The short version: the research supports building mileage gradually, but not any one magic number for how fast. The popular workload ratio used to manage training load has been seriously challenged. Stretching has not been shown to reduce injuries or soreness in a meaningful way. Strength work, sleep, heat acclimatization and a planned taper all have stronger evidence behind them than anything that happens on a stretch table. An assisted session fits early in the build, on easy days, not in the last two weeks.
Fall is when a lot of people commit to a half or full marathon. The questions that follow are predictable: how fast to add miles, whether stretching belongs in the plan, what to do about heat that has not left yet, and how to arrive at the start line rested. This page goes through each one and says where the research is solid and where it is not. It is general information, not a training plan.
How fast should weekly mileage go up?
Gradually. The evidence for any specific percentage is weaker than its popularity suggests.
The best-known guideline is the 10% rule: add no more than a tenth to your weekly distance. It has been tested directly. In the GRONORUN trial, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in 2008, Buist and colleagues randomized 532 novice runners preparing for a 4-mile event. One group followed a standard 8-week program, and the other followed a 13-week program built on the 10% rule. Injury rates were 20.3% and 20.8%. The authors concluded the graded program showed “no effect” on running-related injuries compared with the standard one.
A 2014 cohort study by Nielsen and colleagues in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy followed 874 novice runners with GPS watches for a year. Across all injuries, there was no statistically significant difference between runners who increased weekly distance by under 10%, by 10 to 30%, or by more than 30%. For a subset the authors called distance-related injuries, the over-30% group had a higher rate, though the confidence interval crossed one and the authors described the study as exploratory.
A 2018 systematic review by Damsted and colleagues pulled the available studies together and concluded that “very limited evidence exists supporting that a sudden change in training load is associated with increased risk of running-related injury.” Limited is not the same as none. The sensible reading is that large, sudden jumps are the thing to avoid, and that the exact safe rate has not been pinned down for anyone, let alone for you.
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) describes the same pattern from the clinical side. Its page on stress fractures says bone stress injuries “occur over time when the bone is repetitively overloaded with a rapid increase in physical activity,” and that they “are often seen 3 to 4 weeks after starting a new exercise routine or a new sports season.” Three to four weeks into a fall build is a reasonable time to pay closer attention.
What about the acute-to-chronic workload ratio?
If you follow training apps or coaching content, you may have seen the acute:chronic workload ratio, which compares the last week of training to the last month and flags weeks that jump too far. It became the most popular load-and-injury metric in sport science. It is also contested, and the disagreement is worth knowing about.
In a 2020 paper in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, Impellizzeri and colleagues argued that the ratio has statistical problems built into it and that no study had properly tested whether changing it changes injury rates. Their conclusion was blunt: “There is no evidence supporting the use of ACWR in training-load-management systems or for training recommendations aimed at reducing injury risk.” Practitioners still use it, and some researchers defend versions of it. The safe takeaway is the one that does not depend on the ratio: progress load gradually and treat a big jump as a reason to watch how you respond.
Does stretching during the build help?
It depends which outcome you mean, and the honest answer for the outcomes runners care about most is that it has not been shown.
Injuries. A 2016 systematic review in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism by Behm, Blazevich, Kay and McHugh found that static and contract-relax stretching “had no clear effect on all-cause or overuse injuries.” The same review still recommended stretching inside a warm-up that includes dynamic activity afterward, partly for reducing muscle injuries. Researchers reading the same evidence land on different emphases, and the trials are too varied to settle it. Our position is that injury prevention from stretching is unproven, not disproven, and this service makes no claim about it.
Soreness. A Cochrane review by Herbert, de Noronha and Kamper, updated in 2011, found that stretching after exercise reduced soreness one day later by about one point on a 100-point scale. The authors concluded that stretching “does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed-onset muscle soreness in healthy adults.” That review covered self-stretching, not assisted work, and we do not claim a session reduces soreness after long runs.
Range of motion. Behm’s review found that range gains from a stretching bout are real but typically last under 30 minutes. Why range improves is still argued over: the review offered both reduced muscle and tendon stiffness and an improved stretch tolerance as explanations, without settling between them.
Keep two kinds of evidence separate here. What a single session does in the next half hour is one question. What months of regular stretching does is another. Most of the claims you will see during race season mix the two. We covered the race-week side of this, including the small drop in force output right after stretching, in assisted stretching for runners.
Should strength training be part of a marathon build?
The research leans yes, with caveats.
A 2018 systematic review in Sports Medicine by Blagrove, Howatson and Hayes looked at 24 studies of distance runners who added heavy, explosive or plyometric strength training for at least four weeks. Running economy, the oxygen cost of holding a given pace, “generally showed improvements (2-8%) compared to a control group, although this was not always the case.” Time-trial performance over 1.5 to 10 km also tended to improve. The authors noted methodological limits in the studies and that the finding was not consistent across all of them.
Those are multi-week training effects. They say nothing about one gym session the week before a race, and nothing about a stretch appointment, which is not strength training. If you lift alongside running, assisted stretching for lifters covers how stretching and strength work interact.
What does a warm fall do to training?
Early fall around San Antonio is often still warm, and heat changes how a long run feels and how hard it is on the body.
A 2015 consensus statement in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, written by Racinais and an international panel of heat researchers, called heat acclimatization “the most important intervention one can adopt to reduce physiological strain and optimise performance” in hot conditions. It described acclimatization as “repeated exercise-heat exposures over 1-2 weeks,” and advised that athletes start training and competition well hydrated and limit dehydration during exercise.
That consensus was written for athletes training and competing in heat, so read it as a description of what the body does rather than a plan. Feeling dizzy, confused, nauseated, or unusually unwell during a hot run is not a pacing problem. Stop, and get medical help if it does not pass quickly.
Does sleep matter during the build?
It is one of the better-supported parts of recovery, though the specific studies are smaller than most people assume.
In a 2020 study in The Journal of Physiology, Saner and colleagues put 24 healthy young men on five nights of either 8 hours or 4 hours in bed. The sleep-restricted group had lower rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis, the process that builds and repairs muscle protein. A third group, also sleep-restricted but doing high-intensity interval exercise, maintained normal rates. It was a short, controlled lab study in young men, not a study of marathon runners, and it measured a mechanism rather than race results. It is still a reasonable reminder that the build happens partly in bed, and that a week of short nights is a load of its own.
What does a taper look like in the research?
A taper is the planned reduction in training before a race. The most cited analysis is a 2007 meta-analysis in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise by Bosquet, Montpetit, Arvisais and Mujika, which pooled 27 studies of competitive athletes. Across those studies, the largest performance gains came from a taper of about two weeks in which training volume was reduced by 41 to 60%, while intensity and frequency were kept the same.
That is a group average across competitive athletes in several sports. It describes what tended to work in the studies, not what your plan should say. Your plan or coach sets your taper. The relevant point for this page is that the last two weeks are about doing less of what you already do, not adding something new.
Where an assisted session fits in the season
Early in the build, on easy days or rest days, and not for the first time during the taper. The AAOS states the principle in its Safe Exercise guidance: “Safe exercise programs start slowly and gradually build up in frequency, intensity, and duration.” A first assisted session, taken toward end range by someone else, is a new stimulus. New stimuli belong in the part of the season where a surprise costs a workout, not a race.
Fascia stretch therapy is assisted stretching on a padded table. Stretch to Win, which developed the method and trains its practitioners, describes it as “done on padded tables with stabilization straps, focusing on 3D kinetic chains and dynamic fascial anatomy.” That is the method developer’s description of its own work, not an independent research finding. We looked for studies of the method by name and found none. What it can and cannot do is set out in what fascia stretch therapy cannot do, and how often to come back is covered in how often you should book assisted stretching.
If you do book during a build, bring your race date, your current weekly mileage and how it has changed, and which day holds your long run. Those three facts shape the hour more than anything on an intake form.
When to see a clinician first
Some of what gets called tightness in the middle of a build is not tightness. The AAOS describes the early sign of a bone stress injury as “discomfort in a specific spot along your bone,” at first only at the end of activity. As it gets worse, the page says, pain can come with regular walking and daily activities, can cause a limp, can show up as aching at night, and swelling and bruising are possible. Its advice is direct: “See your doctor or provider as soon as possible if you think that you have a bone stress injury.”
See a physician, physical therapist, or other licensed clinician before booking a stretch session if you have pain in one spot on a bone, pain that is changing how you run or walk, numbness or tingling down a leg, a current injury, or restrictions a clinician has already given you. A wellness appointment cannot tell you what is causing a symptom, and who fascia stretch therapy is for goes through that routing in full.
Booking a session
The Services page lists the 60-minute session at $120, the About page covers Greg’s background and his Stretch to Win FST Level 2 certification, and the Programs page explains how a session is structured. If you have not had this kind of session before, what to expect at your first session walks through the hour. Sessions are offered in Universal City and the greater San Antonio area.
Fascia stretch therapy here is a wellness and performance service. It does not diagnose a condition, provide medical treatment, or replace care from a physician, physical therapist, chiropractor, or other licensed healthcare professional. No session comes with a guaranteed result.
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