The good people at the Muscat Marathon are counting down to the race on January 27th over on their Facebook page. This is one of the more recent posts:
The link takes you to an article from January 4th entitled, “Oman Sports: How to best prepare for Muscat Marathon 2017?”
It advises runners that there’s less than a month to prepare for the marathon.
Here’s a choice pull quote:
“Death is not a common side-effect of these races, but running for a distance of over 42 kilometres, does warrant some training and preparation.”
To be fair, contextually this comes after summarizing the legend of Pheidippides who delievered his news post-25-mile run and then supposedly died. Still, advising runners they need to so some training and preparation less than 4 weeks out from the event strikes me as, um, advice delivered a little too late.
Particularly this quote:
“To get the full marathon experience, start training now with a sprinting, jogging, and strength training routine…”
But, hey, what do I know? It took me six months to train for my first marathon using The Non-Runner’s Marathon Guide. And these days I can turn around from a marathon fairly quickly. But I’m not sure I’d say to somebody, “Hey, ya know — four weeks is plenty of time to prep for your first marathon!” I fervently believe people have the capacity to run this distance… and I actually believe people have the ability to traverse the 26.2 miles/42.195 km distance with just a little bit of training… but the training is really there to ensure one has a GOOD experience and can RECOVER from the event without injury (or minimal injury, speaking as one who recently tripped and fell and is still nursing the cuts and bruises). To be honest, I think the training and preparation is precisely WHY death is not a common side-effect of these races.
But, again, what do I know?