When easy runs feel hard

I completed the half-marathon leg of the Ironman relay in Swansea in 30 degrees heat - it didn't go well. In this episode I explore what went wrong and look at research to determine the ideal temperature to be running these long distances at. 

I've been training for a half marathon which is this weekend. However, I struggled with some of the runs, even the easy ones. This episode is about the final weeks of my training and my plans for the future

I started using the Runna app that is linked to Strava, I'm now in Week 5 and this episode reviews the app and how the training is going. 

I was listening to a different running podcast (can't always just listen to my own podcast!) and they were talking about using pickle juice to overcome cramp during a race. Now, personally, I thought this was a bit crazy so I decided to check to science literature to see if there was any evidence for it being effective and if there were any better cures. 

What is TID and does it matter? For this episode, I looked at an article from Sports Medicine (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-024-02137-7) called The Training Intensity Distribution of Marathon Runners Across Performance Levels. I wanted to know if I should be running slower and how much time I should be spending in each of the intensity zones. I'm not sure I got all the answers but it was an interesting study. 

My musings on the 2026 London Marathon and who won the battle of the super shoes.

This week I look at a paper about the effect of endurance training on natural killer cells https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-06057-y

If you think your training is going badly and you are just getting slower - don't worry, you are very unlikely to beat the world record for the world's slowest marathon

It seems that Lidl are now in the running shoe market. Is this the beginning of the shoe event horizon? Find out more in this week's podcast

Another week of training under my belt and I'm still getting slower not faster - what's happening? And how a German helped me see that it isn't all bad news.