Topic: A marathon a day for a month?

[Patrick Yang]

Chris you gotta get out that intelligent evaluation of sources article pronto. -_-

This would be fantastic, yes.  I'd love to have something to which to point people when they ask me about "something I read somewhere".

[Dan Frank]

1) The ridiculous nature of the book you read.
2) Why marathons, even once in a while, are horrible on the body.
3) How distance running at a long, slow pace will not improve your endurance as well as less miles per week at a faster pace for time.
4) How athletes of today are far more physically capable than our ancestors because of more knowledge in the fields of exercise physiology, performance enhancement and nutrition.
5) How Arnold was never supposed to be strong, just supposed to be big.

6) The fact that Romans and Neanderthals can't be accounted at the same time in consideration of the strength of our ancestors. Neanderthals aren't human; you might as well compare a modern man to a chimpanzee.

[Gregg]

1) Be skeptical of everything you read, especially in internet forums

It's not that hard to run marathon distance in a day. You can break it up into several smaller runs, with plenty recovery time between them.

For example: 1 mile warm up jog, 3 mile run, 1 mile cool down jog = 5 miles. Run 5 of those in a day, and add on an extra 1 mile 265 yards or whatever, and you're there.

Since you said you were recovering from stress fractures, this is probably a bad goal for you.

2) Marathons are hell on the body. I haven't done an ultra. Even marathon training took too much time, and I decided it just wasn't worth it.

3) Distance running at a slow pace trains you to run distance at a slow pace. Running short fast intervals trains you to run short fast intervals. Give me a guy who can run 20 miles, and a guy who runs intervals, and tell them both to run 100 miles - they're both going to be hurting.

4) Are athletes today more physically capable, or just more specialized? We do have more knowledge, better medical care, maybe better nutrition... but Carl Lewis doesn't have to go out and chop wood, work out in the fields, carry water from the stream, track an animal through the woods, or any of those things that were fairly common even 100 years ago.

5 + 6)

[extratooth2]

I would probably have to split it up throughout the day.
The only reason I had a stress fracture was because I wasn't taking care of my body. I didn't hydrate well or get enough calcium. I've learned from my mistakes and know how to take care of myself now. I think know i'd have to have regular medical checkups to make sure I'm working properly and would stop as soon as something starts to go wrong.

[Kevin Davies]

Alright I get it, the idea is dumb. But I have to ask, what do those people who train for super marathons(100mi) run? I can't imagine them only running 14 miles a day and then just to 100 for the race. Those people must be running at least 30 miles per day, but I'd guess that that is low. Mind you I truly have no idea. The longest I've ran was a half marathon and that was just a very good running day. I haven't trained for any run longer than a 5k

If you really want to know, check out this blog.  This is a friend of my wife's from college who runs and wins 100 mile races quite frequently. To be fair to modern day humans, there are a lot of elite marathon runners who while not running a marathon a day, come pretty close.  Running 140-160 miles a week is not uncommon among elite runners. Though they do not do this all year round.  Many of these runners could blow the majority of people here out of the water in a 400 meter sprint (There are probably not any of them who could not run a 400 meter dash under a minute).

[Steven Low]

Many of these runners could blow the majority of people here out of the water in a 400 meter sprint (There are probably not any of them who could not run a 400 meter dash under a minute).

If they were just running 400m, most of them could probably do a 50s 400m.

Developing speed and endurance is the key.

[swap01]

Just going to throw this out there. Terry Fox ran a marathon a day (maybe two, but I can't remember) with one leg. He died, from cancer, because it spread through his leg into his lungs and he kept on pushing. It's a Canadian thing, Don't worry about it if you have no clue what I'm talking about. Amazing person though.

[Dan Elric]

Just going to throw this out there. Terry Fox ran a marathon a day (maybe two, but I can't remember) with one leg. He died, from cancer, because it spread through his leg into his lungs and he kept on pushing. It's a Canadian thing, Don't worry about it if you have no clue what I'm talking about. Amazing person though.

Heard about him, amazing guy.

Perhaps you can do it if you build up to it long enough.  I am no expert on human physiology though.  I am unsure exactly how strong our bones and tendons can build up to.