Maidstone United players ran the equivalent of 100 marathons to win National League South title

How far do you need to run to win a league title?

Thanks to data from Maidstone United analysts Antonio de Vivo, Ben Fuller and Nathan Morris, we can reveal the team covered 4,206km in 40 National League South games this season - that’s 2,614 miles or 100 marathons.

They performed 19,613 sprints for a total sprint distance of 468,488m or 468.5km.

Midfielder Sam Corne ran more than any other player, which should probably come as no surprise given his all-action game.

The team’s best physical performance came in the 3-2 win at Eastbourne in February where the Stones covered a total distance of 128km, a total sprint distance of 15,970m and 637 sprints.

Maidstone used just 27 players in the league this season, with injuries kept to a minimum.

Sports science played a huge part in that, with the players’ every move tracked by GPS vests.

There was no hiding place and with a manager as demanding as Hakan Hayrettin, the players knew they had to hit their targets.

“You can’t have a run of consistency like we did if there’s no science because you can’t monitor it, it’s impossible,” said de Vivo. “You can’t just do it by thinking about it.

“Being a coach, it’s very difficult to monitor your training loads, the fatigue of your players and manage it like that, and that’s what we did.

“You can’t have that consistency if you don’t have the numbers to back it up.

“How many players did we use? Not many.

“And if you look at the midfield, how many changes did we make?

“We had changes not because of muscle injuries or fatigue or strain, it was because of impact injuries, more physical damage than anything else.

“We played literally the same three midfielders over and over again by managing them in training.

“You look at the matches, that’s