Oddly, there is nothing in Belgian media about this.
EDIT: correction! http://standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF2011020...
Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#42Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#43I can recommend watching Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man in which he ran 43 marathons in 51 days for the charity Sport Relief.
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#44Picture of him here: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/41438476/ns/sports-other_sport...
Is it just me or does the photo in the article have a time of 9:48? 9 hours,48 minutes. That race has to be a rarity since he's supposed to average 4hrs.
I assumed that was a pace time (9 minutes 48 seconds per mile).
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#45I'm actually kind of impressed by the scheduling and logistics of this over and above the physical aspect. How do you find 365 consecutive days with marathons, and figure out the schedule to do it, overcome travel delays, etc? Not to mention sleeping. It seems impossible.
This article suggests he's not actually running in organized races every day: "He will do his 42km (26-mile) daily jogs at Battersea Park every day until Monday..."
Of course, anyone who has ever run a marathon knows it's 42.195km (26-miles 385 yards) and we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't round down, thank you very much. :-)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#Distance for the interesting history behind the distance.
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article suggests he's not actually running in organized races every day: "He will do his 42km (26-mile) daily jogs at Battersea Park every day until Monday..."
Of course, anyone who has ever run a marathon knows it's 42.195km (26-miles 385 yards) and we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't round down, thank you very much. :-) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#Distance for the interesting history behind the distance.
I just quoted from the article. I know the history.
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#47Picture of him here: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/41438476/ns/sports-other_sport...
Is it just me or does the photo in the article have a time of 9:48? 9 hours,48 minutes. That race has to be a rarity since he's supposed to average 4hrs.
>I'd guess that's a HH:MM:SS display, and we're not seeing the whole thing.
>That's supposed to be a picture of his last race, which he finished in 4h21m59sec according to this (Dutch) article: http://sport.be.msn.com/running/nl/nieuws/?Article_ID=492504
I think the first of the above statements is correct and the portion of the time that we see differs from that indicated in the second above statement because runners typically wear a timing chip so their finishing time often varies from the official race clock by a few minutes based on how long after the race started that person started the race.
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#48"Engels had asthma as a youngster and doctors told him he should not participate in sports. But he decided to overcome his ailment and ran his first marathon at 25. He said his latest feat is the result of 35 years of exercise."
In other words, he also did it at age 49! Just awesome. (with a best time of under 3 hours, too)
Christopher McDougall, in his book "Born to Run" and in various talks, tells us that humans maintain their endurance until a surprising age. A 49 year old has the endurance of an 18 year old.
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#49Picture of him here: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/41438476/ns/sports-other_sport...
Is it just me or does the photo in the article have a time of 9:48? 9 hours,48 minutes. That race has to be a rarity since he's supposed to average 4hrs.
In some big races, they start in waves so that the clock is total time, but doesn't represent the runner's time. They use chips to log start and end time.
i.e. He could've started 4 hours later than the first wave.
Re: Belgian man completes 365 marathons in 365 consecutive days
#50This is literally unfathomable to me. This guy has to be some sort of serious genetic freak. I workout regularly, but I think I just got chin splints just from reading that article. When you consider how even the most elite athletes fall victim to overtraining, I can't even imagine how his body was able to hold up to this. Truly amazing.
"This guy has to be some sort of serious genetic freak."
Doing it every day would be very difficult, but doing it six days a week wouldn't be that hard. The term 'overtraining syndrome' is actually a misnomer, because you don't get it from training too much, but rather from chronic glycogen deficiency. As long as you eat a banana or an energy bar every 45 minutes and drink diluted gatorade you'd be fine with that workload.
The biggest concern would definitely be joint problems and not muscular issues. The reality is that this guy probably did do a lot of damage to his body, but was able to mask it using an anti-inflammatory/analgesic drug like ibuprofen or marijuana.