we were definitely working as a group. Doug Winn, who was trying to set a new American Record for the 60-65 age group, was there in the group with us too. He would pop out to my left and I’d ride along with him. Then Dan would come back up and drop in right in front of me. At one point, I moved to the front and powered down a tree-lined section of road with the group falling in behind me.

Everything was working fine, but there was just one problem: the pace still felt too fast. I kept having the same thought over and over: “I can’t hang on to this pace. I’ll need to back this off at some point.” I played over in my head that moment that was going to come, when I would crack and need to let the other guys go. I would say, “that’s all for me guys.” But the moment didn’t come.

Six miles came and went. The spotter for Doug Winn was yelling him splits every mile. “You’re ahead by 30 seconds Doug, great job!” We had lost contact with Dan and now it was just Doug and me, running along chasing his American Record. No pressure.

Then it was 7 miles and 8 and we were right on pace. Actually our time was gaining on the record. I think we were 50 seconds up at one point. Doug seemed to be laboring. And then something really weird happened. Running side-by-side with Doug it came the following words came out of my mouth: “come on Doug, you can do this.”

Here I am, the one struggling with the pace, and now I’m the one giving encouragement to another runner. A bizarre twist indeed.

At mile 10, we caught up with a guy that had been fading. He picked it up and hooked his wagon to our train. There was another guy in our group now and he started driving the pace down. All of the sudden, I look down at my Garmin and we’re running 5:30 pace. That pace was too fast for me. I backed it off a bit to the previous pace, but now I was alone. The move had splintered the group.

All I had to do was hold on now. I knew I had 10 miles in the bag and if I just didn’t blow up I was going to run a great time. Big if.

Miles 11 and 12 were, frankly, torture. I was just holding on, but I didn’t slip on the pace. I was still right there, but barely. This is what we call ‘the knife-edge’. I had nothing left, but I was still beating the drum, keeping the turn-over high and staying on track.

Finally I could see the farm where the race ended. I was still hanging in there, although I was fading. I heard footsteps coming up on me. There was about 400M left in the race and I was prepared to let whoever it was go past. But when the runner started to pass me, low and behold it was my friend Rich. Rich was the one that was supposed to be 10 seconds per mile slower than me. And here he was passing me, with both of us way ahead of schedule. When I realized it was Rich, I dropped the hammer, holding him off until he finally relented just before the finish. We ended up finishing just two seconds apart.

At the end of the day, the race had been a new personal best by just over a minute. In reflecting on the performance, I think what happened is that I let myself take a big risk with the pace, running at the faster pace that I’d been training, but outside my perceived comfort zone in terms on the distance. In thinking that I would have to back it off at some point, I was just going for it as long as I could. It turned out that all that speed work and just those couple of 10 milers was enough to put the base in place to make it work.

So going back to Coach Dean’s comment: breakthroughs sometimes happen when you least expect them. The opportunity comes up when you have the capability, but you don’t necessarily know it, and you take a risk to give it a try. I remember Ironman triathlete Chris McCormack saying something along the lines of this: ‘I’ll either flame out or set a new course record, but I can’t set that new record unless I’m willing to risk blowing up completely in the process.’ Now I get it. Sometimes it takes a big risk to make a big breakthrough.

Coach Joe finished The Flat at Sauvie Island, Oregon, in 1:16:27, which was a new personal best. Doug Winn missed the American Record for his age group by just four seconds.

Coach Joe English, Portland, Oregon USA
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I’m getting back into running and am training for a sprint triathlon in mid-August. The problem has been that I have been having diarrhea nearly every day this week. I didn’t know there was a connection with running and diarrhea. I will try some of the things you suggested—your two-part diarrhea article and hydration article were both helpful. I think I have an idea now what might be causing it.

I do have one question, I’m pretty sure I am sensitive to all the sugar in drinks and bars. Is there any product that is not sweet that replaces electrolytes? I read your review on NUUN and will try it. Do you have any other suggestions? And are there any bars that aren’t so sweet? Do “salty” bars exist? I’ve been trying to create my own at home and am getting closer to something I like, but I’m not quite there yet.

I’m glad that you’re working toward solving your problem. Usually experimentation is the key to figuring out why you’re having these kinds of problem and it takes some trial and error to finding the root cause. But let me give you some additional food for thought (pun perhaps in intended.) You may also want to watch the episode of our video series on this topic, which may be less helpful than funny I’m afraid.

Season 2 – Episode 13 — The Runs on the Run from Joe English on Vimeo.

Here are a couple of things that I’d suggest:
– Make sure that you are getting enough fiber in your diet generally. Before bed every night you may want to drink a glass of water with a fiber supplement (like Metamucil) or have a bowl of cereal such as All Bran or Fiber-1. Many times these types of problems are caused by a lack of dietary fiber. Ensure that you are getting enough fiber in your diet in general, by eating plenty of raw fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

– Start experimenting with just a few bites of something during a workout and work up from there.

– Use only one food at a time when trouble-shooting — meaning one brand of gel, or one food like cookies, peanut butter crackers or pretzels. One you are mixing foods, it is hard to figuring out which may be causing the problem. Isolating the food that you use during your workout can help you check off things that work or don’t work for you.

– Make sure to drink plain water (or an electrolyte-only product like Nuun) with energy products such as energy gels. Energy gels are very highly concentrated and need to be diluted by plain water in the stomach. Drinking an energy drink that also has sugar in it (such as Gatorade or Gu2O) may just add to the problem by putting even more sugar in your stomach at the same time. My suggestion is to drink plain water with energy gels and then drink an energy drink in an alternating fashion (e.g. first aid station use energy gel+water then second aid station drink energy drink alone, etc.)

– Commercial energy products are packed with sugars by design. This is the best way to make a big energy punch in a small, portable package. What you may find is that less concentrated foods, such as peanut butter sandwiches will be easier to digest. A food like a peanut butter sandwich includes carbohydrate, protein and fats, so it should be easier for your stomach to tolerate in small doses. But keep in mind there are trade-offs in carrying and chewing these foods — meaning a peanut butter sandwich is bigger and may be harder to eat. However, if this helps you take in calories to fuel your muscles and rids you of diarrhea then this is a sensible trade-off.

– There a number of alternative energy products that have come onto the market recently. A good example is the energy gel called HoneyStinger (www.honeystinger.com). As the company says on its web-site, “We use honey as the main sweetener in our products. Honey has the same glucose to fructose ratio of fruit, 1:1. If you can eat fruit without getting an upset stomach you should be able to eat Honey Stinger without any problems.”

– You may also want to try energy bars that are not specifically formulated for high-intensity sports, such as fruit and nut bars. A good example here is the Clif Mojo bar (www.clifbar.com), which is a “sweet and salty trail mix bar”. These are easy enough to carry and they include some additional salt, protein and fat in the nuts that may be easier on your stomach.

– Another alternative are whole food bars, such as the Vega Whole Food energy bars (www.myega.com). These bars are vegan and made with only natural fruits and vegetables, so again, they may be easier on your stomach. Vega is a brand created by an Ironman triathlete, who also has written an excellent cook-book called “Thrive” which has a number of recipes for making sports bars, snacks and drinks at home.

I hope this information is helpful to you. Good luck!

Coach Joe English, Portland, Oregon, USA
Running Advice and News
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On this episode we talk with Samia about:
- What’s its like to train as an elite runner?
- How much do elite runners run each week?
- What types of preparation go into elite distance training?
- How long does it take to achieve success at the marathon?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to link to our video series home page:

To visit our video pages with links to all of the episodes in our last two season, go to:
Season 1 Video Page

Season 2 Video Page

Running Advice and News
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