DFW running club mark 2!! ALL ARE WELCOME!!!

becky_rtw

I know he officially crazy

I'm planning to go over 50 this week again and I honestly couldnt fit another session in - nor could I make them longer unless I got up at 5:30 every day - how do you do it?? It's sooo inspiring though - where does your inspiration come from Rich??

RichOneday_2

Erm, mad? Yes, probably!:p

Remember that high mileage is only for a short period, though, and you'd be surprised how it actually becomes easier the more you do.

Above all, I don't want The Wall involved in the marathon, it complicates everything and brings pain into the equation...and I don't like pain!:p

And those endorphins are ever so addictive too!:p

hypno06

I'm experiencing so much pain that the wall surely won't be a problem :rotfl:

Who am I kidding :rolleyes:

I will have to go back to the place I bought the trainers from first, to sort out something - new insoles/new shoes/new feet......and then I can work out how to get the blisters on blisters on blisters healed up properly. I have an attractive black toenail now too - just to top things off nicely! I guess a chiropodist or someone is in order.

It's just a case of fitting it all in - working full time and then some is not conducive to getting to shops out of town, and making appointments for foot-first-aid

sallyx

RichOneday wrote: »

Erm, mad? Yes, probably!:p

Remember that high mileage is only for a short period, though, and you'd be surprised how it actually becomes easier the more you do.

Above all, I don't want The Wall involved in the marathon, it complicates everything and brings pain into the equation...and I don't like pain!:p

And those endorphins are ever so addictive too!:p

la la la la not listening...don't want to know about the wall...ok yes I do and is this the way to overcome it?

sallyx

hypno06 wrote: »

I'm experiencing so much pain that the wall surely won't be a problem :rotfl:

Who am I kidding :rolleyes:

I will have to go back to the place I bought the trainers from first, to sort out something - new insoles/new shoes/new feet......and then I can work out how to get the blisters on blisters on blisters healed up properly. I have an attractive black toenail now too - just to top things off nicely! I guess a chiropodist or someone is in order.

It's just a case of fitting it all in - working full time and then some is not conducive to getting to shops out of town, and making appointments for foot-first-aid

Hypno I seriously think you need to take a day off work and get them sorted hun. You can't possibly continue your marathon training with those blisters and also get around 26 miles with your feet intact.

hypno06

I am hoping to go on Sunday afternoon to make a start - I have to collect DS from Heathrow on Saturday, and then have a 20k race on Sunday (may wear my old trainers for that one) and then hopefully can get to the shop on Sunday afternoon.

I'll get there!

Sally, I really really do hope you feel better soon - I know how crap I have felt when I have read of all the miles being done, and I have been tied to the house. **passes over lemsip and benylin**

sallyx

Thanks H, I hope I feel better but have a feeling tomorow I am going to wake up with cold from hell (DD has been horrendous all week) I hope you get your feet sorted!

hypno06

Go and dose yourself up and get yourself a good night's sleep. Fingers crossed the lurgy is just paying a fleeting visit.

Alias_Omega

Anyway, back on the running theme..

Did 2.28mile in 22mins in the snow.

and then rebuilt the snowman when i got home, not quite the same, as he is all ice now..

RichOneday_2

sallyx wrote: »

la la la la not listening...don't want to know about the wall...ok yes I do and is this the way to overcome it?

It certainly is best prepared for as well as possible, this gives a bit of an overview:

Hitting "The Wall"


"It felt like an elephant had jumped out of a tree onto my shoulders and was making me carry it the rest of the way in.”—!!!!!! Beardsley, speaking of hitting "The Wall" at the second marathon of his career, the 1977 City of Lakes Marathon.

“I wasn’t wanting to talk much. And when I’m not talking, you know I’m hurting.”—Don Frichtl, a runner who encountered "The Wall" somewhere after mile 21 of the 2002 Chicago Marathon.

“At around mile 23, I was beginning to feel like the anchor was out.”—George Ringler, speaking of his 1991 Lake County Marathon.

“The Wall.” It evades easy definition, but to borrow from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of obscenity, you know it when you see it—or rather, hit it. It usually happens around mile 20, give or take a couple of miles. Your pace slows, sometimes considerably. Some runners say that it feels as though their legs had been filled with lead quail shot, like the stomach of Mark Twain’s unfortunate jumping frog of Calaveras County. Others can’t feel their feet at all. Thought processes become a little fuzzy. (“Mile 22, again? I thought I just passed mile 22!”) Muscle coordination goes out the window, and self-doubt casts a deep shadow over the soul.


Energy Dynamics 101

“Hitting The Wall is basically about running out of energy,” says Dave Martin, —chemical energy, that is, stored in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and obtained from the breakdown, or metabolism, of energy-containing fuel. The runner’s primary fuel sources are carbohydrates (in the form of blood glucose and glycogen, a polymer of glucose stored in the muscles and liver) and fats (free fatty acids in the bloodstream and muscle triglycerides, molecules containing three fatty acids).

Fats might seem to be the logical first choice of fuel for endurance events; not only are they the most concentrated form of food energy, but even the thinnest runners have enough body fat to get them through 600 miles. Alas, it’s not quite that simple. Fatty acid metabolism requires plentiful circulating oxygen, a precious commodity when you’re running at marathon race pace. Carbohydrate metabolism, on the other hand, requires less oxygen. In fact, cells can derive energy from carbohydrates either aerobically (in the presence of oxygen) or anaerobically (in the absence of oxygen).

If you start your marathon at a reasonable pace for you, your fuel consumption ratio will be about 75 percent carbohydrates to 25 percent fatty acids, according to Martin. During the race, as carbohydrate supplies begin to dwindle, that ratio changes as your body begins to rely more heavily on fatty acids.

What does all of this have to do with hitting The Wall? Let’s start with the pace. It’s common, in the excitement of the moment, to start out at a pace that’s too fast for you. Big mistake. Your heart cannot pump enough blood to ensure a steady supply of oxygen to the muscles. At this point, your muscles have no choice but to burn glucose in the absence of oxygen. The anaerobic metabolism of glucose, as it’s called, is inefficient, yielding only about 1/18 as much energy (in the form of ATP) as aerobic metabolism. To make matters worse, among the by-products of the anaerobic metabolism of glucose are lactic acid and hydrogen ions. As these waste products continue to accumulate in the blood and tissue, they will not only make your muscles feel as though they are on fire, but they can also inactivate the enzymes that govern glucose metabolism. You’re toast.

Even if you’re racing at a reasonable pace and you’ve done a good job of carboloading in the days before the marathon, you still have only about 2,000 calories worth of glycogen stored in the muscles and liver; that’s about enough to get you to—surprise!—mile 20. If you manage to deplete your glycogen reserves, say hello to The Wall. As mentioned before, burning fatty acids requires plentiful oxygen, so as fatty acid metabolism increases, your heart must work harder to pump more oxygen-carrying blood to the muscles. It may be difficult or impossible to maintain your pace, especially if you’ve lost enough water through sweat to become even slightly dehydrated (this causes your blood to become thicker and therefore harder to pump). In addition, fatty acid metabolism itself requires glucose; as someone once said, “Fat is burned in a carbohydrate oven.”

Of course, you can do things to make sure you stay well hydrated and maintain an adequate supply of glucose during the marathon, and you’re probably aware of most of them. Begin to carboload a few days before the race to make sure that your muscles store as much glycogen as possible. Fortunately, the old, frequently stressful and unpleasant depletion/loading program has fallen out of favor with most runners. Martin recommends eating a balanced diet with a higher-than-usual percentage of carbohydrates as you’re tapering before the race. As the body increases its glycogen stores, it also increases the amount of stored water, leading to slight weight gain but also making more water available for sweat during the race.

Make sure that you are well hydrated before the race, and eat a light, carbohydrate-rich meal no later than two hours before the race. And by all means take advantage of the water, sports drinks, and other glucose-containing foods offered at the aid stations!

Martin also points out that nonworking muscles cannot transfer their glycogen reserves to working muscles; once glucose is inside a muscle cell, that’s where it stays until it’s metabolized. “This might be one reason why many marathon runners prefer a race course with periodic, slight elevation changes,” he says. “This allows the glycogen reserves to be shared among a larger group of working muscles.” Runners who are racing on a very flat course might consider occasionally varying their pace or stride length to mobilize unused glycogen stores.

Central Nervous System Fatigue
It should come as no surprise that the brain, as well as the muscles, can become fatigued over the course of a marathon. In recent years, J. Mark Davis and others have begun to study the relationship between changes in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord, or CNS) and exercise-related fatigue.

Davis suspects that CNS fatigue, the result of neurochemical changes in the brain, is very likely to be involved in a runner hitting The Wall during a marathon. In fact, he says, “I think that CNS fatigue is actually what causes most people to stop, as opposed to muscle specific fatigue.” Aside from very highly motivated runners, he says, most people don’t really drive or push themselves to complete muscle failure.

To make matters worse for the marathon runner, the brain’s production of dopamine (the neurotransmitter responsible for generating feelings of excitement, reward, motivation, and pleasure) begins to drop even as serotonin levels are rising.

Runners have been using caffeine to help delay fatigue for years, the prevailing wisdom being that the substance increases the blood level of free fatty acids available for metabolism. Recent research by Davis and others, however, indicates that caffeine plays another, perhaps more important role, in delaying fatigue by increasing the levels of dopamine in the brain.

Cognitive Strategies

Scant scientific research examines the relationship between mental strategies and hitting The Wall per se, although a body of research dating back to the 1970s documents the relationship between a runner’s thought processes and performance. Faster race times are generally associated with what have come to be known as associative strategies—thinking about physical sensations, such as breathing, muscle soreness, or blisters, and other race-related issues such as pacing and competitive strategy. During competition, elite runners tend to use associative thinking strategies almost exclusively.

Athletes who achieve their peak performance usually experience something that has come to be known as “flow,” a concept introduced to the world in the 1970s by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is “a state of consciousness where one becomes totally absorbed in what one is doing, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and emotions,” according to Susan A. Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, authors of Flow in Sports (Human Kinetics, 1999). “So flow is about focus.” In other words, when you experience that running nirvana during which everything seems effortless, you are probably thinking associatively.

Unfortunately, most of us are not able to maintain a state of flow for an entire marathon. Slower runners tend to use dissociative strategies—thinking about things not directly related to the race—in addition to associative strategies.
“There is some reason to believe that people with different levels of running experience may benefit more from using different strategies,” says Britton Brewer, associate professor of psychology at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. “People who are more experienced in the sport may be able to make better use of associative strategies, because they won’t be intimidated or panicky when they experience various symptoms that they encounter while distance running.”

A 1998 study by Clare D. Stevinson and Stuart J.H. Biddle, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, made a further distinction in marathon runners’ mental strategies, describing four types of thinking used by nonelite runners in the 1996 London Marathon.

The first type was internal association, or focusing on how the body feels while running. The second type of thinking was external association, in which the runner’s attention is focused outwardly on things important to the race: calculating split times, negotiating water stations, or jockeying for position with competitors. The third mode of thinking was inward dissociation (or distraction): daydreaming, singing silently (or aloud!), or solving mental puzzles. Runners who used the fourth mental strategy, external association, tended to focus their attention outwardly on events unimportant to race performance: the scenery, the cheering crowds, other runners dressed in kooky outfits.
The researchers found that the most prevalent mental strategy for all runners, whether they hit The Wall or not, was inward association. But those runners who reported hitting The Wall tended to use inward dissociation much more frequently than their wall-avoiding competitors. The authors speculate that “It is likely that being distracted from sensory signals and important aspects of the task meant that runners were not able to judge their pace very well and failed to stay fully hydrated, contributing greatly to ‘hitting The Wall.’ ”

While it might seem plausible that external dissociation might lead runners into a similar trap, the authors found this not to be the case, possibly because “noticing spectators, aspects of the scenery, or, in particular, other runners, made runners inadvertently aware of the speed at which they were running as they passed by them or were overtaken.”
On the other hand, the researchers suggest that paying too much attention to the body (inward association) made their subjects magnify their discomfort, making The Wall seem to appear much earlier and for a longer period of time. Their advice: make brief but regular checks on your body, rather than constantly monitoring every step of the race. Focus most of your attention externally: be aware of critical race-related factors and enjoy the atmosphere of the race.