This was a tough book for me to review.  The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Marathon Training by David A. Levine and Paula Petrella required temporarily removing my personal beliefs on marathons (that they’re races you train for because you are a runner) in order to accept the concept of marathons as a “bucket list” item.

My trepidation began on the first page of the introduction when I read this, “If you are tired the next day after a workout, you are overtraining.” Uh oh, this does not bode well…

And on page 6, “When running marathons, men generally find inspiration in the goal of lowering their finish time.  Women tend to focus on the process more, citing reasons like feeling better about themselves and enjoying the challenge.”  I don’t even have a snappy reply for this, it irritates me that much.

Not to say the whole book is full of silliness, there is a good amount of straight info that someone who has never raced will find useful, from explaining what a timing mat is, to gun time vs chip time, to the general subjects found in this type of book (what to wear, nutrition, etc).  It also had a nice, easily digestible section on how the body works, muscles, mitochondria, oxygen, fat vs glycogen, etc.

But things like this give me pause: “The most pervasive marathon misconception is that only elite runners are capable of completing a marathon.” Pervasive on what planet?  Somebody made that up to support the rest of the paragraph because nobody with a working pair of eyes would ever think that’s true.

In the section on hydration during the marathon “…you need to drink every 10 minutes”.  No you don’t.

And this crazy thing “if you are tired the day after a workout you are overtraining” was actually repeated in at least 3 different places.  This tells me the authors don’t know what overtraining is, which makes me question their authority. If you’re tired the day after a workout, you’re not even overreaching.  For the record, overreaching happens before overtraining (which is a serious condition that happens over a period of months) and it sure as hell isn’t something diagnosed from one tired day.  People get tired for tons of reasons that may or may not have to do with exercise.

I also didn’t understand why so many pages were devoted to running form, given the “just get to the finish line” nature of the book.  If you’re going to bring concepts like “stance phase” and “recovery phase” into it, photos should be included. I can only imagine someone who’s never run in their life trying to physicalize that section.

Furthermore, including sections on POSE and Chi Running is truly superfluous, as is telling us Galloway suggests keeping your feet close to the ground while running.  It left me confused on what the authors recommend.  Maybe there is no recommendation but for someone just starting, this has to leave them scratching their heads.

Ditto on the Daniels vs. Lydiard section.  It didn’t make a lot of sense to see this in the context of this book. They talk about some Three Day Plan that I guess we should know about but they won’t name, saying it’s based off Daniels but I’m quite sure Daniels would not approve.

If you just want to finish a marathon with no time goal and you want to do the least it takes to get there, then this book might make sense for you.  Otherwise, I’d be infinitely more inclined to suggest Bob Glover’s Competitive Runner’s Handbook.  It covers all the race distances and is about a subject I hold very near and dear to my heart: Running.

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