Marathon, Revised and Updated 5th Edition

Now completely updated and revised--a new edition of the long-running marathon training guide that has helped more than half a million people reach their goals. Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide is among the bestselling running books of all time for many reasons, but above all others is this one: It works. Marathon running has changed in the seven years since the fourth edition--there are more runners than ever before, the popularity of half-marathons has grown immensely, and guidelines for best recovery and diet practices have changed. This revised fifth edition includes a new chapter on ultramarathons, along with material on recovery techniques, several new training programs, and advice on how to win a Boston qualifying race and improve your personal record. At its core remains Hal Higdon's clear and essential information on injury prevention, training, and nutrition. Marathon demystifies the marathon experience and allows each runner to achieve peak performance without anguish or pain, taking the guesswork out of marathon training, whether it's for your first or fiftieth. With Higdon's comprehensive approach and tried-and-tested methods, any runner will learn how to optimize their training and achieve their marathon goals.

“Marathon adds fresh insight and certainly exhibits endurance with its fifth edition.”—Amby Burfoot, coach, author, and 1968 Boston Marathon winner

“Higdon’s Marathon has welcomed thousands of runners across the finish line since its initial publication in 1993. It’s a must-read for both debut marathoners and veterans looking to improve their performance. Higdon’s voice is synonymous with running, and the fifth edition of Marathon shows us why. This is a must-read for any runner looking to get across the finish line for the first time or the fiftieth.”—Carey Pinkowski, executive director, Bank of America Chicago Marathon

Auteur

Hal Higdon is the author of thirty-five books and hundreds of articles for magazines as diverse as Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Boys' Life, and The New York Times Magazine. He was among the founders of the Road Runners Club of America and a finalist in the competition to become NASA's Journalist in Space. The American Society of Journalists and Authors has presented Higdon with its Career Achievement Award.

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The Mystique of the Marathon

Running 26 Miles 385 Yards Is a Humbling Experience

What would we do for fun if the Persians in 490 BC had won the Battle of Marathon? This thought occurred to me while I was in Greece several years ago to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of that battle—and the legendary run from Marathon to Athens by Pheidippides, who announced, “Rejoice, we conquer!” and immediately died.

That legend—and it is more legend than historical fact—inspired a race in 1896 at the first modern Olympic Games over approximately the same route from the plains of Marathon on the Aegean Sea to the Olympic stadium in downtown Athens. Only seventeen runners participated in that first race; twenty thousand runners appeared more than a century later for the anniversary celebration. By then, similarly long races with that many runners and more had become common throughout the world. Races that, by the way, are called marathons, that term having conveniently taken hold as a description of a running race precisely 26 miles 385 yards long. (More on that later.)

Not everybody understands the drive that causes hundreds of thousands of runners each year to punish themselves and train for months for the seemingly dubious pleasure of running 26 miles 385 yards. One year at the Twin Cities Marathon, approximately 8 miles into the race, I overheard a woman in the crowd comment: “To think they paid to do this.”

I understood what she meant. Twenty-six miles is a long way. Adding 385 more yards seems to make the distance even longer and further confuses people who do not understand what motivates us to run marathons. “How far was that marathon?” they ask after we show up at the office on Mondays with medals hanging around our necks, limping but with smiles on our faces. Despite the rising popularity of big-city marathons, not everybody knows—or understands—why the distance is a precise (but foolish) 26 miles 385 yards. Even thinking about running that far takes a certain amount of endurance. And courage. And maybe even arrogance. Yet somehow those of us who call ourselves marathoners do it again and again and again.

The woman’s comment at Twin Cities failed to disturb me at the time. First of all, I thought there was some truth to what she said. Second, I was too busy running as fast as I could to worry about what the spectators were thinking.

Only later would her remark begin to haunt me. It was obvious that she failed to comprehend the mystique of the marathon and why running such a quirky distance appeals to so many otherwise normal people. How do you fully explain to friends and family the joy and pain that go into running 26 miles 385 yards?

I still remember another woman who showed up at my booth at the Chicago Marathon expo one year and immediately started crying. She could not talk. She made a few hand gestures in an attempt to cover her embarrassment but still failed to stem the flow of tears. I smiled—tolerantly. I told her to relax. I knew the reason for her emotional breakdown.

She was about to run her first marathon.

Tears are common when it comes to the marathon. And they are not tears of pain; they are tears of joy. Some runners shed tears crossing the finish line. I did so once myself after finishing fifth (first American) at the Boston Marathon with a time so fast I knew I never again would come close to duplicating it, because never again would I be able to summon the will to train as hard as I had for that one peak performance.

Recognizing the Real You

“The marathon can humble you,” Bill Rodgers, who won the Boston and New York City marathons four times each, once said. Boston Billy meant that sometimes even the best runners crash for reasons not easily explainable to family or friends—or themselves. It happened to him in the middle of that span of victories, when he failed to finish one year at Boston after running in the lead much of the way. But the marathon can humble you in many ways. The classic long-distance race can expose all your nerve endings and bring you closer to recognizing the real you, all flaws and virtues on the surface. Whether or not the woman who cried standing before my booth realized that fact, she was displaying a humbling emotion not uncommon among marathoners.

The tears subsided. She made an unnecessary apology and thanked me for the training program that after 18 weeks had altered her life. She bought a copy of one of my books as a gesture of thanks, came around the desk, gave me a hug, and posed for a cellphone picture. She thanked me again and, eyes still moist, disappeared into the crowd of runners flowing past my booth.

I never saw her again. I never got the crying woman’s name. I never found out how she did in the race, her time, whether it matched her expectations. I never learned what motivated her to run what most certainly was a First Marathon (caps intended). I never learned whether she cried again crossing the finish line, although I suspect she did. And at the starting line, too. And maybe a couple of times en route. And maybe while describing the experience to friends and relatives after. I never learned whether she ran a second marathon, or a third, or a fourth, or more.

Many runners have achieved success using my training programs after reading this book or discovering those programs online. I estimate …