Marathon

Recommended first

The 20 mile run

Weekly distance

About 42 km of running a week on average over 6 weeks

Long run

22 km, at least once in the last 6 weeks. Finishing the 20 mile run counts

Taper

An easier week before the event week

Fixed at 42.195 km after the 1908 London Olympics. The second half is not two halves stacked. Fuel, heat, and the last 10 km decide it.

Every challenge in the register is a distance people already know. The marathon is the one measured to the metre rather than rounded, and that exact figure has been the distance ever since.

A marathon is roughly forty thousand steps. Each one sends two to three times your bodyweight through your feet, up through your ankles and knees, transferred through your hips, rotating around your spine and neck, with your arms and shoulders doing the counter-rotation work. Over the full distance, each leg can absorb up to sixty thousand times your bodyweight in cumulative force.

That force travels through the whole body. It hits the foot, the ankle redirects it, the knee absorbs it, the pelvis passes it across, the spine damps it and the arms balance it. Every muscle, tendon and ligament on the way either absorbs part of the impact or passes it on. When every part does its share, the load is spread out. When one part is weak, the load gathers there, and that is where an injury starts.

So getting through a marathon takes two things. Endurance lets you keep going for the whole distance, and durability lets your body keep its shape while you do.

Early in a marathon, the work can feel almost ordinary. The challenge is what happens as fuel runs low, heat accumulates, tissues tire, and thousands of small impacts become one large demand.

Your body still has to hold its posture, control every landing, breathe, keep its temperature down and hold a steady rhythm. If your body cannot keep doing those things for hours, your fitness fades long before the finish.

Your foot meets the ground, and your ankle stores energy and gives it back. Your knee and hip redirect the force, your trunk holds your pelvis and ribcage together, and your arms balance the rotation below them.

A weakness in one place changes the work everywhere else, because other parts start covering for it. That can be harmless for a kilometre and costly after thirty. So a marathon tests your whole body, even though you only repeat one movement. Over forty thousand repetitions, whatever you bring to the first step is multiplied: how economically you move, how strong you are and how freely your joints move.

Endurance develops the engine, and the impact tolerance this particular challenge asks for is earned on foot. Kettlebells build the coordinated strength that keeps force moving through the whole body. Yoga maintains the range and breath control that let the body keep moving without fighting itself.

Together they build a body that can take the whole day and still be in working order afterwards. That is why all three are part of training for a marathon, not extras around a running plan.

These are the challenges that come before the marathon on the ladder, smallest first. Each one is a real day out in its own right.

1. 5 km/
2. 10 km/
3. 10 mile/
4. Half Marathon/
5. 25 km/
6. 20 mile/
7. Marathon

A marathon is forty thousand steps and hours of fuelling, heat, impact, posture and concentration. Getting ready for it means preparing your whole body for all of that, and the same is true of every long challenge, whatever the sport.