The distinction between you and the quickest marathon runner within the pack on race day won’t have something to do with genetics or pace, in line with a new examine revealed within the Journal of Sports activities Drugs. Strava knowledge from greater than 100,000 runners of varied efficiency ranges have been analyzed, and present the quickest runners ran thrice greater than the slower runners in coaching–and this additional quantity was closely composed of low-intensity working.
Must you cool it on the exercises and shift your focus to straightforward runs?
The examine concerned 119,452 members and their 151,813 cumulative 42.2km runs between 2014 and 2017; the date, occasions and areas of those runs coincided with these of main marathons. Researchers analyzed Strava exercise knowledge recording in the course of the 16 weeks main as much as the race and arranged knowledge into straightforward (Z1), threshold (Z2) and excessive (Z3) depth zones.
Researchers analyzed the information in two classes: gender (female and male) and age (over 40 and below 40), and all teams demonstrated a optimistic correlation between pace and coaching quantity, proven within the graph beneath. (Graphs for all teams displayed the identical general sample.)
Sooner runners run extra
It turned instantly evident that as coaching quantity decreases, marathon completion time will increase. The quickest runners, who clocked 120-150 minutes, collected thrice the mileage of the slower runners, who logged occasions exceeding 240 minutes. The sooner group had a mean weekly mileage of about 107 km, whereas the slower group recorded a mean of about 35 km per week.
Most runners within the examine used a pyramidal coaching depth distribution (TID), the place nearly all of coaching (about 80 per cent) was accomplished on the lowest depth (Z1), greater than 10 per cent in Z2 and the rest in Z3. Because of this a runner logging 107 km per week throughout their marathon construct utilizing a pyramidal TID method is finishing about 86 km in Z1, and cut up the remaining 21 km between Z2 and Z3.
Sooner runners run simpler
As marathon pace elevated, researchers noticed a development of larger adoption of this coaching methodology, with utilization rising to 80 per cent among the many quickest group. That is proven within the graph beneath, with inexperienced representing Z1, yellow Z2 and purple Z3. Whereas time spent coaching in zones 2 and three remained comparatively fixed all through the dataset, the time spent in Z1 elevated signficantly for runners on the sooner finish of the spectrum.
Elites versus sub-elites
The examine notes that for elite athletes, coaching is their full-time job, permitting them to contribute extra time to straightforward runs and obtain excessive coaching volumes of 160 to 220 km per week. In distinction, sub-elite runners can face challenges in balancing coaching with full-time jobs, making it tough to log comparable mileage. Consequently, these athletes may compensate for the low quantity with higher-intensity coaching.
These findings emphasize that coaching quantity and time accessible for coaching are key elements contributing to the efficiency hole between elite and sub-elite marathoners.