Marathon running is it good for you?

Well it doesn't feel like it... and many top trainers believe running such a long distance for over almost 4hrs is not a great idea. At the moment I have a deep muscle pain in my hip from the last long run and Ben Morgan is resting a leg injury as well. I'm using the time to apply surgical spirit to toughen my feet... top tip from the marathon running dinner ladies at school.

I have actually not carried out "traditional" training for the marathon because I read this great article by a top trainer in the Independent. I also didn't want to become skinny.

Link to the Independent - cheats guide to preparing for the marathon

so...For example I've eaten lots of protein rather than massive amounts of carbs. The aim was to keep my weight up. Brown carbs passed through me at speed as I seem to process food very quickly. So I eat some but not loads. This seems to stop muscle wastage. Secondly I have not run more than 3 times a week... all the advice is 5+ in the running magazines. Instead I have spent at least 1hr twice a week on strength training. the idea is to be able to hold my form throughout the race so almost every excercise involves abs training too.

This is an excerpt from the article.

"Running for an hour every day puts your body under so much stress that it begins to break down," says Mike Weeks. He should know: though his interest in fitness was kicked off by a passion for rock-climbing, in 2006 he and his partner, Bean Sopwith, undertook the challenge of dragging Jack Osbourne around the Marathon des Sables, a seven-day, seven-marathon race across the Sahara. Weeks ran three marathons a week in training and saw his connective tissue and muscle density drop away. "You'd have to put a gun to my head to make me run for more than a couple of hours," he says. "So many people think running the marathon will make them healthy, and it's quite the opposite. Many people leave it to the last minute and then think: 'Shit. I've got to start cramming in.' Their body is just annihilated in the training."

The interesting thing is that the runner he trained in the article surprised season runners with her progress using this approach. She finished in 4hrs 2 mins with 10 weeks training - she was only 25. But that is a very good time with really only a month and halfs training