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Run Like Crazy

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Run Like CrazyThis is Tristan Miller’s story of running 52 marathons in a calendar year. I imagined that he would run a marathon somewhere on a Sunday, then travel a leisurely distance to run another next Sunday. Not so: firstly 42.195 kilometres wasn’t always far enough. There was Two Oceans in South Africa (56km) and The Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset Marathon (100 km). He also ran an alpine marathon in Switzerland followed, the next day, by another alpine marathon in Italy. So, there is very much a Lonely Planet aspect to this story with many of his travel choices driven by a need to conserve cash.

His marathons were everywhere from Antarctica to Iceland, from Rwanda to Argentina. He also managed to run the big city marathons: Boston, Chicago, New York, London, and Berlin.

He is a Belgrave boy whose first marathon was the 2005 Melbourne and he has since run another three Melbournes.

The book gives equal time to the travel challenges and the people who shared the journey. There is enough detail to work out how he prepared and ran each race, but it is certainly no training diary. At the start of 2010 his PB was 3hrs23m, but he lowered it to 3hrs3m at Berlin – where else?

Buy the book from his website.

Recommended.

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  1. Maurice Gregory  November 10, 2012

    I was contemplating running 3 marathons this year, Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne. GCM went well best time for 10 years but within weeks had a calf injury so abdoned Sydney to concerntrate on Melb.(would have been 18th this year) but injured lingered and was forced to withdraw a month out. that was very frustrating. Only just starting to run again now but planning (wanting) to run 3 or 4 next year. I am now 55 and the body doesn’t recover as quick as it used to. So I’m looking for advise on how recover from one marathon and train for the next while trying to reduce to chance of injury.

    • Wayne thompson  October 21, 2013

      If you want to run very well in a marathon then even the 20 to 30 year olds can really only put in 2 top efforts in a year as Deek’s, Mona and many others have discovered. A very big effort marathon is extremely taxing on the muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons, blood haemoglobin and other factors, immune system, and even psyche.
      A fit runner over 50 can run several “lesser” effort runs with about 10 to 12 weeks recovery. A serious effort will need at least 4 to 6 weeks of very easy work after the event. Then a further 12 to 20 weeks to build the entire system back for a total output. Certain things become far more crucial over 50. Protein sourcing must be studied. Collagens in foods for tissue repair. Thorough diary and spread-sheet records of training with a clear record of; past week, past month, past 2 months, past 3 months, available as graphs, and observation of times for specific courses (without looking at the watch during the run) must be very regularly kept. thus adaption can be gradual, measured and monitored and systematically increased. Sleep. Sleep more. Rest also. Attention to rest at a daily, weekly, and occasionally monthly interval (easy month) will allow the body to “catch up”. If you try to compare training to any other body “injury” such as a cut hand or bad foot blister, up to a broken bone healing period, then you will start to realize that internal healing (ie recovery and adaption to training stress on the organism) takes the same time as visible injury repair. (eg; Bad sunburn 10 days? – 10km race hard, 10 days?) Whilst training heavily the body is producing new cells about every 5 or 6 weeks. Each new generation of cells is superior but the process takes time and can not be accelerated by any substance or other means. Your shoes must be excellent and you must train on soft (more grass or dirt tracks please) and flatter surfaces (less hills please.). Get adequate low GI Carbs and water and allow time for these to be absorbed, 24 to 48 hours, after heavy training efforts. Just banging out long run concrete path fast miles with low rest allowance and sketchy fuel detail will destroy your Mustang!

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