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The wall is the state of extreme fatigue that is reached during an endurance race.
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Nutrition is crucial in preparing for a marathon, but do not neglect mental training as well.
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In fact, this too is crucial to overcoming the wall, through self-motivation, mantra, distraction, and a small-step approach.
In any self-respecting story there is always the supervillain. The marathon is one of the most beautiful stories there is, and in fact it has its own supervillain. In this case his name is “The Wall.” The Wall is a way of defining the state of extreme fatigue that is sometimes reached during an endurance race.
When you hit the wall, you don’t have many options: either slow down to regain some energy or stop altogether. Or try to climb it. Since this is a metaphor, however, it is clear that it cannot be physically climbed. Mentally, however, yes.
Why you meet the wall (and hit it, sometimes)
The wall coincides with a sudden drop in mental or physical energy, or sometimes both. It is difficult to determine whether the former are the cause of the latter or vice versa: it may be that as soon as your physical energy fails, the mental one collapse as well, as if your motivation suddenly fails you (“I’ve prepared so much and look at this: I’ll never make it”) but the opposite can also happen.
What is clear is that we need to ward off the possibility as much as possible, working on the physical and mental level and never neglecting that it can happen even to experienced runners. All the more reason never to underestimate certain aspects of preparation.
Power supply
The most important aspect -aside from proper preparation, possibly followed by a coach but still punctilious and punctual-at the physical level is nutrition, both before and during the race. One should never enter an endurance competition without sufficient energy, and this comes from glycogen reserves, that is, from the transformation of carbohydrates taken in the days before and during the race.
Your diet should therefore include plenty of it, at least in the three days before the race. During the race, it is important to supplement with gels or bars, which should be taken in quantities ranging from 60 to 90 grams (depending on body weight) per hour of the race.
An important tip concerns the type of supplements and gels used in the race: everyone has his or her own favorites, and not necessarily any gel/energy bar will work for everyone. Some may find certain supplements difficult to digest, others may not like the taste. The only advice is to try them before and not on race day, to avoid finding out too late how you will react.
Step
When you face a marathon, it is reasonable to have a time in mind: that is your limit, that is where you want to get to or even that is the boundary you want to cross.
One rule that you should always keep in mind is not to be deluded by the abundance of energy you have at the beginning by starting out very fast and convinced that, in doing so, you are “getting ahead of the work.” It is not by running a first part of a marathon at hyper-speed that you can hope to mortgage the desired outcome. Starting too fast is in fact the best way to run out of energy before the finish line, for example, hitting the wall.
A good technique might be, for example, negative split, and we explain here.
Mental training
We used to say that the wall could also be mental. That is why you should not neglect this type of training as well. To achieve this you can work on:
- Self-motivation: this is the outcome of psychological work that you have to do on yourself or yourself and consists of considering some basic factors, such as the commitment you have made, the adherence to the program, the determination with which you have performed the workouts. Always consider what caused you to struggle for long months: there in the middle is the foundation of your conviction.
- Choose your mantra: The power of a motivational phrase intervals like a prayer in times of trouble provides amazing mental strength. After all, it is almost a prayer: your one.
- Distract yourself with music (if the organization allows it) or by counting your steps or focusing on your breath. The purpose is to keep the mind engaged and distract it from the obsessive idea that it is not succeeding.
- Eat the elephant one bite at a time: derived from a popular African saying that teaches that the only way to tackle a great feat is to break it down into small gestures, try not to think of the marathon as a 42 km, 195-meter race but as a set of segments of much smaller length (like 500 meters or one kilometer) joined together. Your mind will thus focus on completing kilometer after kilometer and not focus on the long way to the finish line.
One last piece of advice
As we tell you in our book Correre ti cambia (la vita).”, the wall can be moved: “How far? It’s obvious: until you never meet it, that is, well beyond the finish line. Think about it: if your wall in the marathon is around the infamous kilometer 32, it means that in the half marathon you will never meet it, since the finish line is at km 21.”
Every distance has its own wall, and so you have to try to train with a view to getting as far away from it as possible, that is, getting used to longer distances.
Or by applying the advice we’ve given you so far, wishing you never see that barrier that seems insurmountable to anyone at some point. And not forgetting that bad days can happen to anyone.
(Via Women’s Running)