馬拉松賽跑訓練: 出師未捷? / Marathon Training: DNF?

I will be running my 9th marathon, and the 3rd one this year. As much as I want to get myself psyched-up, I cannot help but feel bitten by the greatest fear of all marathon runners: DNF, which stands for "Did Not Finish", or in non-technical, layman's term: "You blew it, bud!!"

While runners are usually competitive in nature (either against others, themselves, or time), many do recognize that human beings are not built to last forever, as much as we want to push the limit. In endurance sports, I find that it's usually my body's muscular-skeletal structure that yields first before I reach my aerobic capacity limit and hit the anaerobic wall. If you take the target running pace of 90 steps per minute (which is also the ideal pace for cycling), and multiply it by 60 minutes, that comes to 5,400 strikes per foot over a one hour period. Thus for runners whose finish time is from 3 to 5 hours, each foot will have struck the road surface 16,200 to 22,000 times, with a force equals to 2-3 times the person's weight.

In prep for the upcoming race, my weekend LSD (long, slow, distance) run is now maxing out at 22 km, which is far below my usual 33 km mark. Given the inadequate training, all I can hope for is to finish the 42.2 km race in reasonable time without incurring any injury. I sure don't want to have a DNF, at least not till I finish my 10th marathon next year.

As I heard Grete Waitz (who won the New York City Marathon nine times!!) once said: "... We all have a finite running life ..." In other words, no matter how good an athlete is, he/she will eventually use up all the foot-strikes and run into the 'yield' sign, and finally the 'stop' sign. I think that is true for marathon running as well as life in general. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ References:
* Grete Waitz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grete_Waitz
* 8th Marathon: http://lotusandcedar.blogspot.com/2007/05/2007-marathon-training-for-spring-2007.html
* 7th Marathon (Rome): http://lotusandcedar.blogspot.com/2007/04/rome-marathon-maratona-della-citta-di.html
* Other blog posts on marathon training: http://lotusandcedar.blogspot.com/2007/01/training-for-marathon-trail-running-or.html
http://lotusandcedar.blogspot.com/2007/01/marathon-race-personal-best-pb.html
http://lotusandcedar.blogspot.com/2006/10/training-for-marathon.html
http://lotusandcedar.blogspot.com/2006/10/running-marathons.html