Boston Marathon Challenge & Weight Loss (PBS)

Saw a NOVA science program on PBS last night titled "Marathon
Challenge". Really great ending, pretty emotionally charged, at least
for me. Here is the PBS website on the show.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/marathon/

Overly simplified summary has 13 people selected as candidates, and
these were mostly ordinary out of shape folks. There was on fairly obese
lady, and a lady in her 60's. Bunch of guys to, including a former pro
footbal limeman in the range of 300 pounds built to run short distances
and knock you over - fast twitch muscle guy ordinarily not thought to be
slow twitch marathon material.

One person dropped out of training because of repeated multiple stress
fractures, underlying a basic medical issue she had.

The remaining 12 "ordinary people" survived the nine (9) month training
and ran the race, I believe it was the 2007 Boston Marathon which was
almost called off because of wet cold weather.


All 12 finished, but some took over 6 hours.


Here is the interesting part. The obese lady lost quite a lot, but she
was still large, probably technically obese.

For the most part, none of the participants really developed lean runner
bodies, they still had a lot of body fat visible by X-ray scans.

Taubes "Good Carbs, Bad Carbs" page 267


...... "That same year [1987], Danish investigators reported that they
had indeed trained previously sedentary individuals to run marathons
(26.2 miles). At the end of this eighteen-month (18 month) training
period -- a time of almost fanatic exercise -- the eighteen men in the
study had lost an average of five pounds (5 pounds) of body fat. "No
change in body composition was observed" among the nine (9) female
subjects."


Jassen, R. W. et at 1989 International Journal of Sports Medicine May 10
(1suppl.);S17-21

I forgot to tape the show, and there were parts that slipped my mind on
just how much body weight change and body shape/composition were
observed. Also, the PBS group trained for only half the period of those
in the reference above.

I really cheered on the obese lady.

On Nov 1, 7:33 am, Jim wrote:
Saw a NOVA science program on PBS last night titled "Marathon
Challenge".

As I get a little older, I find running so hard on my bones.....I
prefer biking, swimming, badminton, or using the elliptical machine or
reclining bike machine. I used to love running (probably 6-8
kilometers on average 4-5 times a week) but started developing a bad
ankle so stopped. That being said, I love walking for hours on end
and will put little sprints in now and then for fun. I really don't
want to put so much stress on my bones that running seems to cause.