#Wall May 14
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I am proud of the fact that I have trained for a year and completed a marathon. It is no small feat to cover 26.2 miles on your feet. When you train for a marathon you hear about a painful physical condition called the WALL.
The WALL occurs somewhere around the 18-20-mile mark of the race. It is the point when your glycogen (stored energy) within the muscles is depleted. This forces the runner to slow down considerably, sometimes to a walk.
When I ran the Raleigh (NC) Marathon in 2001 I hit the WALL just before the 19 mile mark climbing an incline.
I don’t think I was as bad as some of the runner in the clip above but I had to cover the last 7 miles using a walk run combo.
I suspect that many people are feeling like they are hitting the WALL dealing with the pandemic. So what can we learn from marathon training that can help us prevent or minimize hitting the WALL.
Understand that the science of avoiding the WALL is clear. You have to store enough energy to complete the task.
That is why marathon runners become obsessive about diet, training, hydration, and sleep. When you are training for a marathon you make lots of sacrifices that not only involve physical but social, mental, and emotional. It takes a lot of time to prepare to run 26.2 miles and avoid the WALL.
Dealing with the conditions of the pandemic we all need to avoid the WALL by realizing we have to make sacrifices and store up our energy. Just like a marathon we have to take it one step at a time even if it means walking versus sprinting.
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