The Wall

Two weeks have past since I finished my first Marathon – the San Diego Rock-n’-Roll Marathon. I can still visualize the preparation, the excitement and anticipation, the effortlessness of the first half of the race … and the pain and agony of the last tem kilometres after hitting the wall at the 30km point. My quads cramped, aiming to lock and I was under the threat of a DNF (did not finish) score. The joy of the finish line was extreme. The tough fight gave it a very sweet taste.

New York is going to be different, New York will be festive, no place for The Wall while running my favourite city.

First, what is the “Wall“? Our bodies are primarily fuelled by high-octane glycogen (carbohydrates) during a marathon. The other fuel we use is fat, which uses oxygen less efficiently. Our bodies tend to burn off the glycogen first, and once that is depleted, it will switch over to fat. This causes you to slow down, feel fatigued, and hit the “Wall”.

Quick self post-mortem – in addition to the classic rookies mistake of running the first half much faster then planned, I blamed my crisis on poor preparations mainly lack of hills training, no legs weight lifting and not enough mileage. These items earned “respect” in my NY plan. My formal 18 week Marathon training plan starts July 1^st. The current weeks are known as “base building”, recovering and preparing the body for the actual training period.

I love XL-ing long term plans. Playing with assumptions, simulating the progress and actually “visioning” what it would look like 6/12/24/… months from today. There is a certain “high” feeling that falls on me during this planning period -I can literally feel it happening. The anticipated “down” usually hits me on the first days of the execution phase. Suddenly, there is a feeling that I didn’t really recover from my previous “race”, the down to earth tasks are not that exciting, the milestones seem to far away and even the easy ones that I laid out first are not that easy… a pseudo “mental wall”.

Last Friday I did my first long run for this season – easy pace 10km along the Yarkon river ending on the beaches of Tel-Aviv. And it was tough!... my knees hurt, it was hot, I wanted it to end… during this one hour run questions like “if this is how 10k feels, how would 30k in August weather feel like?” took over what used to be a “runners high” feeling.

My next long run is a 12km this Friday, 20% more than my previous one…

“When I hit the wall I focus on my next step and then do it over and over again until it’s gone”
Anonymous Everest climber