The Marathon and Half-Marathon : A Training Guide (by: Graeme Hilditch)

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: The Crowood Press Ltd (12 Nov 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1861269633
ISBN-13: 978-1861269638
Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.6 x 1 cm

Book Contents

This book is composed of 14 chapters, going from the first things to know about the endurance races, your body and stretching on to injuries, keeping yourself motivated and the race day. In fact, it gives you a major overview of all the interesting bits of the training and what you need to know to prepare yourself for the race day. In more depth, the book starts with “First things first”, a chapter on what you should do before you start: get a checkup, which event to choose, how to pick a charity, what to wear, how to buy shoes, etc. It then moves to “Welcome to your body”, a chapter giving you an overview of the parts of your body involved in running and how to look out for them to keep them fit. The third chapter is “Running Intensity” giving you an idea of what is aerobic and anaerobic training, which one to focus on, how to prepare yourself and how to mix these to optimize your training. It then devotes a chapter to your heart : “Listen to your heart” in order to establish the main concepts regarding the most important muscle in your body. Chapter 5 is on “Stretching and Core Stability”, over viewing what stretching is, why it is important and when to do it. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are on “Training” discussing the trainings for the half and the marathon, what to do and what not. It presents for both endurance runs a beginners training programme and an advanced training programme. A chapter follows on “Staying Motivated”, how to keep yourself running even if your mind tells you to stop. “Nutrition for Running” follows as chapter 10 giving you a very brief overview of what to eat, when to eat it and which care you should take when preparing your meals before a run. A nutrition chapter can only be followed by a “Fluids” chapter which gives you a basic overview of what’s out there and what to use, when to use, etc. Chapter 12 is about the damn “Running Injuries” where the authors tried to go into some depth on how to diagnose and treat the most common injuries in running. Chapter 13 is devoted to precautions for old or female runners and the last chapter is regarding the race day where the author tries to provide you with the tips to make you a split second faster.

Review

This book was lent to me by Jenny, which she referred as basic. Although Jenny has experience with several books of the kind, I never read any so I decided to give it a try. As you can see through the book contents a lot of ground is covered, however, this book has 176 pages, lots of images, which probably reduces the book to a couple of dozen pages of text which can easily be read in less than a working day. All of this means that although a lot of ground is covered, it is covered only superficially. Still, I must say it is perfect for beginners like me who want to get an overview of the main concepts behind training for the marathon or half marathon or as a preparation to read a more advanced book. All of the chapters are written in a very clear language explaining as much as possible the details it is set out to explain. The author seems unbiased regarding sport theories and repeats over and over again (sometimes annoyingly) that each person is a person and everything should be adapted to your own self.

As a beginner myself, I can only highly recommend it for beginners, as a first book into this subject. I rate is as a 4-star for its explanation of the main topics in a clear, easy to read style with loads of photos and computer created images. I don’t give it 5-star due to the lack of more in-depth explanation on the development of the presented programmes for the full and half marathon. Although not essential, I would definitely like to see it there, even if it is a book intended for beginners.

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~ by pmatos on September 29, 2008.