Training for a marathon? Here are 8 running accessories you need to get started
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Embarking on the journey to complete a marathon is as exciting as it is challenging. Seasoned runners and beginners lacing up for their first long-distance race both need the right gear to get to the finish line.
The right running accessories can help you stay motivated and focused on your goals. From the perfect pair of running shoes to advanced GPS trackers, these items will equip you with the tools you need to hit the ground running and make the most of your marathon preparation.
The first thing you need when you're planning to train for a marathon is a new pair of running shoes designed for road or trail running. Luckily, there are plenty of options. Nike's Zoom Fly 6 are men's running shoes specifically designed for road racing. They come in beautiful, bright colors and have ZoomX foam bases that take pressure off your knees and feet when you're running.
Women can also find Nike Vomero 18 running shoes that have a similar reactive foam. They're also extremely lightweight, perfect for all types of running. Hoka's Rocket X 2 shoes are unisex running shoes made with ultra-responsive, high-performance foam that protects your feet while you're running.
Runners who prefer more natural feeling shoes can go with Oranginer barefoot shoes. They're shoes that are wider, giving your feet more room and making it feel like you're running barefoot, which, for some runners, is preferable.
Tracking your runs helps you track your progress and reach your running goals. An Apple Watch Series 10 can track your overall fitness and your workouts. You can monitor your heart rate, track distances and it gives you advanced workout recommendations when you connect to the Workout app.
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If you want a simple tracker, a Fitbit Inspire 3 focuses on your health metrics. It's small and lightweight to wear and tracks your heart rate, sleep, distance and more. Runners who want to go all-out and track every aspect of their runs, a Garmin Forerunner 55 can do just that. It tracks your heart rate and uses GPS to track how far, how fast and where you've run.
If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can get these items sent to your door ASAP. You can join or start a 30-day free trial to start your shopping today.
Original price: $60
Staying hydrated during your runs is extremely important. Running long distances takes a lot out of you, so you need a way to bring along a lot of water on your runs. A Camelbak hydration pack is a small, lightweight backpack with a 50 oz bladder you can fill with water. There's an easy-to-use water tube along one of the straps that you can drink from while you're running.
Hydro Flask (the well-known water bottle brand) has a hip hydration pack that straps comfortably around your waist. It has a smaller, 5 oz water bladder, but it also comes with space for all your belongings.
Amp Up Your Workouts With The Perfect Fall Running Gear
Chafing is a real issue for marathon runners. There's a lot of sweat involved, so having an anti-chafe balm on hand is a must for anyone who plans to run daily. You can find Body Glide original anti-chafe balm on Amazon. It's a vegan product made from allergen-free, plant-derived ingredients. Gold Bond also makes a friction defense stick that's nongreasy and unscented, plus it has aloe added for extra comfort.
Running belts give you a place to store your belongings while running, so you don't need to deal with your phone or keys slamming against your legs in your shorts' pockets. A Fitgriff running belt is very compact yet still has enough space for your phone and a few other small items. It has a reflective strip for when you're running in the evening, and it has a safety hook to keep your keys on.
A Hoka run belt is also a discreet belt that comes in black or pink. It's comfortable to wear and has ample space for anything you're carrying. The North Face's running belt is designed to reduce bouncing while you're running, ideal for trail runners and road runners.
From Watches To Sunglasses: Here Are 15 Accessories To Elevate Your Next Run
Running shorts are designed differently than other athletic shorts. They're typically shorter to help prevent chafing and to keep you cool. Hoka makes women's running shorts that have a breezy inner lining that helps with air flow, and the stretchy material makes for a comfortable run. For an affordable option with zipper pockets, these high-rise running shorts on Amazon fit the bill.
Nike's Stride running shorts for men are made with runners in mind. They're lightweight and designed to help reduce sweat build-up. Men can also grab a two-pack of running shorts that have zipper pockets and are partially made from spandex for added comfort.
Training for a marathon is hard work and runners need recovery tools that can help soothe sore muscles. A massage gun is a great overall massager that you can use on your arms, legs, back and shoulders.
Foam rollers are also great for rolling out leg muscles, and when you want to focus on your sore feet, a foot roller ball can work out knots and muscles in your feet.
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Original price: $26
Running on hot days means you have the sun shining in your face the entire time. To avoid overheating, a sweat-wicking athletic hat can help. The North Face's LIGHTRANGE summer running hat is designed to be water-repellant and ultra-breathable. It's made from a combination of recycled polyester and a mesh material.
Addidas also makes a sweat-wicking hat that's lightweight and comfortable to wear on long runs, plus it comes in a wide variety of color options. When you're running in colder weather, a Skida Sahara running hat will keep you warm but won't trap sweat. The hat comes in dozens of unique patterns.Original article source: Training for a marathon? Here are 8 running accessories you need to get started
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Kennedy has shifted the goalposts, but there are a few things he has said would make a clinical trial meet his requirements: First, an inert placebo, meaning a placebo control that didn't have any biological effects on the body, like water or saline solution. Kennedy has said that without comparison to an inert placebo, the true side effects of vaccines can't be fully understood. He also uses the term 'prelicensing,' meaning the research is conducted before the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the vaccines. The FDA sometimes accepts enough evidence to approve a vaccine but then will require more safety studies and monitoring after approval. Kennedy and other critics argue that more safety testing should be done before the vaccines are approved in the first place. In some instances, Kennedy has also said that these studies should be large, including many participants, and long-running. In general, larger studies have greater statistical power to show subtle differences between groups. And the longer a trial follows its participants, the more confident researchers can be in the durability of their results. Although scientists agree that larger and longer clinical trials are the most reliable, these studies are expensive to conduct. They can take years to run, which delays the possibility of getting an effective intervention to people. It can also be difficult to find participants who can stick with the monitoring requirements of a study for longer periods of time. In recent testimony, however, even Kennedy seemed to be softening his stance on this particular stipulation, agreeing that other types of studies can provide solid evidence, too. 'You know that the Cochrane Collaboration in 2016 published a study that showed that the predictive capacity of placebo-controlled trials, which are the gold standard, is actually not any better than good observational trials in retrospective trials. So we can do those kind of studies without subjecting people to an unethical experiment,' Kennedy said during a May 20 Senate budget hearing when asked about the need to test established vaccines in large, lengthy placebo-controlled trials. In his 2021 book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,' Kennedy repeats the claim that vaccines for children haven't been tested against inert placebos, saying that he and groups he's affiliated with have explicitly asked to be shown such studies. He cites two letters between the Informed Consent Action Network or ICAN, a group run by his close associate Del Bigtree, and HHS. The letter from ICAN asserts that in contrast to most other FDA-approved medications, 'vaccines are not required to undergo long-term double-blind inert-placebo controlled trials to assess safety. In fact, not a single one of the clinical trials for vaccines given to babies and toddlers had a control group receiving an inert placebo.' The HHS letter refutes this claim: 'Contrary to statements made on page two of your letter, many pediatric vaccines have been investigated in clinical trials that included a placebo.' The letter goes on to say inert placebos are not necessary to understand the safety of a new vaccine, and so they haven't been required. Still, Scott says the evidence is clear: Of the 258 placebo-controlled vaccine studies he and his colleagues found, about half – 128 – included inert placebos. When it comes to vaccines routinely recommended for children, specifically, Scott found that at least nine of the 16 on the CDC's regular schedule have been tested against inert placebos: These are the vaccines against Covid-19; rotavirus; polio; influenza; measles, mumps and rubella; human papillomavirus; varicella, or chickenpox; pneumococcal; and H-flu, or Haemophilus influenzae. One of the largest of these trials was on the polio vaccine. The placebo-controlled part of the study included more than 400,000 grade-schoolers. Half got the inactivated polio vaccine created by Dr. Jonas Salk, and the other half were given injections of an inert placebo, which was saline solution. The trial was conducted in 1954, and the results were announced in April 1955. So great was the urgency to get the vaccine to kids that the FDA licensed it the same day. 'It's frankly astounding that someone who made such easily disprovable claims is now heading HHS and continues to promote similar misinformation,' Scott said of Kennedy in an email to CNN. 'We compiled this evidence specifically to counter these false narratives with hard data.' Scott says he and his colleagues hope to have their project published in peer-reviewed medical journal soon. For now, it's available in a publicly posted spreadsheet. Vaccine trials that don't use inert placebos will sometimes use what are known as active placebos. These comparison shots have some biological effect but don't interfere with scientists' ability to interpret the results of their study. Active placebos are used for a variety of reasons. In some parts of the world, for example, where it might be difficult to recruit participants, researchers might give the control group an unrelated vaccine to make sure they're getting some benefit by enrolling in the study. One study published last year in the Lancet, testing a vaccine against malaria, gave participants in the control group a vaccine against rabies instead. Rabies vaccines don't protect against malaria, so they wouldn't interfere with researchers' ability to tell whether the malaria shot actually worked. Other active placebos in the studies in Scott's project included shots that contained only an adjuvant, an ingredient that's added to vaccines to trigger a stronger immune response. Dr. Greg Poland, who studies how adults and children respond to vaccines at the Mayo Clinic, said it would be a mistake to assume that active placebos can't be valid and rigorous ways to test vaccines. Adjuvants, such as aluminum, are often the reason people get soreness around an injection site. Giving just the adjuvant can guard against even psychological bias in control participants who might guess that they didn't get a real vaccine if they didn't feel anything after their shots. It also allows researchers to isolate the benefits and side effects of the vaccine proteins, since everyone got the adjuvant. 'You're literally saying, 'OK, we're testing a vaccine that has ingredient A plus B against a non-vaccine placebo that has ingredient B.' So the only thing different between the two of them is the actual vaccine,' Poland said. An active comparator might also be used rather than an inert placebo because of ethics. When there's already a vaccine that's considered to be safe and effective against an infection, it's considered unethical to deny study participants the chance to get it. In that case, companies that want to test a new and improved version of a vaccine against an older one would normally have to offer participants in their control group the older vaccine. Many modern vaccines have been compared against older versions of the same vaccine. Flu vaccines are a good example, Poland says. If you were testing an improved type of flu vaccine, chances are that the board that oversees your clinical trial wouldn't approve a study that used an inert placebo – especially if you were testing it in a vulnerable group, like people over 65, for whom an infection is more likely to be dangerous. 'It's unethical because the recommendation is that everyone, each flu season, receive an influenza vaccine. So it'd be unethical to enroll people in a study where they may just get placebo and not get any benefit of protection,' Poland said. Poland said he's been puzzled by Kennedy's statements, too. He's concerned that they are getting traction with the public now that Kennedy is the head of the nation's health agencies. 'This notion that there are no placebo-controlled vaccine trials is patently false, but it's a really interesting phenomenon that I have a hard time understanding,' he said.
