I'm not planning on running a marathon in a long time, but a recent paper - Metabolic Factors Limiting Performance in Marathon Runners by Benjamin Rapoport - may prove quite useful to those who do or when I do finally get around to running another marathon.

In short, Rapoport has devised a series of calculations that can be used to help you optimize your carbohydrate consumption and race pace to achieve a maximal-for-you performance over the full marathon distance. A brief explanation can be found in this Runner's World article

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Seeing is believing...

Well, almost. Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, Siraj Gena is indeed barefoot as he crosses the line, however he didn't run the whole race barefoot, just the last 500m or so.

As a tribute to Abebe Bikila and to honour the 50th anniversary of his Olympic win in 1960 in Rome, the Rome Marathon offered a €5000 bonus to both the men's and women's winners today if they took off their shoes and socks and run the last 300m of the race barefoot. The winners would also get 20 seconds off their official finish time to compensate for the time lost to taking off their shoes.

With the race in the bag by the 40th kilometer, Siraj fittingly paid his tribute and took off his shoes and pocketed a little extra cash.