Hello again and welcome back to Happy Hour. We just had a quite cold and drizzling Sunday in Beijing, but it was also a big day in town because the Beijing marathon took place yesterday. It is a pretty big sporting event. So has anyone of you taken part in yesterday's race or do you participate in any other marathon events?

I have to admit I really didn't know much about marathon before I started doing research for the program. A little over a year ago, one of our early listeners Richard specifically requested an episode of marathon and actually sent us a lot of relevant information and some vocabulary. So now I'm finally doing this. So let's talk about marathon.

First of all, what is a marathon? Well it is a running event. A marathon is a race with an official distance of 42.195 kilometers or 26 miles and 385 yards. Very exact you might think. So, why is it such a specific distance? This is because marathon race originally, it was to commemorate the story of Pheidippides. So Pheidippides was a Greek soldier, according to the legend, he fought at the battle of Marathon near Athens in 490 BC. So Marathon was the name of a place near Athens. After the battle, he ran back to Athens from Marathon to tell the city that they had won the battle. So he kept running for about forty kilometers, which was the distance between Athens and Marathon. When he reached Athens, he shouted, we have won! And then just collapsed and died. So that was his very last run.

The modern marathon started was the first modern Olympics in 1896. Nowadays you can run a full marathon, half marathon 半马 or ultra-marathon 超马. This is a race that is longer than marathon, I just can't imagine doing that, it sounds extremely tough. With marathon becoming more popular, if you look around the world, they have something called the Abbott World Marathon Majors (AWMM). This is a championship style competition, and it includes six world's most high profile marathons: Berlin, London, Chicago, New York, Boston and Tokyo. And if you finish all of them, you would become a six star finisher. This is kind of like the grand slam in marathon world.

So getting back to Beijing marathon, it’s still relatively young. It was first held in 1981 and has been held every year since. The race uses lottery system to allocate entries, so you have to be lucky enough to get a chance to participate in this marathon run. And the race begins at Tiananmen Square and finishes at the National Olympic Sports Center Stadium.

If you have ever participated in marathon events or have watched a marathon event up close or on TV, then you probably have seen these people with bunny ears. They have a very cute name, they're called the rabbit or pace bunnies. The official name is pacer or pacesetter. These are people who run a specific time or pace. They are like your reference. If you want to run the marathon within four hours for example, you will try to follow a four hour pace bunny or rabbit and so on. There are of course faster bunnies and slower buddies for you to choose from. Pace bunnies basically help other runners pace themselves to get a better grip on their speed.

Marathon is definitely not for everyone. It is an athletic sport with high risk and great intensity over long distances. It has very high physical demands on participants. So if you wish to participate in marathon race, you should be not only in healthy condition but also have experience in running and have completed training. So let's take a look at how to train for a marathon. Of course I'm far from being an expert, so this is just based on information provided by runners and also a little bit of research.

So you generally have to have a training plan ranging from twelve to twenty weeks before the marathon because you need to build up your endurance. Generally you need to do a long run every week, twelve or fifteen miles, and there are some specific types of running that you can do to train for marathon including interval run 间歇跑, tempo run, 节奏跑. This is the pace that's faster than moderate, but still comfortable. It's about the lactate threshold 乳酸门槛. And you can also try LSD, long slow distance or Fartlek run. Fartlek is a Swedish word for speed play, so you're changing speed when you're running 变速跑. So tempo run, interval run, Fartlek run and long slow distance, if you're interested in any of those, do more research; maybe you can start training for marathon.

So like we have mentioned before, marathon is an athletic sport with high risk, great intensity and long distance. Therefore there are many medical concerns that you needed take into account. For example, during the race you might feel dizzy; you might have abdominal pain, this is like stomach aches or cramps 抽筋; you might need to be very careful and perhaps even carry pain relief spray to ease the pain. And if the race is on a very cold day like yesterday, then you also have to be careful about hypothermia. This means loss of body temperature. If you are a runner, if you have ever done marathon or other long distance running, you might know the idea called the bonk or hitting the wall. This is when your energy level suddenly goes very very low, you feel exhausted. You just feel like you can't carry on. Hitting the wall is not really hitting a real wall. It's like your energy suddenly drops. And experts were telling the runners how to avoid the bonk or how to avoid hitting the wall by eating carbohydrates 补充碳水, eating energy gels or bars 食用能量棒, drinking electrolyte drinks 喝补充电解质饮料. Start slowly to avoid the race-day adrenalin rush. This is because runners obviously on the day, you're excited and you might burn your energy too quickly. And of course, listening to the cheers of the spectators will help you keep your spirit high. So those are some information and tips about preparing for the race and what to do on the race-day.

The thing that's great about marathon is that unlike other race where you have to outrun other participants to win. In marathon I think as long as you finish it, you are already a winner and you get a finisher medal.

In the end, let's wrap up with a few idioms of running. When we want to talk about things over time or in a long term, we can also say in the long run, in the long run, we can say: this will be good for you in the long run. To have a good run, means to achieve some level of success. If people say we had a good run, this means we had some success. Or a dry run, to do a dry run means to rehearse something before really doing it. So you can say, for example, let's do a dry run before the big day. So those were some of the idioms in English about running.

In the end, I just wanna say running is a good exercise and I'm sure a lot of you are really excited to participate in events like marathon. But like many things in life, it's important to remember not to overdo it. Always assess your physical condition and always remember safety first, other than that, enjoy the run. And if you are a marathon runner, or if you're interested in the subject, or have experiences to share, we would love to see your comments. I'll see you next time. Bye.