My brother and I have done a couple of long runs/marathons now and on all occassions one of us has hit the "wall" and had to slow up. Does anyone have any advice on how to combat this during a run and the best way of training to avoid it in the first place?
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It is said that if you do plenty of long training runs (without necessarily hitting The Wall in training) to improve your leg muscles' ability to store glycogen and your body's ability to start using fat as fuel earlier in the race, taper properly, and carbo-load in the run-up to your marathon, you should be able to sail past The Wall with only minor discomfort.
Let's have the voice of experience. Anyone here got The Wall well sorted?
Fat gives a lot more energy per gramme than carbohydrate. The problem is that the fat must first be turned into Glycogen. This is a slow process. The Wall is hit when the muscles run out ready energy and have to really on Glycogen being made from fat. You have to slow down as this process is slow to start and is a slow process anyway.
If you train with a higher fat diet, the body starts to burn fat earlier, and more efficiently, so the wall is either avoided or delayed.
This advice was taken from the "Non-runner's Marathon Trainer"
1) Run fast enough as not to run out of glycogen reserves
2) Refuel en-route
Being as slow as I am, I use option 2
I also agree with V-rap that long training runs are also a good bet )
Will
This is coupled with a good hefty pasta with cheese sauce meal the night before and porrige for breakfast a couple of hours before.
Good luck.
We'll machinate over it for a while and see if we can adjust some training and tactics. I think our main problems from what everyone is saying is, being too optomistic of our time for the level of training we were doing (we tried to do 8 minute miles for the Cardiff marathon when 9 might have been more sensible) and not having any energy drinks/food with us.
Incidently our next effort is the Tal-y-bont 20 in the Brecon beacons (in the race diary in RW) - a lovely place to run if you like hills!
as V-rap says, you've got to train your body to adapt to the whole glycogen depletion/fat burning thing and that really is the key. The accepted wisdom (Bruce Tulloh, I think, but others as well) is that your 5 longest training runs should add up to 100 miles and this definitely works for me, though I put in a few extra to be on the safe side. I find that by the time I've logged my fifth 18-22 miler I can clearly feel I've gone through the adaptation and my body is coping with the change in fuel burning in the critical zone.
I also personally think it's important to go up to 22 miles at least twice in training - unless you're running your first marathon in which case it's not advised. Quite apart from anything else, beating the wall is psychological, so it really helps to get into that final 10K zone in training. 18-20 miles is not quite far enough for comfort in my view, but then I like to over-prepare rather than the other way round!
p.s. I take two Immodium b4 the marathon, and that definitely helps ! (Good for peace of mind too.)
Doing five of them may be too antisocial for the family, but get in at least 3 20+ runs.
And a big bowl of porridge, with jaffa cakes to follow. I've only done two marathons, but managed to avoid the wall. I put it down to the above, but maybe it was the Immodium after all.
Johnny - the trick to avoid being antisocial is to get up before dawn, then you come back and make everybody breakfast!