Should we burn fat or glycogen when we run?

By Hayden Shearman When you do an easy run, you’re primarily burning fat. When you do a workout or shorter race, you’re primarily burning glycogen. So, what’s best? Not to disappoint right off the bat, but asking what’s best is probably the wrong question here, because the truth is that both energy systems have their[…]

How to Decipher the Unbelievable from the Unreal

By Hayden Shearman Last weekend, in Monaco, the men’s 5000m world record was broken by Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda in running a mind-exploding 12:35! However, within hours, the inevitable rhetoric came out online that it could be doping or that it was the shoes. As fans of athletics, it can be tricky to decipher the[…]

The Hills of the Auckland Marathon

By Hayden Shearman // One of the many frustrating things about running is the incredibly vague and contradicting uses of the terms “hilly”, “undulating”, “rolling”, and “flat”. Every runner has a different take on what these terms mean and even with a course elevation profile it’s difficult to make out the real magnitude of the hills on[…]

How to tell a good running training plan from an average one?

By Hayden Shearman // A quick Google search revealed 825 million results for “marathon training plan” in just 0.36 seconds. That’s a lot of choice. And a lot of noise. And unfortunately not every training plan is made equal. And, worse, unfortunately not every runner is made equal … which complicates the heck out of[…]

Why do runners get injured?

By Hayden Shearman // The obvious answer to the question above is that something in your body—whether it be bone or soft tissue—can’t handle the stress you’re putting it under. For distance runners, that stress isn’t usually from a one-off exertion but a small repeated exertion over time. In other words, running injuries are usually[…]