So there are 40,000 steps in a marathon
and every time you make a step
you take the full force of your body weight
plus all of the acceleration that is put into that,
so it's a really highly impactful event.
The impact for your joints
is quite significant on your muscles;
that much impact through joints like
the hips, the knees, the ankles
and even the feet
can cause those joints to feel painful.
In long distance running
you need to produce force but you don't need to produce maximum force
so you need to use force to propel yourself forward
for long periods of time.
So your muscles don't need to be as strong
but they need to be fatigue-resistant
and those muscles are smaller in size
than in a sprinter
and actually,
having a lighter body mass is helpful in running
because with every step you have to propel your body weight.
Therefore being a lean, light specimen
makes you more adaptive to endurance running
than being a very strong powerful sprinter.
We know there are certain physiological characteristics
that a marathon runner has to possess
to be elite at that event.
They have to have a really big aerobic engine
and we measure that by measuring their VO2 max
which is the maximum amount of oxygen they can take in
to transport to the muscles and utilize
but the second and almost equally important component
is being a really economical runner.
So, it doesn't matter if you have a really big engine
or a really big VO2 max,
if you're actually very inefficient at running,
that's not going to help you run for 26 miles
So, running economically
how much energy it takes for you to take
each step per kilometer
is very important.
During a race