Marathon Challenge

One of the Team In Training members for the fall season was able to DVR Nova's Marathon Challenge on PBS and offered to put it on DVD for anyone who missed it. We had a hard time catching up with each other Saturday mornings so she could give it to me, and finally she sent it in the mail. I got it yesterday, and I watched it last night.

For those of you who have not seen it, it's an experiment to see if regular people could be marathoners. They chose 13 Bostonians from all different walks of life (fitness levels, ages, health issues, personal issued, weights) and spent nine months training them for the Boston Marathon. One girl had to drop out because of chronic stress fractures in her shins, but they replaced her with a 300-pound former football player. In the end, the final 12 finish the marathon.

I was a little bit disappointed in the show. I don't know what I was expecting, but I guess I was expecting more. It was still a good story, though, because I saw my own story--mortal becomes marathoner--but with 3 more months of training. And at one point in the filming, when one of the last women was crossing the finish line, the person immediately behind her was a TEAM member! I saw the purple and my eyes were drawn to her, rather than the bright yellow of the Nova team member. That was pretty neat.

The one part that was most interesting to me was the explanation about how running makes you healthier almost immediately. The Nova team members had to have physicals before they were allowed to take on the challenge, and one of the measurements taken was each runner's Vo2 Max. From what I gather, it has something to do with the amount of oxygen that your body is able to use to oxygenate the blood going to your various limbs. Each person's max is different depending on how sedentary a lifestyle they were leading. At the beginning, the team was mostly in the poor to fair range. Nine months later, they were all excellent to superior, like professional athletes.

In that first physical, each runner also underwent some sort of body scan that determined a very accurate muscle to fat ratio. One of the women was over 50% fat! I think I'd be scared to undergo that test.

Another interesting thing was how they mentioned that the runners didn't really lose any weight in nine months, and when they interviewed the doctor, she said that running is not really a sport for weight loss, but more for major cardiovascular and minor muscular gains. The key to losing weight is diet. (Duh!) Some things you just know, but don't really practice. I also have been running pretty regularly for 8 months and have had no noticeable weight loss, but my asthma has not been acting up, and I have a lot more energy and better outlook.

So, all in all, I would recommend this Nova program, Marathon Challenge, for any mortals out there.