Mentally Preparing for the Wall

The wall is a result of going out too fast. Everyone will hit the wall if
they pace it wrong. If the world record holder in the marathon goes out at
4:30/mile, even he will hit the wall before 20 miles. If he goes 4:45, he
can hang in there to the end.

You know you've run the marathon right if you can maintain almost the same
pace to the finish. It takes time and experience to know what the proper
pace feels like.

It's not necessary to run the long run that fast -- a minute per mile slower
than marathon goal is fine.

-- Dan

"Charlie and Lisa Harrison" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

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Last Sunday I ran my 2nd Marathon in Berlin. The weather was cool, the
crowds were amazing and I managed to beat my goal time by 8 minutes and

last

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years time by 47 minutes running it in 3:07:02 which also qualifies me for
Boston (not that I have any idea when I will be in Boston).

As I actually 'ran' this marathon with a goal in mind as opposed to just
trying to finish, I managed to run hard enough to hit the famous

'marathon

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wall' at 36 km (yes, I wish I hadn't skipped those long runs while on
vacation) . It was quite a wall, I was a national level competitive

swimmer

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in my youth but never had I experience pain quite like this. The 'wall'
combined with the cheering and urging of the crowds and then looking

around

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to see other people dealing with their own battles with the 'wall' was

quite

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emotional. A great experience but one I would like to avoid.

Clearly avoiding the wall through better training and pacing is the best
approach, but I also wondered about being better prepared to deal with it
mentally (I ate lots of carbs during the run, I didn't bonk its just my

legs

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stopped working). If it hadn't been for the crowds, I would have

struggled

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to keep going. (I kept chanting Lance Armstrong's quote: "pain is
temporary, quitting is forever"😉.

In training, I ran all of my long runs 'slowly' as recommended by so many
books and articles. My longest distance at race pace was 16 km so I

didn't

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ever get to the threshold that I did in the marathon, and give myself an
opportunity to practice running through the wall threshold.

Any suggestions as to how to both 'not overtrain' by doing long runs too
hard but to train hard enough that you can learn to deal with going on
despite the pain associated with 'the wall'?

<< The wall is a result of going out too fast. Everyone will hit the wall if
they pace it wrong. >>

Just be sensible,
use commonsense,
train well,
eat well,
sleep well.
Make realistic goals,
modified with each success
or need.
Take the long view...
It takes time.

_______
Blog, or dog? Who knows. But if you see my lost pup, please ping me!
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To mentally prepare, just repeat the following...."I'm not as goofy as I
look!" "People are laughing with me, not at me!" "Chicks dig smelly
red splotchy mouth breathers!" It's all about positive reinforcement.

pace better ... and slow down if needed ... there is no such thing as the wall
... simply runners who run faster than they are ready to ...

pace better ... and slow down if needed ... there is no such thing as the wall
... simply runners who run faster than they are ready to ...