The E=MC2 of running

What is TID and does it matter? For this episode, I looked at an article from Sports Medicine (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-024-02137-7) called The Training Intensity Distribution of Marathon Runners Across Performance Levels. I wanted to know if I should be running slower and how much time I should be spending in each of the intensity zones. I'm not sure I got all the answers but it was an interesting study. 

My musings on the 2026 London Marathon and who won the battle of the super shoes.

This week I look at a paper about the effect of endurance training on natural killer cells https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-06057-y

If you think your training is going badly and you are just getting slower - don't worry, you are very unlikely to beat the world record for the world's slowest marathon

It seems that Lidl are now in the running shoe market. Is this the beginning of the shoe event horizon? Find out more in this week's podcast

Another week of training under my belt and I'm still getting slower not faster - what's happening? And how a German helped me see that it isn't all bad news.

After a bit of a layoff due to coughs and colds, I started training with some consistency again. In this episode, I share my running plan, how I have regained fitness and what I plan to do in the next few months. It's probably useful for anybody starting back running after a break or even starting running for the first time. The key is consistency and keeping going even if you don't seem to be getting any quicker. 

Towards the end of September, I took part in a 100 mile cycle ride. I talk about the lessons learnt and how they apply to running. I also discuss my next big venture and the training that I have been doing. 

I took up a challenge to cycle 100 miles from our village in Cambridgeshire to Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. So, now I'm in training, but this time on the bike. In this episode, I look whether there are advantages of cycling for running. Will cycling make me a faster runner? Will cycling make me fitter?Also, I got an email from podcast.feedspot.com saying that this podcast features in the Top 40 running podcasts, you might like to find other running podcasts from their list 

I downloaded a training plan while I was on the paid version of Strava and found it surprisingly useful and motivating. So, in this weeks episode, I talk about my training plan, my tips for things that should be in a training plan and how a training plan can really help you to progress in your running. 

I decided to give Strava Premium a go during April, it was partly because I was aiming to run 100 miles during the month to raise money for our church hall and partly because I wondered what I was missing out on.In this episode I talk about some of the benefits of having a premium subscription and how I found the month as a subscriber. 

With the London Marathon tomorrow, I was reminded of the year when I ran the marathon but really struggled because of hay fever. I didn't really recognise what the problem was at the time but with a high tree pollen count again this year, I wondered whether there was anything in the scientific literature about running and hay fever, this episode is about what I found out. 

In this episode I discuss the advantages of quality sunglasses (and other running gear) and whether it is worth investing in this type of kit

This episode is based on a paper published in Current. Sports Med. Rep. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20463502/ . I discuss the various factors that are reported in this nice review about prevention of running injuries. You might also like to listen to another podcast series that I'm doing with our running club called the Warriors Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-warriors-podcast/id1800811449 

Although I haven't done a podcast for a while, I have still been running, although not racing. This is an update on my successes and disasters over the past few months.

After a bit of a break, I'm back with details of how my 10k went, what I've been up to and a bit of a book review. 

You may have noticed that the weather has been a little warmer than normal this past week. I wondered if there really was an effect on performance with increased temperature. To be honest, I've tried to run before the sun is at its strongest, but sometimes that isn't possible. I found a nice paper in physiology reports that looked at the effect of temperature on running and I talk about this and my experience of following my Garmin coach on my watch in this week's episode.

Wondering what to do now the Olympics are over? You might have been inspired by some of the performances but left with a sense of what next?! Over the next few weeks I'm going to be training for an important 10k in the New Forest, it isn't important in running terms but it in in personal terms as I will be running in memory of my friend, Alex. Please support me if you can and follow me on my journey over the next couple of weeks. https://maggies-10k-for-alex.raiselysite.com/

In spite of the fact that the furthest run this year has only been around 7 miles, I foolishly thought it would be a great idea to enter a 10 mile race. Here's my view of how it went. 

This Saturday was the North West Road Relays in Heaton Park in Manchester. It was a great event, this is a report about how it went and some thoughts on running relays. 

It was the final week of our Parkrun challenge and the theme was 'run like a Kenyan'.  If you want to support the club in Kenya then the is the link https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Elgon-running-club?utm_term=WnX2B4kJR

Just a short update on this week's Parkrun challenge - crazy hair. Instead of my normal Parkrun location of Birkenhead Park, I ran in Cambridgeshire at Wimpole Estate Parkrun, so I was the only one with crazy hair. Also an update on our amazing athletes competing in various events around the world

This week's Parkrun challenge was to run an epic sprint finish. I'm not sure that mine was entirely epic, certainly no Usain Bolt but it was a least both a sprint and a finish. I had the opportunity to run in a new pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS running shoes so I talk about that, and finally I talk about the sprint in the World University Games and the controversy surrounding that. 

This week's Parkrun challenge should have been to run in the rain! But it wasn't, it was to run at a Parkrun that you hadn't been to before. I planned to go to Chester, I'd sorted out the route there, worked out where to park and was all set for my tourism Parkrun. This episode is about how week 3's challenge went.

This week we were getting ready for Alex and Emily getting married next Saturday so we had to dress up as if we were going to the Hen Night or the Stag Night. In this week's episode I talk about how it all went and a few thoughts that came out of that. 

Maggie gives a bit of an update on her running and why it's been a while since the last episode but mainly this week's podcast is mainly about the crazy Warriors Parkrun Challenge and how she got on in week 1. Just to say, it was a lot of fun. 

I ran my first race in ages on Friday, a 5k in a lovely village near Chester. This is my race report - tune in to find out how it went. 

School sports day - you either love it or loathe it. I'm more in the latter category, perhaps because my kids aren't all that athletic and I'm far too competitive. It can be fun though and then there's the parents race. The question is though - as a serious athlete, should you bother taking part?

I found a really interesting article looking at bone injuries in adolescent athletes. The group that did the study took a group of boys and studied them over 4 seasons taking lots of measurements to assess bone growth and skeletal maturation. I discuss their findings and my thoughts on what it means for those of us who are coaching young athletes.  The link to the abstract can be found here 

In episode 7, I featured a story about an ultramarathon runner called Jo Zakrzewski who had completed a 48 hour race running an incredible 255 miles. However, she was less of a hero in a recent 50 mile race. I also feature some marathon musings from the recent London marathon and my own exploits and plans.

Iten is known as the runner's paradise. It is the place that you go to if you want to learn about why many of the best long distance athletes in the world are Kenyan's and it's the home of many of the world's best long distance athletes.But Iten has a darker secret. In late 2021, Agnes Tirop was found murdered, with her husband/manager/coach implicated in this murder. Within 6 months, another female athlete, Damaris Mutua was found strangled in the home of her boyfriend. In this episode I talk about how influence, power, love and money can be a toxic mixture in the coach/athlete relationship and discuss two recent articles that I thought made me start to think about this more carefullyhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/mar/31/laura-muir-jemma-reekie-split-from-coach-after-training-camp-exit-olympics-athleticshttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/17/why-were-two-female-olympians-killed-in-kenya

I set myself a goal to run every day this year, and so far, I have achieved that goal. I also set myself a goal to run at least 30km each week, and again, I have managed to achieve that. However, what I haven't done is much speed work and so I wasn't sure how I would get on running 5km at parkrun. Would I be able to maintain a good pace? Would I die after running the first km too fast? I felt fairly confident that I could run around 4.45 per km but could I run quicker than I had done in training without having done any speed specific training? Would my lack of focused 5km training be my downfall? Find out in this week's episode.

Following on from World Athletics announcing that transgender athletes would be banned from international female competitions, UK Athletics has following suit and made a similar ruling. In this episode, I talk about this decision. I also provide an update on how my running is going. 

In this week's episode, Maggie talks to her friend, Jen Young, about some of the joys of parkrunning and we compare notes on their running experiences

I'm joined this week by Ronan Kearney, coach and founder of Warriors Pentathlon and Athletics Club. In this episode we discuss the benefits of getting young athletes involved in activities other than just running and how to bring fun back into running. We also talk about laser run, pentathlon, biathlon, fell running and other sports that might contribute to running. 

In this week's episode I spoke to friend and fellow scientist, Michelle Ma, about her experience of running. Michelle would not describe herself as an elite runner and has never competed in a running race (since school) - so what motivates her to run?We discuss some of the benefits of running, our favourite places to run in London, whether it's better to run with music or without and a host of other topics. 

I was very excited to be joined by Dr Eoin Everard for this week's episode. Eoin is a biomechanics specialist and chartered physiotherapist from Ireland, he's also a pretty phenomenal runner being 5 times National Champion, sub 4 min miler and sub 30 min 10k runner. I wanted to ask him about the benefits, or not, of static vs dynamic stretching as part of a normal running workout. However, we ended up talking about a whole host of other stuff too from running style, preventing injury, running mentality etc. The interview was packed full of really useful advice which was both practical and achievable. I hope that you enjoy listening to Eoin as much as I enjoyed talking to him. You can get a download of his free book at https://everardpilates.com/books/ 

This Saturday was the National cross country championships and, for English athletes, this meant a trip to Bolesworth Castle near Chester. In this episode I talk about my highlights from the race (as a spectator not a runner) and I also talk about heart rate and the effect of different resting heart rates on running performance. 

What is the longest distance you have ever run? For me, I think it's 28 miles. However, this weekend, British athlete Jo Zakrzewski ran 255 miles in 48 hours. In this week's episode, I talk about this amazing achievement. 

What happens when you are training for a marathon and you get injured or sick? I've often heard people say that it won't have a big impact on your overall performance in the marathon. But is this true? Maybe that's the case if you just need to take off a couple of days, but what about a week or two weeks? Is it OK to take this much time off from marathon training or will that actually impact on your finishing time? A study by Feely et al looked at Strava data from 300,000 recreational runners. They found that about half of marathon runners had a break in their training. However, they were able to identify runners who had run at least 2 marathons, one with a break in training and one without to compare the impact of the break on the overall time achieved for the marathon. In this episode I look into what they found. 

In this week's episode, Maggie looks at a paper by Boere et al (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26093-2) in Nature Scientific reports where the authors look whether a short walk outside is better than a short walk inside.While running on the treadmill can be great, especially if the weather is bad, are there actually hidden benefits of running outside. Maggie discusses the paper's findings and speculates of the reasons behind the results. 

In this week's episode, Maggie gets annoyed with somebody who says that running in the cold is just about having the right kit. She also talks about her excitement over this year's Spine race. If she were ever to run the race herself, she might not make it past the Green Dragon pub and tea rooms - sounds far too tempting not to just stay there. Link to Katie Holmes website is here: Run Young 50

Are trail runners as good as road runners? An article published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36515604/) looked at differences in economy, biomechanics, strength and power between trail runners and road runners. I talk a bit about this article and the differences in running different disciplines. I also provide a recap on how I'm getting on with my New Year's resolution to run at least 1 km each day and, I hope, provide some useful insights and advice. 

Sudden cardiac death in athletes is extremely rare. However, a recent letter in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology (Polykretis and McCullough - Rational harm-benefit assessment by age group are required for continued COVID-19 vaccination suggests that there have been as many of these types of deaths in the past 2 years as in the previous 38 years! Is that true? In this episode I looked into further evidence to see if these claims were true and whether, as Polykretis and McCollough suggest,  it has anything to do with COVID-19 vaccination. In particular, I looked at a paper by Bonaventura et al (Risks of the Athletic Field Revisited: Report of Unusual Occurrences of Cardiac Arrest and Sudden Death in Professional Soccer Players) published in the American Journal of Medicine looking at sudden cardiac death in professional football players in Europe between 2002 and 2022.Whatever the cause, I think it is important that people learn how to use a defibrillator so that they can help if somebody does have a cardiac arrest. If you ring for an ambulance, they can tell you where the nearest defibrillator is and they are easy to use, with instructions provided - so don't be afraid to help in an emergency. 

Welcome back to the E=mc2 of running for Season 2! In this episode, Maggie talks about how to set a New Year's resolution (that you might actually be able to stick to). She talks about her own New Year's resolution and also gives an update on where she currently is with her running. No science this week but some helpful advice. 

You've heard of supershoes but have you heard of superpants?  I really want a pair of superpants? These are definitely the next thing in running technology to make you go faster.  Find out more about the science behind them on the podcast or, alternatively, follow the links in the excellent article from Outside magazine https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/running-exoskeleton-research-2022/

Do you like running in the dark? What about if it's cold and wet and dark? I've really struggled this past couple of weeks getting out and running when it has been dark.I tried to find out if there was anything in the scientific literature to support my case against actually running in the dark. Alas, I found little of significance. I did, however, come across an interesting story which, I think, gives me a perfect excuse for not running in the dark. Find out more in this episode of the podcast.

I ran in the Manchester Area Cross Country League yesterday. The weather was miserable and I didn't really run all that well. But, can we blame the weather or was something else coming into play.I discuss having the right mindset and how I might be able to improve my results in future races. 

Do you like running in the rain? I don't but I know that quite a lot of people absolutely love it. It made me wonder whether the weather, particularly rain, made any difference to your running performance. To find out, I took a look in the scientific literature.I came across two papers, by the same groups, looking at performances in the Berlin Marathon between 1974 and 2019. They looked at the weather conditions for the races and assessed whether the weather had made any impact on the times. You can find the papers here (from May 2021) and here (from July 2021).Perhaps we will have to do our own research to find out the ideal conditions for our own performances. As for me, I will, no doubt, continue to be a bit of a fair weather runner, avoiding the rain wherever possible. 

Have you ever felt like giving up? Have you ever got to a race and wondered why on earth you even entered? I felt a bit like that in the race on Saturday but, the words of a friend inspired me to continue. Those words were about an athlete who, despite the circumstances, refused to give up - I bring you the story of John Stephen Akhwari, a marathon runner from Tanzania competing in the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games.