I’ve never before posted about running on this blog as generally most people find travel much more interesting. However, running is my other hobby. I generally run a few shorter runs through the year – a mixture of 5k, 10k, and half marathons (21.1k) with the latter being not so short in some peoples opinions! Then, usually in the fall I run a marathon. That would be 42.2km for those non-runners out there.
Last year I finished in 3 hours and 35 minutes, which I consider quite a respectable time. However, being competitive with myself, I always want to try a goal a little bit faster. So, 3 hours and 30 minutes seemed very doable.
It was a lovely clear morning with a temperature around 15 degrees when the race started. My goal pace was 5 minutes per km, this would result in the required time I wanted. This has been my training pace, and as such was simple to sustain for the first half. However, I got slightly carried away and the pace moved ever so slightly towards 4’50” per km. This would mean a finish time of 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Rounding out 32km, the point at which many runners start to really feel the loss of energy, I felt tired, but my legs still felt fine, my pace was still fast and I was looking forward to telling everybody about my great time. In fact, if I could do this, maybe next year would be a Boston qualifying year!
Then, at 36km (with only 6km to go) I hit the wall. It had never even been a concern for me since it had never happened before. Within a short period of time it was impossible to maintain even a slow running pace. I slowed to a walk, around 600m from a water station, trying to calculate how long it would take to walk 6km.
The crowd at the water station were very sympathetic as I stumbled in grabbing for water and Gatorade, yelling unhelpful yet encouraging messages … “You’ve made it this far!” … “Only 6km left” … I smiled and waved – they meant well. I gulped down the Gatorade and continued walking.
Fortunately, after refuling with energy gels, Gatorade, and water I managed to maintain a resonable pace again for the finish – clocking in 8 minutes late at 3h and 38m – and being rather disappointed.
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
So what happened? When you run, your body burns a combination of carbohydrates and fat. The idea is that your body needs energy from something. Indeed, a marathon will burn 3500 – 4000 calories, so it needs to come from somewhere.
Fat is more difficult to burn, so you need at least enough carbohydrates that you don’t completely run out. If you do run out, your body can only burn fat and it cannot convert fat to energy so quickly to keep you running – so you stop.
As disappointed with the time as I am, it’s pretty amazing to see that the human body can successfully convert sugar into enough energy to finish 6km fairly quickly.
It’s hard to know exactly what went wrong, and indeed, sometimes things just don’t go your way. I think that I should have focused more on eating carbohydrates in the last 48 hours before the race and made sure to consume energy gels quicker in the race. I felt good, so I delayed consuming gels for a while. That probably did not help the situation.
Hopefully this may help somebody out there that googles “the wall” before, or even after hitting it!