Why You REALLY Hit the Wall in a Marathon

Linds, the cool thing about this paper, but let me just say what it's called.

Let's do that first.

So the paper is called Hitting the Wall in Marathon Running: An Integrative Psychophysiological and Durability-Based Review.

My gosh, that's a mouthful.

Really what it's looking at is why do we hit the wall in a, in a marathon, and that is not just around glycogen depletion.

But you and I were just saying before we started, you know, we talk about these things all the time, and it's just really nice now to, I mean, we've, we've got some evidence now to base the, the things that we're saying on, right? I mean, that's why that we're going to go through this article, correct?

Yeah.

Look, I, I, I love the article.

Um, and we, we were talking offline, the two of us, and really the marathon has always been the ultimate test.

'Cause when we look at the relative intensity for the duration, there isn't another test like it.

And I always stress, um, with clients and in one-on-one calls, you know, I'm, I'm always telling people that it's not, it's, it's actually never one thing.

So the marathon is complicated 'cause running in, in, in general is very forgiving of a mistake, of a second mistake.

It's when it becomes two, three, four things that we really start to battle, and that is what the marathon exposes.

So it's all in the name really.

I mean, that was a mouthful, but the name really just tells us that it's, it's mental, it's physical, it's physiological, and that there is an energy, not necessarily supply.

I mean, obviously if you're not taking enough energy, that's an easy one.

But the, the nuance there is that it's not necessarily that you're not taking in enough energy.

Often the problem is still the availability of energy for use.

Yeah.

But that is, that is, yeah, I mean, those are the things that we are gonna unpack.

So I don't want to go, go too deep into the weeds, but, but that's why it's a great topic 'cause it is.

It's all the things that we've been saying all along.

Um, and the marathon exposes one or more of those, and that is why it is so difficult to nail the marathon and to prepare for the marathon.

Because when we go through this, some of these things will impact, um, you, but not all of them will impact you.

And so when you're training, you might not need to specifically work on certain things while someone else might need to.