Topic
Running
Endurance training, pacing, race prep, and distance running science.
Lauryn BrittDo Electrolytes Actually Prevent Muscle Cramps During a Race?
A review of 10,533 IRONMAN medical tent records across 49,530 starters found that cramping athletes had the same serum sodium and potassium as athletes treated for anything else.
Elias KiptooDoes Jumping Your Longest Run More Than 10 Percent Actually Get You Hurt?
A study of 5,205 runners found overuse injuries often strike from a single session, spiking when one run jumps more than 10 percent past your longest run of the previous month.
Elias KiptooDoes Running With a Higher Cadence Actually Lower Your Injury Risk, or Just Move It Around?
A 2024 Maastricht study is the first to measure what nudging your cadence does to the three tissues runners break most often, and it found cadence is the rare change that protects all of them at once.
Elias KiptooDoes Swishing a Sports Drink and Spitting It Out Actually Make You Run Faster?
The coaching rule said swishing a sports drink only helps runners on an empty stomach, but the carbohydrate signal reaches the brain's effort circuits whether or not you have eaten.
Lauryn BrittWhy Do Bones Keep Breaking in the Same Spot? The Stress Fracture Risk Nobody Screens For
A bone stress injury doesn't announce itself with a snap. It starts as a dull, localized ache that shows up earlier in each run, then lingers after, then greets you on the first step of the day. By the time it's a tru…
Elias KiptooDoes a Bigger Carb Dose During a Marathon Actually Beat the Old 60-Gram Rule?
For years the ceiling on race-day fueling was roughly 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour, the point where your gut's glucose transporters were thought to saturate. That number came from single-sugar studies, and it hel…
Elias KiptooDoes Taking Sodium Bicarbonate Before a Hard Session Actually Buffer the Burn?
Most runners hear "baking soda" and think of a chemistry-class volcano, not a performance aid. But sodium bicarbonate is one of the few ergogenic aids with a mechanism that actually makes sense for the kind of running…
Elias KiptooDoes Adding a Weekly Downhill Run Actually Protect Your Legs on Race Day?
Most marathoners train their quads to push and forget to train them to brake. Then they hit a downhill course like Boston, or the back half of any point-to-point race, and the eccentric load shreds a muscle that was n…
Elias KiptooDoes Double Threshold Training Actually Make You Faster Than One Hard Day?
The Norwegian distance runners spent the last few years turning the training world upside down, and the centerpiece is a method called double threshold: two sub-threshold workouts in a single day, morning and afternoo…
Elias KiptooDoes Running in the Heat Actually Boost Your VO2max Like Altitude Training?
Every summer a runner logs a brutal August tempo, sees the pace tank, and assumes the block is a wash. It isn't. What's happening under the hood during those miserable weeks is a genuine adaptation, and the research o…
Elias KiptooHow many strides per week does it take to boost your running economy?
Most runners obsess over their long run and treat strides—those short, relaxed 15-to-20-second accelerations—as an afterthought, if they do them at all. That is a mistake, and the mechanism is more interesting than "t…
Lauryn BrittWhy Stretching Before a Run Doesn't Prevent Injury (and What Load Management Does)
The belief that a few minutes of static stretching will armor you against pulls and strains has survived decades of locker-room repetition, but the evidence has never supported it. A large systematic review by Lauerse…
Elias KiptooDoes Drinking Beetroot Juice Before a Race Actually Make You Faster?
Beetroot juice keeps showing up in race-day chatter, and for once the hype has decent science under it. The mechanism is dietary nitrate, which your body converts to nitrite and then to nitric oxide, improving blood f…
Elias KiptooThe Difference Between Fitness and Durability
We see it every marathon season. A runner hits the wall at mile twenty, watches their pace collapse, and blames their fueling strategy. But often, the true culprit is a lack of durability. Recent sports science has fi…
Elias KiptooWhy Cardiac Drift Tells the Truth About Your Base Fitness
We spend a lot of time obsessing over VO2 max and threshold pace when we are fresh. But those numbers mean very little at mile eighteen of a marathon. The true currency of a distance runner is durability, which exerci…
Elias KiptooThe Hidden Cost of Super Shoes: Why Carbon Belongs on Race Day, Not Everyday
The defining shift in distance running over the last decade hasn't been a new training philosophy. It has been the carbon-plated super shoe. By combining hyper-responsive foam with a rigid, curved carbon-fiber plate,…
