Ever since the Greek soldier (whatever his name was) ran from Marathon to Greece to inform the senate that the Greeks were triumphant, then collapsed and died, people have strived to do the same. What’s more, we added and additional 5.2 miles over the distance he did, if that makes any sense. Of course, participants in marathons are much more numerous these days and do it for different reasons, but the distance is not trivial.
Most every fit person is capable of running up to 15 to 18 miles without experiencing any real or lingering effects. At some point though, everyone reaches their breaking point. If you have ever done a 10k or a half-marathon, you probably have not experienced “bonking.” Your body stores fuel (some of it more than others, and I wasn’t really talking about fat reserves, but rather glycogen, which is stored in you liver if I remember correctly). Your body can produce more, but not as fast as you use it running. At the 15 – 18 mile mark, your body starts to run out of its stores. There are several ways to counter this, of course, which I will briefly cover later but you will have to read up on it if you want more information. When your body is depleted of glycogen, you fell like crap. Your legs get very heavy and stiff, and you simply have to rely on pure will to finish the race. If you push yourself hard, it can take from two weeks to a month to get to feeling 100%. But, even knowing this, you are already 2/3 through the race and it would be a shame to throw it all away.
One way to counter this is to start “tanking up” on fuel before and during the race in the form of gel packs or power bars. I read about this and didn’t believe it until the last marathon, when I saw runners in those snazzy quasi-crotchless running shorts sporting “food belts” and were popping gel packs at the start.
I wrongly assumed that the Disney Marathon route would be festooned with food, but during the course we were all given one gel pack and one PowerBar, or roughly 400 calories. Seeing as you will probably burn like 3000 calories, it simply was not enough.
The other thing to help keep “the bonk” at bay is to train and train well. Somewhere during the training, you have to get up to doing near-marathon distance. I was following a plan in a book that got up to 22 miles a couple of weeks before the race. As a result, I did a lot better than my previous marathon.
Well, I want to do another marathon. I picked the 2008 Marine Corps Marathon because I think it would be neat to run around the Nation’s Capital. And since I am no where near to being in the shape I need to be to run it the weekend after next, I will have a whole year to train for it. I plan to do a half-marathon a few months before and several other “run-through” 10ks. At the 100 day point before next year’s race, we should be able to run a 10k. That will be the starting point and whatever pace you run the 10k is what you should shoot for as your pace for the marathon. (Actually, I would shoot for about :30 slower/mile).
So, if you ever have wanted to do a marathon, feel free to join me. There will be plenty of fun training runs come next August/September so we can share our misery.
Check out their website: Marine Corps Marathon
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