Part 2 of "Your Personal Marathon Zone: Training Guidelines and Building Blocks" by Guy Avery has a splendid list of what happens when you run long. In Marathon & Beyond magazine (the Nov/Dec 2006 issue) Avery writes that the physiological benefits include:

• developing deep capillary beds in the leg muscles that will enable you to transport oxygen far more efficiently
• increasing your ability to store glycogen and use it more efficiently
• using more free fatty acids as a partial fuel source
• increasing significantly the number of oxidative enzymes and the size and number of mitochondria that help process oxygen and create energy more easily at the cellular level
• recruiting and converting certain muscle fibers toward gaining greater endurance ability so that a higher percentage of your key musculature can be come more effectively engaged in running, and
• strengthening all connective tissues to prevent future injuries while also providing a reserve training capacity to more easily handle shorter but more intense training sessions that are critical to your marathon racing success

As a sucker for lists I've gotta love this one, and I especially applaud the idea of powering up my mitochondria — crank out some more of that ATP, little fellas!

(cf. SelfImprovement (29 Jul 2002), RunsInTheFamily (25 Jan 2003), ResetTheThermostat (1 Apr 2004), ...)

TopicScience - TopicRunning - 2006-11-11

(correlates: Edge of the Possible, Comfortably Numb, NumberNineDream, ...)