Running by the Books: Math for the Marathoner

[bananas]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/10/22/running-by-the-books-math-for-the-marathoner/

About two-fifths of marathon runners “hit the wall” on the big day. That means they completely deplete their body’s stash of readily available energy, which makes them feel wiped out and severely limits their running pace; it sometimes forces people out of the run completely.

Marathoner and biomedical engineer Benjamin Rapoport has been physically and mentally struggling with this phenomenon for years, and had the bright idea to turn it into a research project. He published a mathematical theory in the journal PLoS Computational Biology describing how and why runners hit the wall–and how they can avoid it.

By taking into account the energy it takes to run a marathon, the body’s energy storage capacity and the runner’s power, the researchers were able to accurately calculate how many energy-rich carbohydrates a runner needed to eat before race day and how fast to run to complete all 26.2 miles (42 kilometers).

<snip>

And while following this formula won’t enable everyone to run a marathon without training, Rapoport has put an easy-to-use version of his unwieldy formula online to help trained runners calculate their ideal pace.

[underpants]

1. Cool! Thanks

I hit the wall in my third marathon. You know it is bad when everything looks uphill and you are running basically along the coastline in VIRGINIA BEACH!!!

I finished. It was tough but I finished.

My fourth start did not include a finish but that wasn't because I hit a wall--it just was not my day.

I will give this a full read later.