Dave Kuehls - Four Months to a Four-Hour Marathon

A Perigee Book

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright 1998, 2006 by Dave Kuehls

Cover design by Dorothy Wachtenstein

Cover photograph copyright by Sportschrome

Interior illustrations by Pat Daugherty

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the first Perigee edition as follows:

Kuehls, Dave.

Four months to a four-hour marathon / Dave Kuehls. 1st ed.
p. cm.
A Perigee Book.
ISBN 978-1-1012-0306-4

1. Marathon runningTraining. I. Title

GV1065.17.T73K84 1998796.42'52dc21 97-40763
CIP

Outdoor recreational activities are by their very nature potentially hazardous. All participants in such activities must assume the responsibility for their own actions and safety. If you have any health problems or medical conditions, consult with your physician before undertaking any outdoor activities. The information contained in this guidebook cannot replace sound judgment and good decision-making, which can help reduce risk exposure, nor does the scope of this book allow for disclosure of all the potential hazards and risks involved in such activities.

Learn as much as possible about the outdoor recreational activities in which you participate, prepare for the unexpected, and be cautious. The reward will be a safer and more enjoyable experience.

Why? Because 4 hours is a doable goal . You dont need tons of speed (which is the hardest part of running to come by), just a goodly amount of endurance (something everyone can build into their system, just like my dad). In addition, there is something quasi-mystical about the 4-hour marathon . A foot populi version of what surrounded the 4-minute mile for half a dozen fleet-footed milers back in the 1950s.

So I decided to write a book. This book.

I decided I would tell 4-hour marathoners exactly what to wear, what to eat, how to train and how to run the marathon. Every sentence would be geared toward one goal: Getting the reader to the finish line of a marathon in 4 hours .

And to help me with the book, what better person than my dad, who set out to doand didjust what youre about to learnand dofrom reading this book.

In 4 months , you too can run a 4-hour marathon .

Read on.

OTHER THINGS THAT TAKE 4 HOURS

• A round of golf
• Extra-innings baseball game
• Preparing Thanksgiving dinner
• Afternoon classes
• Dinner and a movie

Running Form

Running is the easiest exercise to master. You dont need much balance, like you do for riding a bicycle. And you dont need a couple hundred bucks and good arm-leg coordination, like you do for cross-country skiing. Or coordination, for aerobics. Or patience, for walking. Or gills, for swimming.

You just need to get out the door and do what you did when you were a kidrun.

But many young adults and older adults have forgotten what it was like to run the way they did when they were seven or eight. They look like theyve been stuck behind an office desk or school desk or plopped on a couch for too long. And they probably have been.

So here are a few pointers on running formas you begin training for a 4-hour marathon for the kid in all of us.

Lets start from the top:

• 1 Your head: Should be straight up and down or slightly leaning forward. If your head is arching back, you throw the rest of your body backward.
• 2 Your mouth: Breathe through a comfortably open mouth. Some runners like to breathe in through the nose, then out through the mouth. But unless youre running through a cloud of black flies, why not open your mouth and suck in all the oxygen you can get?
• 3 The lower lip: Loose. If you have a loose lower lip that means youre not clenching your teeth. And the rest of your body is staying loose too.
• 4 Shoulders: Low rather than high. Loose rather than tense. They should have an upright or slight forward lean.