Abstract
Objective: Finishing a marathon requires to prepare for a 42.2 km run. Current literature describes which training characteristics are related to marathon performance. However, which training is most effective in terms of a performance improvement remains unclear.Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of training responses during a 16 weeks training period prior to an absolved marathon. The analysis was performed on unsupervised fitness app data (Runtastic) from 6,771 marathon finishers. Differences in training volume and intensity between three response and three marathon performance groups were analyzed. Training response was quantified by the improvement of the velocity of 10 km runs Δv10 between the first and last 4 weeks of the training period. Response and marathon performance groups were classified by the 33.3rd and 66.6th percentile of Δv10 and the marathon performance time, respectively.Results: Subjects allocated in the faster marathon performance group showed systematically higher training volume and higher shares of training at low intensities. Only subjects in the moderate and high response group increased their training velocity continuously along the 16 weeks of training.Conclusion: We demonstrate that a combination of maximized training volumes at low intensities, a continuous increase in average running speed up to the aimed marathon velocity and high intensity runs ≤ 5 % of the overall training volume was accompanied by an improved 10 km performance which likely benefited the marathon performance as well. The study at hand proves that unsupervised workouts recorded with fitness apps can be a valuable data source for future studies in sport science.
Highlights
Finishing a marathon is a fascinating goal, especially for recreational runners
For all parameters except W, IT90, and ID15, we report the effect sizes ηr2esp and ηm2 p of the main effect of the two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) if the p-value was below a significance level α = 0.05
Our results demonstrate that polarized training with maximized volumes below the aimed marathon velocity in the LIT zone yield better marathon performances (Seiler and Tønnessen, 2009)
Summary
Finishing a marathon is a fascinating goal, especially for recreational runners. The motivations for people to take on this huge effort are manifold. They can be of personal (goal achievement), social (respect of peers), physical. Independent of the motives behind the decision to participate in a marathon, all those runners are united in the task to prepare well by bringing their bodies in shape to run 42.2 km. Recreational runners with lower training volumes can potentially increase their performance by increasing the amount of training. This was underlined by the results of Roecker et al (1998) and Tanda (2011), who found training volume to be one of the key predictors for marathon performance in recreational runners
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