The race within a race: Together on the marathon starting line but miles apart in the experience

Burke, Louise M., Whitfield, Jamie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8961-8872 and Hawley, John ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0886-9881 (2025) The race within a race: Together on the marathon starting line but miles apart in the experience. Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 227. pp. 367-378. ISSN 0891-5849

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Abstract

Every four years the world's best athletes come together to compete in the Olympic games, electrifying audiences with incredible feats of speed, strength, endurance and skill as personal best performances and new records are set. However, the exceptional talent that underpin such performances is incomprehensible to most casual observers who often cannot appreciate how unique these athletes are. In this regard, endurance running, specifically the marathon, a 42.195 km foot race, provides one of the few occasions in sport outside of Olympic, world and national competitions, that permits sport scientists and fans alike to directly compare differences in the physiology between recreational and elite competitors. While these individuals may all cover the same distance, on the same course, on the same day – their experience and the physiological and psychological demands placed upon them are vastly different. There is, in effect, a “race within a race”. In the current review we highlight the superior physiology of the elite endurance athlete, emphasizing the gap between elite competitors and well-trained, but less genetically endowed athletes. We draw attention to a range of inconsistencies in how current sports science practices are understood, implemented, and communicated in terms of the elite and not-so-elite endurance athlete.