Advanced Marathoning Book Review

Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger

Advanced Marathoning is broken into two parts:
~Training Components
~Training Programs

What I Learned:
~So many factors affect recovery. So many that will have its own post.
~Marathoners can almost double their muscle glycogen stores by doing a long run 7 days before a race, then eating a low-carb diet for 3 days followed by a high carb diet for 3 days before the race. However, carb depletion and loading increases your risk of getting sick, which you can NOT afford to do that close to the big day!
~I want to check out the book, Vegetarian Sports Nutrition. I have never even heard of this book...

What I Liked:
~The book talked about developing a periodized training plan. The author advises to organize training into macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles.
~Gives recovery plan for after the marathon.
~Allows for tune up races!
~Shows a variety of training plans for people interested in different amounts of weekly training. It was so interesting to see what a training plan would look like for someone running more than 85 miles per week! If you want to see what insanity looks like, check it out!
~There was a great section on running form drills, something I have been wanting to add to my training, but never do. Suggested drills include: Skip march walk, skip march run, kickout, and fast feet.

Some Criticism:
I liked this book, but it wasn't as informative as some of the other running books I have read. I also thought it was a little basic. Some of the chapters included: Nutrition and hydration, supplementary training, tapering, race day strategy, etc. Maybe because I already read so many other books, but I already knew a lot of the information. Still, it is always good to be reminded. Another criticism I have is that the book is a little repetitive. Don't get me wrong, it is a good book, but there wasn't much that was said that I hadn't heard before. I always like to check out new and different training plans and while I probably won't follow a specific training plan from this book, there are definitely some workouts in here that I would like to try!

Have you read this book? What did you think?