Question:So, what is item (c)?
Answer:
c) Rule number 1 in athletic training is specificity of training. To be
good at race walking you race walk. To be good at cycling you cycle. To be
good at running you run. You could take the winner of the Tour de France
and he couldn't beat any halfway decent local distance runner. Actually,
Lance Armstrong might be the exception, as he ran 15:36 for 3 miles cross
country in high school, but you get the idea.
I think you underestimated the difficulty of a marathon. It had nothing at
all to do with pavement. It had to do with the fact that you don't run and
yet you thought you could go out and run 26 miles. I'm sure that you are a
pretty fit individual, you just weren't prepared to RUN a marathon. You
should be pretty happy with your results considering the training you did.
Don't come to a running site and say a marathon is a vacation compared to
walking. That statement is either naive, foolish or both. You train for a
marathon by running, not by walking fast or riding a bike.
You think walking is harder on the knees than running? I would have to
disagree with that, in my opinion. I never had any trouble with my knees
until I started running.
Have you ever tried dog-paddling a mile?
Unless you've also walked long distances on a consistent basis, I seriously
doubt you have enough experience to make a good assessment. In the past,
the ease of making a quick transition from straight walking to walk-running
to almost straight running without *any* run-training has put to the lie the
suggestion that there's no cross-benefit or overlap between the two. There
certainly is a lot of overlap.
I guarantee you that if you try running 26 miles without any training
(running OR walking) and without having ever run more than 3 miles at a time
in your life before then you will not finish at all.
To finish even in 4 1/2 hours under those conditions is simply unheard of.
Concerning exertion:
Walking requires quite a bit more exertion than running. In fact, past
around 30-40 miles (in my experience), you have to actually start running for
lengthy periods of time just to rest from walking. The legs make so much
less contact with the ground, and are stressed so much less, when running,
that it almost feels like sitting in terms of providing relief! That's
how dramatic the difference is.
I've never walked more than 30 miles at a time without having to resort to
running at some point for lengthy periods of time just to rest.
I think the same goes for the comparison you made: dog-paddling a mile
will require a lot more exertion than front crawling the same distance,
since it's a less efficient way to move.
No. (c) = long-distance running - long-distance walking, which is only a
small subset of running.
Running uses a lot more of the calves (as I found out the hard way) and
generally the lower leg; walking is much harder on the knees and uses a bit
more of the upper leg.
But having now done both, I can tell you that other than that, it's almost
a one-on-one overlap between the two, and even the marathon, itself, felt
pretty much like walking about 15-20 miles, apart from the calves being a
lot more stiff.
So, (c) is pretty much isolated to the muscles and the ligaments of the
lower leg. And the best way to train these is NOT by running, but by
weight training.
As an avid hiker and a first-time marathoner (Chicago, 4:15) I can
only surmise that you've suffered some sort of anal cranial inversion.
Sure walking is tougher than running.
The toughest actually is lying on the couch - try doing this
for a week or so - and you will want to go out and run to rest
a little bit from constant lying down.
If that's not challenging enough, try sleeping all the time.
That's even more exhausting than just lying on the couch.
After you are completely exerted from sleeping all the time,
running will be so easy! :)
My knee problems only come with walking. Really. I've worked on my walking
style to prevent my knees killing me -- what I learned from running is to
spring more, bend my knees more, and just be looser, in order to reduce the
shock. I'm with the previous post-er -- running often provides a welcome
break from walking.
