The Wall

Well, I have finally found the magical, mystical, undeniable, invisible, WALL that runners and endurance athletes talk about. This Sunday I met the Wall for the first time.

See, in swimming we talked about the ‘Bear’. You know, when you are watching a swim meet and there is always one kid that goes out really hard at the start of the race. It usually happens in the middle distance events, the kind that you have to start out pretty hard, but you have to hold back a little to finish strong.

You see, that kid that goes out too hard at the start and has a hard time finishing the race. We would call that ‘The Bear’ because it look like a bear jumped on his back and he had to swim the rest of the race with a Grisly Bear on his back. Until now the ‘Bear’ is the only thing that I could describe as the Wall.

Well, Sunday the challenge was 23 miles. I meet up the run / walkers at the YMCA. The plan was two laps of 10 miles and one lap of 3.1 miles. I felt pretty good about doing the workout. I’ve done 20 miles twice so, what 5 K more, Right?

The weather was great for a run. I had no problems through the first 20 miles. Then I met the Wall. It was all I could do to finish the last 5 K. My feet felt like two wooden boards slapping the pavement because they were so numb & my legs were on fire. They were screaming at me!

However, my nutrition was good. I drank water at all the water stops. The gels worked fine, but my body was not so willing on the last 3 miles. Before the long run I had worked out about 8 hours and this work out pushed it to 12 total hours on the week.

Hopefully now with a little more rest, excitement of the race, and crowd I will be able to push it a little harder for the marathon. I’m just glad that I’ve meet the Wall in training and not on race day. I fell confident in my race nutrition and now I know what to expect. I think I will try to keep a little back so that I don’t have to crawl across the finish line.