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On Thursday, November 24, tens of thousands of people will lace up for their local turkey trot. In most cases, these races portray the positive side of the Thanksgiving story while neglecting the tragic Native experience surrounding the holiday. Over the past three years, a group of Indigenous runners have sought to change that.

From November 24 to November 27, rising hearts—a local Indigenous-led organization—will host the third 4 Miler Truth Action. The race was created to honor Native history, foster covenants, and share the true story of Thanksgiving during Native American Heritage Month.

Over the past two years, Rising Hearts has partnered with ReNew Earth runninga non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the lands of Indigenous communities, donating proceeds from the race to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the group that made first contact with English settlers and now call Massachusetts home and eastern Rhode Island for over 12,000 years.

The Truthsgiving 4 Miler was born out of a virtual race during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and has since grown to four in-person races. For the first time ever, races will be held in St. Paul, Minnesota (11/24), Harrisonburg, Virginia (11/24), Washington DC (11/26) and Los Angeles, California (11/26) this year. .

By hosting the Truthsgiving 4 Miler on Thanksgiving weekend, Rising Hearts founder Jordan Marie brings three white horses, Daniel hopes to encourage runners to be open to a new perspective on the holiday. “We’re not trying to deter people or turn them away by saying you can’t do it,” Daniel said. Women’s running. “It’s about reframing your opinion and reframing the language around it, which is why we call it Truthsgiving and not Thanksgiving. We want people to understand the real story.

What Thanksgiving Means to Indigenous Peoples

Generations of children in American schools have been educated on the positive version of Thanksgiving Story in which Plymouth settlers and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe shared one of the first fall harvest festivals, celebrating a 50-year covenant that began in 1621, a year after English settlers arrived in this which is now the United States.

However, for many Indigenous people, Thanksgiving is considered a day of mourning and protest. As an Indigenous non-profit organization native hope shared, the day commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression, land theft and genocide that followed for Indigenous communities.

“Very few teachers have the chance to tell students about the massacres of indigenous tribes like the Pequot that took place in the years that followed. Nor do they mention that English settlers robbed Wampanoag graves and stole food from them in order to survive their early years on this new continent,” Native Hope organizers wrote in a statement. blog post.

As people across the United States celebrate the holiday with turkey and pie, many Indigenous communities are leading protests. In 1970 the United American Indians of New England named the fourth Thursday in November the National Day of Mourning for Native Americans and their allies. Every year, people gather at Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for a Thanksgiving rally.

How runners can be better allies

In the running community, many start Thanksgiving with a turkey trot in the morning. As The runner’s world reported in 2021, it’s America’s most popular and oldest continuous running race. And the number of participants continues to grow with the exception of pandemic cancellations. According Run in the United Statesmore than 961,882 people completed a trot in 2016, compared to 684,334 in 2011.

By hosting the Truthsgiving 4 Miler, race organizers hope to encourage runners to be more mindful this holiday season and throughout the year. “We should be grateful for the food we eat, the roofs over our heads and the gift of running. But Thanksgiving has a heavy weight. It’s something we passively accept like turkey and football, but it’s so much more than that,” said Michael Harralson, Founder of ReNew Earth Running. Women’s running. “In my opinion, we need to remember the historical background of the holiday, and if we want to holiday about it, it needs to be truthful.”

Harralson and the ReNew Earth Running team will host one of four in-person races this year at Pike Island, located on the section of the Mississippi River that runs through St. Paul, Minnesota. “Wherever we are on Indigenous land, there are truths to be told. The race sheds some truths about the Thanksgiving holiday, but we’re going to get some truths about where we’re hosting our event,” Harralson says, explaining that the pike island history includes the story of the creation of the Dakota people as well as the tragic war between the United States and the Dakotas of 1862, after which more than a thousand Dakotas were forced into confinement.

An opportunity to create a community

Those who sign up for the Truthsgiving 4 Miler are encouraged to dig deeper in Indigenous history and supporting Indigenous communities throughout the year action steps, including shopping for Natives, reading books by Native authors, donating to Native organizations, and “decolonizing” the Thanksgiving plate by preparing Native cuisine, among other recommendations shared by the organizers of the race before the event. They also want to make the race accessible with a reasonable price (between $25 and $30) and by offering the possibility for people to sponsor the participation of other runners.

Daniel says the response to the race has been positive with a few exceptions. In her first year, some had negative reactions to the concept of sharing the real story behind the vacation, but they’ve become less vocal in recent years, she says. Many reached out with their own positive racing experiences or shared their efforts to start conversations about Truthsgiving at the dinner table. So far, race organizers have raised around $10,000 a year for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, in an effort to support a group whose experience needs to be shared.

“The biggest thing that harms Indigenous people in our communities is the constant erasure, stereotyping, racism and invisibility that we experience,” says Daniel. “This race is an opportunity to present the real story, for people to have a better sense of who we are beyond racism and stereotypes, and to truly be in community together.”

Cornerstone VNA Caregiver Cafés return in person

ROCHESTER – Cornerstone VNA has announced that its monthly caregiver cafes are once again meeting in person. The Caregiver Cafés are a collaborative effort between Cornerstone VNA and four local libraries in Farmington, Newington, Dover and Strafford. Caregivers and their loved ones are invited to attend an hour of support, conversation and education.

In the spring of 2020, Caregiver Cafés transitioned to a virtual format, allowing local family caregivers to stay connected and supported throughout the pandemic. The monthly virtual caregiver cafe provided a sense of camaraderie, especially during a time of extreme isolation in an already extremely isolated sector of the community. In the words of one participating Virtual Caregiver, “I always feel less alone after one of our coffee sessions.”

The Tasmanian government recently released a four-year strategy to transform outpatient services in its public health system.

Tasmania Transforming Ambulatory Services Strategy aims to reduce wait times, improve communication and modernize processes.

One of the goals of the strategy is ICT and virtual care capability under which a digital outpatient management system and electronic referral system will be provided to “modernize and streamline service delivery processes”.

“They will help address current inefficiencies in business processes, improve communication channels between consumers, referring practitioners, clinicians and clinic staff, and enable the implementation of new models of ambulatory care,” said said the Tasmanian Department of Health.

These projects will also facilitate communication with outpatient services; an option to update personal information electronically; an option to easily schedule appointments; and access to care through virtual care and telehealth. IT will also lead to increased administrative efficiency and less double manipulation.

“Information technology will play an important role in supporting the transformation of outpatient services. Our digital capability will be significantly enhanced with the introduction of an outpatient digital management service and eReferrals,” noted the Department of health.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT

Each year, the Tasmanian Health Service (THS) provides approximately 600,000 health service opportunities across 46 different specialties. These include diagnostic assessment, screening and treatment by specialists; ongoing management of chronic and complex conditions; and pre- and post-hospital care. About 10% of these services are new appointments for people who are on an outpatient waiting list, while the rest are for services that do not have a waiting list, such as cancer services, and for the examination and management of individuals who require ongoing or follow-up care. .

By 2024, the state government expects the population of Tasmanians over the age of 70 to grow, with the 85+ cohort expected to grow by 85% from around 12,600 in 2020 to about 23,000 over the next two decades. This demographic change seems to have an impact on the future demand for health services, in particular the demand for people with long-term illnesses.

The four-year strategy enables THS to meet this expected increase in demand by proposing strategies that will build the capacity needed for the future.

THE GREAT TREND

Ambulatory Services Transformation Strategy release follows Tasmanian Government launch 2022-2023 Digital Health Transformation Program earlier this year with the help of a consulting firm KPMG. The state government has also invested A$150 million ($100 million) over four years to upgrade its digital health infrastructure.

Meanwhile, since 2019, the Tasmanian Department of Health and Primary Health Tasmania have been working to set up and roll out the eReferral system across the state. The system uses HealthLink SmartForms for primary care users with a hospital referral management system. It is currently adopted by all general practitioners using best practice and the medical director, over 125 private specialists and a growing number of paramedical organisations. A wider roll-out in Tasmania’s Northern Region is set to begin next week, November 22, while implementations in the Northwest Region’s outpatient services will begin early next year and in the Southern Region at the mid-2023.

Participating in online yoga classes, or tele-yoga, can help people with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) relieve pain, overcome certain functional limitations and improve their mental health, suggests an Indian study.

The study, “Tele-yoga in the management of ankylosing spondylitis amid the COVID pandemic: a prospective randomized controlled trialwas published in Complementary therapies in clinical practice.

Symptoms of AS can make it difficult to perform daily activities

AS is a type of arthritis that affects the joints of the spine, causing inflammation and swelling. Because it usually occurs around the joints of the spine, the main AS symptoms include pain, stiffness and loss of ability to move the spine through its full range of motion.

This can make it difficult for people with AS to carry on with daily activities, which is one reason why some may experience a decline in their mental health and quality of life.

Staying active, exercising and adopting good posture can help living with AS less difficult while maintaining joint health.

“Yoga is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease in chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome,” the researchers wrote. “In addition to its beneficial effects on physiological and metabolic actions, yoga also influences positive actions for mental health. It helps reduce stress and its effects and improves anxiety and depression associated with various chronic diseases.

However, the effectiveness of a yoga practice for people with AS is unclear.

To find out more, a team of researchers from across India designed a three-month yoga program for people with AS that included yoga poses, breathing exercises, meditation and relaxation techniques.

As the study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, all classes were offered online, twice a week for one hour per class.

Yoga is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease in chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome

Lower disease activity reported in 57 adults who completed a yoga program

The researchers invited 130 adults who had been diagnosed with AS for at least three years to participate in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group engaged in the three-month yoga program at home in addition to their usual care; the other group (control) received only its standard care.

Some participants dropped out of the study because they did not have time to follow the program or lacked motivation (four patients in the yoga group), were not reachable by phone or did not want to continue the program. study (eight patients in the control group), or were diagnosed with COVID-19 (one patient in the yoga group and five in the control group).

A total of 109 adults (57 in the yoga group and 52 in the control group) completed the study. Most (83.5%) were men and their average age was similar in the two groups (34.4 vs 35.1 years).

At the start of the study and after three months, researchers used the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index to assess disease activity, including pain. While mean scores did not change in the control group, they dropped significantly in the yoga group, from 6.04 to 4.91 points, indicating less active disease.

Practicing tele-yoga also helped patients feel less anxious and depressed.

The yoga group also had significantly lower scores on Bath’s ankylosing spondylitis functional index (4.07 versus 4.93 points for the control group). The index measures the functional ability of people with AS to perform activities of daily living, and higher scores indicate more severe impairment.

Similar observations were made when examining the results of the ankylosing spondylitis quality of life questionnaire.

Researchers have found a link between disease outcomes and mental health. This means that the better the patients felt in terms of disease activity, functional ability and quality of life, the less anxious and depressed they were.

Exactly how yoga works to improve overall health remains unclear, but “yoga practice may have improved joint mobility and spinal flexibility”, while increasing pain tolerance and reducing stress, noted the researchers.

All participants were comfortable with a virtual yoga intervention, suggesting yoga (or tele-yoga) practice as a possible intervention for people with AS, the team wrote.

Africa Newsroom
2022-11-08
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Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha challenged the National Health Insurance Fund to align its operations with the needs of its customers.

Speaking at a meeting with the NHIF management and board on Monday, the Health SC said the government remained committed to delivering on its promise of universal healthcare, with the Fund to play a vital role in its implementation.

“There is a need to align your strategic plan with the government’s UHC agenda to make it more patient-centred. The government remains committed to ensuring that individuals and communities have access to quality health services without suffering financial hardship. Observed Nakhumicha.

This even as she stressed the need for the NHIF to fully digitize its operations to improve efficiency and reduce waste. “I am encouraged by what you have been able to accomplish internally. Let us make good use of available resources to improve services, even as we strive to involve all stakeholders. “Says the CS of health.

She said the government has prioritized the constitutional right to health by pledging to implement its universal health care program which will focus on primary health care and the seamless universal health insurance system.

Speaking at the meeting, NHIF CEO Peter Kamunyu said the fund had embarked on a transformation program to improve its efficiency and make it more responsive to clients. He highlighted the upgrading of the NHIF system which is currently running on a legacy system, the development of an optimal centralized health care management system, timely payment of bonuses and budgetary approvals as some of the urgent concerns that need to be addressed. processed in order to carry out the plan.

During the familiarization visit, the CS also visited the NHIF Customer Experience Center which offers its customers 24-hour communication support services. She was accompanied by Health PS Susan Mochache, Acting Director General of Health Dr Patrick Amoth and several senior officials from the Ministry of Health.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Kenya.

HEALTH NOTES: Park users ‘less likely’ to get cancer

By mail the Sunday reporter

Published: 6:15 p.m. EDT, November 5, 2022 | Updated: 6:28 p.m. EDT, November 5, 2022

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A woman wipes away tears as she pays tribute to the victims of a fatal accident during Saturday night’s Halloween festivities at a makeshift flower lay area set up near the crash site in Seoul, South Korea , Wednesday, November 2. , 2022.

Public health experts in Qatar explained _ in an online briefing organized by the Geneva-based World Health Organization _ their preparations for a tournament which is expected to attract at least 1.2 million visitors to the small emirate.

“Surprises do happen, but we are prepared as much as humanly possible for such events,” said Dr Soha Al Bayat from the Qatari Ministry of Public Health.

“There have been events that have happened recently in other countries where there have been injuries and there have been casualties, so of course we keep that in mind,” he said. she stated.

Public health experts describe the FIFA World Cup, which begins on November 20, as the largest mass gathering of spectators since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

Although Qatar this week ended mandatory testing for international arrivals, Dr Al Bayat said risk assessments had been carried out on the “disease profile” in the 31 nations coming to play at the tournament.

‘We have very strong surveillance tools, we have a large surveillance team,’ she said, adding that in the event of ‘any outbreak anywhere in the world, we we’re above that’.

The briefing also focused on preparing for ‘high casualty’ events, after more than 150 people died in crowds at a Halloween celebration last weekend in Seoul, Korea. from South. The public authorities have apologized for the disaster.

A month ago, more than 130 football fans died at a national match in Indonesia amid panic worsened by police tear gas. At least eight fans died in a crash outside a stadium in January during the Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon. Security breaches, including police using tear gas, also marred May’s Champions League final in Paris.

“There will be crowds but they will be kept to a minimum,” Dr Al Bayat said of Qatar’s eight World Cup stadiums, citing clear instructions on match tickets telling fans which gates to use.

Up to 40,000 people can gather at Al Bidda Park in downtown Doha to watch matches on giant screens and other entertainment at the official Fan Festival which is a venue for the FIFA Cup. world.

Dr Dalia Samhouri, WHO emergency preparedness specialist in the Middle East, said additional training for such an incident during the World Cup was carried out after an assessment of the medical facilities at the Qatar.

“We realized that mass casualty management training was needed in trauma care,” she said.

The Qatari’s preparedness for a major health incident was tested during the Arab Cup tournament last December and, after a post-tournament review, another simulation exercise in August.

The test drills also covered food and water safety, extreme weather conditions and accidents, the online briefing said.

Fans coming to Qatar have been advised, including on the Ministry of Health website, to purchase travel insurance and up-to-date COVID-19 and flu vaccines.

Qatar is making essential healthcare available at four public hospitals free of charge to holders of the tournament identification known as the Hayya card.

“Qatar is one of the countries,” said WHO’s Dr Samhouri, “where we can safely say that we have strong capabilities.”

(For more sports news and updates, follow Ahram Online Sports on Twitter at @AO_Sports and on Facebook at AhramOnlineSports.)

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IIt would be anathema for a healthcare facility in the United States to have a main entrance that is not physically accessible to everyone. Yet many of their digital gateways block people with disabilities. They have to change that.

More than 30 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act took effect signed into law In an effort to break down barriers for people who are blind, deaf or with other physical or mental disabilities, the digital landscape continues to erect barriers to access. A Kaiser Health News survey in 2021 showed that nearly all Covid-19 vaccine registration websites examined were not accessible to blind people, a major violation of disability rights laws amid a public health emergency.

Digital accessibility involves designing inclusive web pages for people with visual, motor, hearing, speech or cognitive disabilities. More … than 61 million people in the United States – nearly 1 in 4 Americans – and more than a billion people worldwide have one of these disabilities, including 46% of people aged 60 and over. With the number of Americans age 65 and older expected to nearly double from 52 million in 2018 to 95 million by 2060, federal officials have already identified the accessibility of health information online as an urgent need.

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A information note we wrote on behalf of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Foundation and Mathematica sheds light on how difficult it can be for people with disabilities to navigate the healthcare system. Our research found that among the top 106 hospitals in the United States, most of their homepages — their digital front doors — are not accessible to disabled users and elderly users.

Using accessScana free audit tool for online web accessibility, we assessed whether the websites of these hospitals, all recognized as Top Hospitals by US News and World Report in 2021-2022, complied guidelines created by the World Wide Web Consortium, the main international Internet standards organization. Only 4.9% of landing pages fully complied with the Consortium’s most recent web content accessibility guidelines. Nearly 80% were semi-compliant, meaning their pages met some of the accessibility requirements, but not all. However, even a semi-compliant web page is likely to cause navigation problems for people with disabilities, likely making it inaccessible.

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The accessibility issues we found were often the same from hospital to hospital. The most common problem was lack of color contrast – strong contrast between the color of text on a page and the color of the background is essential for readability. Many pages lacked alt text, which is used by screen readers to describe what an image is meant to convey. Our analysis also highlighted a pattern of missing or inaccessible labels, which is important because buttons and search boxes on websites need to be clearly labeled so they can be easily identified by assistive technology. .

Some people with disabilities or injuries cannot use a mouse and must be able to navigate a site using only the keyboard. Many hospital web pages lacked such keyboard accessibility, which was not detected by the type of automated audit we performed for our analysis.

Medical records are an essential part of health management. But as with hospital homepages, millions of Americans struggle to access their personal health information through patient portals. People with disabilities who are unable to successfully navigate their electronic health records are at a disadvantage in managing their health care. This includes the ability to message health care providers, review test results, book appointments, and renew prescriptions. This can translate into less than optimal health for these people, who are already at higher risk of disease and injury.

As the digital age flourishes and technology becomes more advanced, healthcare websites and patient portals are becoming increasingly complex. Unfortunately, this means a steady decline in accessibility. In a recent study conducted by the AHIMA Foundation and Knowbility, people with low vision, mobility disabilities, who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who have cognitive disabilities reported a daily struggle when trying to access information numerically.

The Website and Software Application Accessibility Act (S. 4998 and HR9021) was introduced to Congress by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to build on the Americans with Disabilities Act and address current gaps in digital accessibility enforcement. While this legislation represents a step towards improving the experience of all users of hospital websites, including people with disabilities, it will take time and effort to address the lack of awareness and ambiguity surrounding digital accessibility today.

We see five key steps hospitals can take to improve the accessibility of their websites:

Use a combination automated and manual audits to inspect web pages for accessibility issues and produce a list of potential errors that warrant further investigation.

Hire and train full-time digital accessibility employees to ensure long-term improvement. Experts strongly recommend appointing a digital accessibility coordinator who is different from the one currently appointed by the hospital ADA Coordinator and the establishment of an interdepartmental working group bringing together decision-makers from a wide range of departments: information technology; health information management; human ressources; diversity, equity and inclusion; procurement/selection of suppliers; and marketing and brand management.

Foster multi-sector collaboration with community advocacy groups, local Independent Living Centers, and regional ADA Centers to ensure they engage and conduct user-based testing with older adults and people with disabilities during the solution development.

Collaborate within the hospital system across administration, management and operations to address the root causes of website issues. For example, color contrast and other color errors on the hospital’s homepage may be an issue that falls within the hospital’s branding guidelines and the purview of marketing.

Provide educational opportunities for hospitals and health care systems in the United States on the role of web accessibility in ADA compliance.

In a digital-first — and often digital-only — society, the wide diversity of functional user needs must be taken into consideration, and healthcare facilities must keep their physical and digital doors accessible to all.

Amanda Krupa is director of the AHIMA Foundation, where Jill B. Roark is a health communications consultant. Kirsten Barrett is a Principal Researcher at Mathematica.

The Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) database, produced by Behavioral Measurement Database Services (BMDS), is the go-to information resource for students, researchers, and practitioners trying to locate health and social science measurement instruments. BMDS has expanded the HaPI database to meet the growing demand from industry services by providing more information on the psychometric properties of questionnaires (e.g. reliability and validity), translations and subscales .

Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) was created by Dr. Evelyn Perloff (1921-2022), who devoted 50 years of her professional life to documenting and disseminating information on the wide range of constructs that researchers have measured in psychological and health sciences, as well as the measurement properties of these research tools.

Health and Psychosocial Instruments began as a filing cabinet created by Dr. Perloff, a former professor at the University of Pittsburgh. HaPI has since grown into an international resource that currently contains over 232,000 records. The database continued its steady growth and expansion, with approximately 5,000 new records added each year.

“Our mission is to promote the sharing of knowledge about measurement tools across disciplines,” said Dr. Linda Perloff, President of BMDS. “Most instruments are ‘buried’ in avalanches of published literature and are therefore difficult to discover. Students, researchers, and practitioners in one field (eg psychology or sociology) may not be familiar with instruments in other fields (eg medicine, nursing, public health). This is where the Health and Psychosocial Instruments database comes in. By maintaining comprehensive instrument information from a variety of sources and disciplines, HaPI allows users to retrieve relevant measurements that they might not otherwise be aware of. Thus, HaPI helps researchers easily find what they need and avoids “reinventing the wheel”.

Today, the Health and Psychosocial Instruments database has subscribers at top colleges and universities, medical schools, VA centers, and other government agencies, hospital systems, and research organizations around the world. The purpose of the database is to make it easier for students and researchers to find quizzes, interviews, surveys, and other tests. The HaPI resource can give students and faculty an edge for their research projects, theses, dissertations, surveys, and grant proposals.

The HaPI database offers essential information about what individual instruments are designed to assess. Additionally, researchers can learn about response formats, sample items, psychometric properties, and more. HaPI offers researchers access to an unrivaled wide selection of measurement tools, helping them to improve the quality, reliability and validity of their measurement techniques.

“At Behavioral Measurement Database Services, our goal is to provide a comprehensive and practical resource for researchers,” said Dr. Perloff. “We offer a step-by-step guide to accessing the search tools in the HaPI database. The database is available to researchers through trusted platforms from Ovid Technologies or EBSCOhost. These leading providers offer HaPI through subscriptions to academic libraries, medical schools, and medical systems around the world. »

Those interested can visit https://www.bmdshapi.com/hapi-database/ to learn more about the database, and also opt for a 30-day trial with either provider, to learn more about the wealth of information available through HaPI.

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Behavioral Measurement Database Services

Address: PO Box 110016, Pittsburgh, PA 15232

Telephone: (412) 687-6850

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A few years ago I wrote an article on a high-tech marathon prediction study which analyzed Strava data from 25,000 runners. They extracted each runner’s fastest training segments over distances ranging from 400 meters to 5 km, plotted the data as a hyperbolic speed/duration curve, used this curve to calculate the runner’s critical speed and used critical speed to predict his marathon time.

If none of this makes sense to you, or you don’t have a GPS watch, or you just can’t be bothered to upload all your workout data into an all-seeing algorithm, then I have another type of marathon prediction study for you. In the European Journal of Applied PhysiologyJapanese researchers led by Akihiko Yamaguchi look at simpler variables like how long and how often you run, and offer general information to keep in mind the next time you tackle 26.2 miles .

Researchers surveyed around 500 runners about their training habits before the Hokkaido Marathon, focusing on monthly training volume, number of running days per week, average running distance and running distance the longest. (According to the newspaper, Japanese runners and racing media generally track their training volume by month, rather than the more common weekly totals in North America.)

Savvy readers will notice that these variables are interconnected: if you know the frequency of running and the average distance covered, you have already specified the monthly training volume. This is what makes this kind of analysis tricky. Many previous studies have attempted to determine which training variables are the best predictors of marathon time. But if, say, total training volume is a good predictor, it’s hard to know if that’s because running every day is the most important thing, or if really long runs are the key. or whether total mileage is what matters, regardless of how you accumulate it.

To circumvent this problem, the researchers divided their runners into subgroups. For example, they created four monthly mileage subgroups: those who drove less than 100,000 kilometers (62 miles) per month; 101 to 150K; 151 to 200K; and over 200K. In each of these groups, monthly mileage had no power to predict who would run the fastest marathon, as everyone ran a similar mileage. Then you can ask which variables do predict the time of the marathon. Is it an operating frequency? Average running distance? Longest running distance? The answer, oddly enough, is that none of them have significant predictive power. For people running a similar overall mileage, the other training variables don’t tell you anything useful.

They followed a similar procedure for training frequency, dividing the subjects into homogeneous groups running once to twice a week, three to four times and five to seven times, then analyzing the effect of the other variables. In this case, the strongest predictor was monthly mileage: for a given running frequency, the more you run, the better. Average running distance was also a predictor, but that adds nothing new: if you run the same number of days per week, those with higher average running distance will also have higher monthly mileage.

Subgrouping the other two variables (average run distance and longest run distance) produced similar results: in each case, total monthly mileage was the best predictor of marathon time in each subgroup. But this relationship only held for people whose average run was at least six miles and whose longest run was at least 12 miles. Below a certain minimum level of training, all predictions are wrong.

So far, it may seem painfully obvious: Those who run more miles run faster marathons. But the analysis of the subgroups allows us to draw more solid conclusions. Most notably, it doesn’t seem to matter how you rack up that mileage: a bunch of short trips or a few long trips produce similar results. which is parallel early summer findings in JAMA Internal Medicine on the health benefits of being a so-called weekend warrior: long-term mortality depends on how much exercise you do, but it doesn’t matter whether you spread your exercise throughout the week or that you integrate it on weekends.

If you dig deeper into the subgroup analyses, you also find that the longest run was a better predictor than the average run. As a result, the researchers conclude that at a given level of mileage, it is better to do one long run and several short ones than to do all of your runs at the same distance. This too fits with marathon orthodoxy which says there is no substitute for long runs.

Compared to the Strava study of 25,000 runners, this one has many shortcomings. It’s very small, the training data is self-reported and (therefore) does not include any speed measurements, the subjects are very lightly trained (on average 93 miles per month, or around 23 miles per week, with an average finishing time of 4h20). If you’re looking to qualify for the next Olympics, or even Boston, look no secrets here: you should rack up some volume and frequency and long runs, without trying to figure out which variables you can neglect.

But there are times in every runner’s life when training slips a few notches on your priority list. In these situations, the rule of thumb in this study seems more useful than the formula for calculating critical speed from your Strava data. The rule is: rack up as many miles as you can, whenever you can, whatever dose you can get. Sometimes races can be shorter or less frequent than you’d like, but on race day it all counts.

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For more sweat science, join me on Twitter and Facebookregister at E-mailand check out my book Enduring: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.