Hitting the Wall: Fuel, Fatigue & When to Stop | Extra Mile

0:00Hello and welcome to Untap the Extra Mile with me Spencer Matthews and me Oli Patrick where today we will be discussing the dreaded wall. For runners it's the big ghastly beast that lurks somewhere between kilometre 30 and 35. You'll know it when it comes for you. Your legs stop working, your lungs feel like they're burning and everything feels twice as hard. But what's actually happening from a physiological perspective? Today, Olly Patrick and I dig in to discuss. How are we feeling about these new intros? That intro is from the ages. You like it? I love it. Okay. I'm so revved. Well, you know, thank you.

0:43That's the idea. You know, if our listeners could be revved, that'd be great. But not too revved. Otherwise, they might hit. The wall. The wall. Yeah. The wall. It's a big topic in the running world. yeah we've we've touched around it before but maybe haven't given it the space that it deserves you've not hit it i've not hit the wall in the sense that you can't finish yeah right like i think some people hit a wall their legs literally stop working they're on the deck you know johnny brownley hit a wall had to be lifted by his brother ali in a very famous clip that saw you You know, Johnny finished the race.

1:22Controversial at the time. That looks like, you know, the beast real. He got hold of him. You know, that he was somebody else's, you know, thing. A toy. You know, the wall, you know, turned him into, well, you know, putty. A rag doll. A rag doll, indeed. Type of thing Gigi would have on her bed. Genuinely. But that's so different to what most people experience in fatigue. And I remember when people spoke about the wall, I thought, well, isn't it just, you know, it's just grit. It's just push through. And I've, we've all experienced fatigue. Those people must be weak in mind or body. And then I had a lovely experience of hitting the wall.

2:06And it was unlike anything I'd ever encountered before or since. I think, yeah, what would be really interesting for me, at least, is to dig into the differences between fatigue. so physical fatigue that you could argue you might be able to pull yourself out of you know with a strong mind and resilience and everything else that um people are trying to learn nowadays yeah um and that my race is over and there's nothing i can do about it so that to me is the wall i think encountering pain in a marathon is a given yeah right so like obviously when like Paula Radcliffe, who I had the pleasure of interviewing earlier, feels pain and dark moments in marathons.

2:53I imagine everyone does. Obviously, elite athletes probably suffer less from them because they're so used to it and they're so trained and they're so dialed in. But around my level, you'll go through three, four, five rough patches in every marathon that needs addressing. Absolutely right. around your 249 level sorry you noticed it's uh that old prominent for good reason that old thing that little thing yeah no wall there well no wall but like you know plenty of fatigue you know i was able to keep the pace actually but didn't feel like that was going to be possible at times you know several times in the race you look down at the watch and you know you were seven eight seconds slower than the previous K and all of a sudden you're going like ah like I'm now going to be this slow for the rest of the race and you're trying to figure out your finish time and then you know you I've learned from a bit of experience doing that is just painful it makes it worse yeah so you need to try and do everything you can just to think about positive things literally physically smile maybe engage with the crowd a bit find some way of just getting out of the negative headspace and all of a sudden your pace can increase again and it's just it's just a window that you have to get through so that's just what everyone experiences i think but let's talk about the wall and it's called the wall for a reason right i'm assuming you're not running through the wall no you you are flatlined often i think there's great debate over what would define the wall i think historically it's been classified as a percentage drop-off in pace which is almost unrecoverable i think but i think like i think 90 of marathon runners have that no yeah i think it's if it's something like i think like 13 for more than four kilometers is definably the wall and it's sort of the trademark of the wall is you can't think your way out of it you can't you know return to play because it's predominantly and there's going to be lots of thinking about this a fueling issue and that fueling issue is not reversible through thinking your way out of it And really that the wall is in its sort of simplest form is broadly people running out of glycogen.

5:09So glycogen, the body's stored form of carbohydrate. I'm smashing that glycogen. Four fifths of my body stores in my skeletal muscle mass. One fifth sitting in my liver. That is my body's ability to run itself when I'm exercising at an intensity greater than I could achieve using fat alone. So that's the crux of it. And, you know, you and I both love burning fat. Love it. like a profession for us yeah um but you know when we do get the bunsen burner we are we're combusting fat now although we've just had an outrageous cookie delicious two cookies i had dark chocolate and banana and triple chocolate and sea salt from creme well which is uh french for cream i've never so i will soon be running on pure glucose because my blood sugar is going to go mad but principally we got you for 15 minutes we got 15 minutes of window to get some sense out of before i have a nap great so we will be running on fat now because we're not doing much we're using oxygen and fat to create fuel we've said as the human machine goes through the gears it can't achieve high levels of fuel you know of energy production using fat alone so we start to utilize carbohydrates through again blood glucose to fuel higher endurance or higher intensity exercise and and the reality is if we're using glucose we don't have unlimited stores of that that's the simple principle so then what i'm hearing is if you carb load efficiently and properly and well and you have you know let's just for this argument plenty of carbs yeah you know i think it's it's 1.2 grams of carbs per body weight over the three days leading into the race if you want to be a real nerd about it good good benchmark something like that and that's what you were given i just ate lots of like like cheesy pasta and paninis and stuff when i felt hungry i didn't i didn't take berlin anywhere nearly as seriously as i could have and i'm not saying that to sound i trained very hard obviously yeah i purposefully just gave my mind a bit of a break from the what should i be doing and when should i be doing it and i need to get to bed now and i need you know I just didn't think that way.

7:20I drank alcohol in the week leading up to it two or three times. I attended things, you know, at night, you know, events and stuff that I probably wouldn't have gone to if it was the week before Valencia. You know, I did a bunch of things that, you know, meant that I may be risking the result. But also the more casual approach to it was really helpful because, you know, I was able to sleep the night before because I almost forgot that I was there to run a marathon. And I started taking it very seriously. I suppose from when we touched down in Berlin you know I made a conscious effort to eat lots of carbs You didn't do a 3 day 4 day load No no I didn't run for And that 1.2 is at the lower end I mean you could be doing you know upwards towards 10 grams per kilogram Oh wow So people can do 700-800 grams of carbs in those 3-4 days before Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough It shows up in the smallest moments You bite your tongue instead of escalating.

8:19You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends.

8:59You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash start now. That's growtherapy.com slash start now. growtherapy.com slash start now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

9:34I think, you know, we don't need to get into too much detail about carb loading itself. but you know if you're being a nerd about it it's something like 12 grams of carbs per kilo of body weight in the three days leading up to the race so you know call it a kilogram of carbs for somebody like me at 82 83 kilos something like that huge amount of food yeah and all the people just can't fathom that it's that much carbohydrate so lots of people listening to that will be thinking you've got the numbers wrong it is like eating all the time yeah and you know and has to be spaced out through the course a lot of people just don't get there is there something to be said for you know like if you look at um precision hydration or you know the some of these companies that create uh liquid carbs like i drank a uh carb flow i think it was called yeah 300 grams of carbs yeah i literally just did that in the cab right on the way to the airport just in one go pretty much that's a third you know a third of a kilo pretty much of carbs yeah uh it was fine kind of it felt like you're just having you know something really naughty and filthy you know it's just very sugary obviously but that's easier i'd say than eating 300 grams of carbohydrate through solid food so why wouldn't why wouldn't one just do four or five of those in the lead up to a marathon knowing then that you've got all the carbs you could possibly need and then also if you're hungry i guess you may not be just eat normal meals yes like why mess around with boiling copious amounts of rice and eating loads of pasta like it's all it's all like quite a lot for people like why wouldn't you just buy these drinks and drink just the drinks good question probably the main question always with carbs at high volumes is the gut so the trainability of the gut to be able to absorb that volume of carbohydrate in that dosage over that time period and you know ultimately your body is not that akin to receiving 300 grams of carbs in liquid form and so the big challenge always is that sweet spot between i need the carbohydrate in my diet to then turn into the muscle and other glycogen but i've got to get it through my gut without gastrointestinal distress which for some people bloating others nausea others you know propensity for diarrhea whatever it might be so what you're saying if you if you only had these like flow sachet things yeah significant need a bit of fiber you would need fiber and they think they have a little bit of fiber in them but nowhere near as much as whole food would so it's that curated blend of and we say the same thing someone's you know solution will be another person's poison the question would be trialing how do i get that huge volume of carbohydrate in the three days prior to a marathon event and it's really important to know again i don't need that massive wodge of carb if my event isn't going to run or completely deplete my glycogen store so you know you didn't carb load but you've had a pretty high carbohydrate diet for you know because you're training for a while yeah you you lean into carbs because you train relentlessly well i didn't want to make the mistake that i made in the berlin marathon the previous year which was to suddenly have eight pizzas in the lead up to the marathon because all of a sudden you feel heavy bloated like your body responds to the excess calories weirdly yeah because i'm not eating two pizzas a day in the lead up like while i'm training so all of a sudden i got to berlin i had two pizzas when we landed I had another pizza that evening and then I had another pizza the following day.

12:52All of a sudden I'm just cramming in all this food that I wouldn't ordinarily eat. And I felt, well, like a turd on the start line. Yeah, no, just heavy. But then you've got the yeasts, you've got the other, the processed foods. And you want to start feeling, you will be heavier. So there's a really important part to that when we come to, if you've stored all of that, as much of that carbohydrate as you can. And again, depending on how much muscle someone's got, how big they are, but let's assume someone stores 600 grams of glycogen that's a pretty reasonable you know full storage someone between four and six hundred might be your body's stored amount of glycogen and interestingly before we we came on here i was looking at your stats on your uh on your devices and they were magnificent well thank you ollie you're always so kind to me i was salivating the the consistency just the whole thing that's like sure it's not the cookie the cookie was was secondary to the data data was delicious and i it was good clean data The feed is so clean.

13:48But that data gave us a calorie output. So here's just an interesting quick bit of maths in the fact that your total calories on the Berlin Marathon was? During the Berlin Marathon, I expended 3 ,292 calories. Outlandish. And we also looked at your heart rate data where you had spent the majority of your time at what heart rate? I averaged a heart rate of 163, which is 95 % of the race in zone three. Lovely. With the exception of 4 % in zone four in the final two kilometers where I really put the pedal down. As you should. Yeah. The glory strides. So let's remind ourselves that you've done a gas analysis cardiopulmonary test.

14:37So we know your zone three, not by predicted heart rate, but by actually when you move through different fuels. So we've seen when you go into zone three and you start using carbohydrate, we've got the heart rate zones for that, which is a little higher than your average human being. We're putting you into an elevated camp. So what we've got there, let's imagine in zone three, you're using quite a lot of carbohydrate. You had 600 grams of carbohydrate on the starting line, and that 600 grams of carbohydrate will deliver you four calories per gram. so you've effectively got 2400 calories of carbohydrate available to you that's interesting so yeah so there's basically there's 800 calories that you need to find on the route exactly so you and or and i meant on the route not on route because the big pet hate of mine when people say i'm on route o n route it's on route it's on route e n route but i said on the route because I'm talking about a specific marathon route.

15:33I'm not en route to a pub or whatever. That's excellent. Thank you. Well, it is important actually. When people, honestly, if you're ever texting me and you say en route, O-N route. Yes. Not okay. No, you're probably. I'll pull you up on it. You won't be there when they arrive. Exactly. Okay. Je suis arrivé. Je suis pas là. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I've got nothing. So, yes. Je suis parti. So, two parts to that. A, we never just use one fuel. So, you know, you would have in that zone three, you would have contributed to some of that energy production with some fat, with some, you know, some additional fuel.

16:10So you're not just running on glucose as you would be if you're in zones four and five. So zone three is a bit like the hybrid. You're going to contribute to that for a little bit of fat metabolism. But then you also, so let's imagine you were running in zone four and that was your pace. You would have run out of glycogen at about 30 kilometers. right then and here we have the wall which is i i ran at an intensity where my body was not able to deliver that speed using fat metabolism or fat as a fuel and therefore i relied on having 600 grams of carbs in my muscle and glycogen so question number one for the wall of was there 600 grams or did i gamble and not carb load at you know nearly 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram in the three to four days building up to that um so that's sort of question number one question number two is is did i fuel mid-race and we also discussed your your your strategy and you did how many gels i had two gels left at the end i did two caffeine gels one at the start line uh like 10 minutes before heading in that had i want to say 100 milligrams of caffeine yeah yeah uh and then one at halfway that's that's these are the caffeine gels i'm talking about that's a performance enhancing elements yeah and then on top of that every i want to say like six kilometers seven kilometers i had a gel something like that every half hour yeah and the gels had sort of 40 60 or more 40 45 grams 45 grams of carbs and something i think you can do theoretically you can do about 60 grams kind of feel like hot dogs towards the end you know they're pretty like yeah pretty gloopy i mean again that but that carb is going to provide that top up potentially and we've spoken previously that the carbohydrate gels give um a carbohydrate mouth rinse which tells your brain fuels coming so they play into that perception of fatigue i like ali branley's i'm not we're not paid to say this or anything but the true fuel ones are way easier to consume than say the mortons really interesting like i like the true fuel one when you tear off the top and you just and you put your fingers at the bottom and you just yeah it just goes straight into your mouth you can swallow it it's like a kind of party trick yeah um whereas like the morton is quite like it's a bit of a mish to get the whole thing that it's like it's a meal.

18:25So maybe, and again, remembering we can't take too much glucose in per hour because we can't get it through the gut. There's a receptor that moves the glucose from your stomach into your tissues. And so some of the heavier gels have fructose as well, which goes through a different gate. So basically, if you're trying to evacuate the cinemar, there's two doors, which means you can get twice as many people out, or in this case, twice as much sugar in. So you've got glucose and fructose combined. So normally the glupier ones are a combo which deliver more carbs, but I'd need to do a better looking at the products.

18:56But principally, let's imagine you've banged in 100 grams of carb across the glucose and the fructose. There's another 400 calories. You've done that five or six times. That's the calories to get you to the end, which meant you didn't hit the wall. And historically, that's the key. just go back to the like so am i correct in now thinking that you run 30 35k of the marathon just call it four minute k's average just for argument's sake and easy math something like that yeah and then you're no longer able to sustain that pace even though you've been carb loading and gelling and whatever yeah for whatever reason you just can't keep hold the pace yeah so you drop off pace for the final seven or or or 12k or whatever it might be yeah and that is that is in your view hitting a wall that's not just fatigue i think that's a great question so the wall is is quite synonymous with with glycogen depletion so one of the trademarks of the wall would often be a i think the definition and you're going to need better sports scientists than me is that definitive drop off in in actual running pace but it would also come concurrently with some other symptoms that feel quite neurological.

20:06Don't know if you've ever seen anyone have a sort of hypoglycemic episode. You know, any friends who have type 1 diabetes who have... I can't say I've ever witnessed a hypoglycemic episode. Okay, so it looks a little bit like being, before it turns into a real challenging issue. So someone with type 1 diabetes injects insulin, which is the hormone that drops your glucose down. So sometimes that individual injects the right amount of insulin, but they hadn't factored in the fact they'd drunk alcohol the night before, or they did a big training session and so they put too much insulin in and their glucose goes to really low level and before that goes to rock bottom where they can drift into a coma and it can be actually fatal they look like they're a bit drunk you know it's sort of you know they're clumsy and slurring and it's it's like when you've got super low glucose the brain is like the first sounds like my wife's sister yeah well she may she may have low glucose she doesn't oh she may i'm sure she's fab let's give her you know that's where that's where that advert you know you're not you when you're hungry and the whole snickers thing came from when you have low blood glucose you can be neurologically and psychologically different so you can be irritable angry and so when when you got when you're having a proper like hypo there is there's confusion as well right so you're like i don't know and i reference this i did hit the wall and i i was like hallucinating i was like well that's big ben's there and big ben was not there was he not it was not there but then big ben the clock rather than no i know i know i know you i know you meant the clock who um who else would big ben be well i'm sure we've all got a large friend called ben yeah oh yeah our big ben yes um yeah so you know but you So the wall would be, I think, in sports science terms, defined by a statistical drop in pace.

21:56Of 14%. I think it might be 7 % for one kilometer and something like 14 % for five kilometers. Because the fuel is gone, so there's no ability to think your way through it. It's an actual, you know, it's just... It's a thing. It's a thing. And it's different. You know, we love the idea of what is fatigue and these ideas that there's this central governor theory that my brain is receiving these signals of discomfort and working out how tired I should be. it's not that i know that there's i know that undoubtedly when you run out of glycogen this will happen yeah but from my experience of running quite a few marathons now the feeling is quite similar of fatigue to hitting the wall sometimes i'm sure you simply can't pull yourself out of it but interestingly in berlin yeah i could because i wasn't probably completely depleted of glycogen but the feeling is the same well there'll be i think the feeling will be different actually and i think in i think things that would correlate so you would also potentially be dehydrating a little bit and it again depends and that would be a slight decrease in blood volume and that means that as we saw i think a little bit your heart rate's rising um for the same pace so only a little bit a smidge no more than a smidge a smidge but yeah and that sort of that disassociation between pace and the cardiovascular response is a sign that the system's working harder for the same output um that's going to feel like fatigue and you're building fatigue in so many different areas you know you are creating a huge signal to your brain that has been screaming at you for for a long time to tell you to stop and that's where of course this sort of central fatigue where the body is is trying to just judge can it keep doing this without risk to itself because the body's trying to save it it's trying to protect itself and the great danger always of of mantras and and pushing through the pain is there's a sweet spot when the body is recognized that what you're doing is now genuinely harming it.

23:48And that signal telling you to stop is a protectionist mechanism that doesn't necessarily want to be completely ignored. But the wall can't be overthought. The protection mechanism, though, will start telling you to stop doing something hard almost immediately. Yeah, well, it budgets, right? So it budgets. If you think you're going to run 100 meters, your body will basically give you this capacity to do that. If you run much beyond that, it sort of starts screeching and screeching. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating.

24:24You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S. offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends.

25:04You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash start now. That's growtherapy.com slash start now. growtherapy.com slash start now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Mississippi is breaking new ground for business at a historic pace. Amazon, XAI, Toyota, Milwaukee Tool and GE Aerospace have all tapped into our deep talent pool, prime geographic location, and welcoming communities.

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26:09I think, you know, we don't need to get into too much detail about carb loading itself. But, you know, if you're being a nerd about it, it's something like 12 grams of carbs per kilo of body weight in the three days leading up to the race. So, you know, call it the last K of Berlin was like a 5K. Oh, can I? Well, I can't imagine. But also like it definitely isn't a K. No. like i i couldn't believe the length of this thing i like turned the corner and it was like one last kilometer awful and i looked at the finish line and i was like that's fucking miles away yeah miles away but your but your body budgets right so if you what's always interesting about heart rates if we're going to run a hundred meter race our heart rates will go to zone four maybe before the bang of the gun yeah because we are anticipating that that volume of load there's always that question if you ever had a personal trainer i don't know whether sean um stafford does it you're you know your legendary trainer um whether you've finished your reps and then he says now do two more oh it's awful i i i i've banned him from doing this it's it's a bugbear of mine because your body has said i i okay if i'm gonna do 12 it's it's it's violation like genuinely it's not it's not okay no no i literally can't bear it where it's like you know okay 10 9 8 7 and then you get down to zero and you've given it everything.

27:27Like two more. No, I'm not. I'll tell you what, you can't have them. No, I agree. Even if I could do them, I'm not going to give them to you. Because you budgeted for the 12. I budgeted. And that means you put the energy into the first 12. That is all you've got to give. And so when we extend an event beyond our anticipation, we confuse that fatigue mechanism for sure. But is that a mental thing? So it's really interesting though that because it's like when you take, say you take the London Big Half. Yeah. Where, sorry to make it all about me, but it's just easier to... I love it being about you.

27:56No, but just for the listener, it is just easier to take my personal experience rather than generalizing. Yes. Like if you... I ran the London Big Half with an average pace of 3.54 for the Big Half, for the half marathon, which is my Valencia marathon pace. The dream. And that was the goal. Yep. Not to go any faster and not to go any slower. That was the goal. Hit the goal perfectly. Yeah. Really hard though. Like way harder than I thought it was going to be to the point where i got to the end i was like there's no chance i can do valencia like like in at this place yeah yeah and i was like that is it was literally a nail in the coffin of my i don't want to use the word anxiety because i'm not an anxious person but like my fears of so the seed of doubt of yeah just the it it it put all of my doubts in uh it just clarified it all as as reality like i was hoping to put the doubt in a coffin yeah like nail it down and just bury it right at the end of the big half so i can go yeah i could do that twice the opposite happened right it was just hell and i thought well no chance could i possibly run one more kilometer at this pace um then sure enough when i go to berlin and i'm running three 56s for the majority of the race and i ended up averaging four minute k's which is not an awful lot slower than the big half and it was probably easier than the big half and it's twice the distance so my brain for berlin was prepared for that it knows it's full marathon it knows to treat it with respect it knows it knows that it's going to be rough it knows it's going to be hard it like my heart rate was high on the start line everything about it you were geared into this tunnel of i know what's about to happen yeah and it's going to be fucking rough yeah i'm ready for it and let's go and it's like a fight whereas like the big half i was like that's a half i run half marathons like three times a week it's great you know and i was just like i couldn't give a shit about this to be honest it's a slightly faster training run yeah and it had the better of me really because i didn't really treat it with any kind of respect that it deserved and on the start line i was just like i can remember looking at my watch on the start line seeing my heart rate at like 80 and i was like this this sucks like heart rate there on the start line there was like 130 yeah like good to go let's go boom and like big half i was like this is going to be a long like super interesting considering you actually probably prepped more deliberately and professionally for the big half than you did for the the you know arguably yeah probably arguably and i think that that piece around what you're anticipating your body's gonna get ready for is absolutely true be interesting to track what your heart rate was on the half versus the marathon because of course your ambition is to be able to run 354 at the heart rate that you've just run at four miles because that that that gives you a really clear physiological reason if you are five beats higher and you're dipping into zone four that glycogen contribution and the fatigue that it induces will be will be greater the big half average heart rate was 167 so four beats higher so a little bit higher so it's just again in that scenario we are producing that little bit more contribution of glycogen which means there'll be a little bit more production of those challenging hydrogen ions and there'll be that increased sensation of fatigability so that that's again the sensation coming from your body will be slightly different between the two but your receipt of that information comes down to the mindset you went into that race with and that's such an interesting part of running that two people who are exactly as fit as each other one will win one will lose and of course how does one access that inner reserve and and what strategies do we all deploy to hide from the signals of our body screaming to stop and be a gritty bastard and grit is the is the single greatest sort of concept here and it's beautiful but until grit you overrode the natural signal to actually stop and then grit harms you you know there'll be a lot of people who are like their body was screaming not in running but in their um professional lives you know i'm just going to keep enduring i'm going to push through and i'm going to get to that break and the grit allowed you to go deeper into your reserves than you should have done and that individual gets a you know a burnout of some description or their immune system falls over so we always got to find the balance between self compassion and grit actually um from a running point of view i would say the same there's a point when the damage is too damaging and the person should stop and again john you know johnny brownley which is that interesting point where he's so psychologically resilient he he can ignore that signal to the point where his body goes into effectively meltdown with like 100 meters left i mean it's the most i just it gets me that that bit ghastly stuff well just i love i love alistair brownley's reaction to it no i love them as well but i mean can you imagine like that's worrying isn't it if you're pushing through pain to get to the end of a marathon and there's 100 meters left imagine that well then but then and that's when you get to the point that's not about how tough are you that is physiological fatigue right so he's run out of an energy system and that's again where the wall separates from other fatigue it's not i can think my way through this if you don't have the fuel source that you need to combust running at four minutes per kilometer and your body now has to drop from using carbohydrate to fat you won't be able to treat you're probably dropping down now to 430 minutes per kilometer or five so your body's got to drop its pace to a level that can match that you no longer have glucose available as that fuel so that that is a natural reaction which means drop of pace is as good a symptom of the wall as the symptom of being dizzy or light-headed but you'd also include that thermoregulation have i overheated because i've lost some blood volume and plasma have i built some other mechanisms of fatigue too much hydrogen ions have i built some central nervous system fatigue fatigue is so beautifully complicated that we can't reduce it to did i have enough you know pasta and and and bread the night before but i think the wall at that particular point if we 600 grams of carbs four calories per um per gram of carb that's probably going to run out about 30 kilometers on the average person and the deeper you're into zones three four five the quicker you're going to burn through it and the more prevalent your pre-race preparation needs to be a ghastly beast it is horrible i said i i my first marathon i cocked it up completely so i ran a i was so on the day i was so hyped by the crowd i trained to run a 330 very clearly and I came through halfway in 129 and I was like, I'm running this up three.

34:31This was 2001. Oh, mate, you would have been a hero of the time. Like then. I'd also run a 129 by high five. I reckon I'd have to high five 10 ,000 people. You know, I was, my name was on my vest. I was living every part of my best existence until I got to 17 miles. And I was like, what's that taste in my mouth? I was like and then at 19 I was like why is Big Ben here and the mate I was running with was like we are literally just leaving like Canary War we're in Cutty Sark yeah so and and then I and then I went into the crowd and there was a kid eating jelly beans and I sort of clawed my way into his kids did you nick his jelly beans I nick his jelly beans yeah did you actually without a yay I was literally like a drunk and yeah yeah and then you know and then just had to walk and walk and I would also I'd made so many errors that were just fascinating to me physiologically that I'd mismanaged carb loading i've mismanaged hydration i've mismanaged race pace and it was one of those things where it first taught me that there are just rules to physiology there are rules and being you know being young and arrogant and arrogant in in sport not as a person i don't think you're arrogant well as arrogant i could just bully the race and i was fit enough to just run what i'd run as a half as a double and the science was was still pretty robust it wasn't as clear as it is now but i then 100 hit the wall and it was it wasn't that i couldn't i couldn't run fast i couldn't speak to my legs i couldn't feel my body it was like i was disassociated from my own tissues it was it was an amazingly sometimes my legs take me places i don't want to go either and i can't even stop them i say for sake lads we're here again yeah like i told you last week not to bring me back here well that's the thing well they generally look after you that's jans is it Jan Voigt, the Tour de France cyclist, who says, shut up legs.

36:22That's his mantra. I made a deal with my ankle once. Oh, well played. No, it was in the Jungle Ultra in the Amazon on the last day, and I had this club foot. It was swollen and just bitten to shit, and it was terrible. Awful. Enflamed mass of flesh. I couldn't put any weight through it or whatever, and I had to hop like 82K, basically, on the last day. Not hop, but I couldn't really use my right foot. I'll try and get a picture for you. Yeah. It's grim. Yeah, send it immediately. Full on like elephant hoof or whatever they have. Send it to me tonight. Elephant. They do have hooves. Do they? Elephant foot.

37:00Elephant feet. I think it's a foot. Let's just call it a foot. I think it is a foot. I have a foot, so we'll just call it a foot. No, terrible, terrible. So much pain, like gobbling paracetamol and ibuprofen, like skittles all afternoon, just trying to get to the end before cutoff. and I sat down and I spoke to my foot and I just said if you just fucking loosen up and just let me put a bit of weight through you and just get me to the end of this race I'll treat you to all kinds of shit I said I'll take you to a spa I'll get you looked up by a doctor I'll bandage you up I'll give you loads of love but like you collapsing on me now is a fucking problem and it's pissing me off and you don't want me annoyed because I could just cut you off I don't need you really incredible i don't need you all right especially not on this form that is incredible i love it i had a good chat and actually you know what kind of like i just the whole back and forth helped yeah it helped i would think that's an amazingly intelligent strategy the only caveat to that is it's trying to save your life yeah that's the tipping point where you're like okay if i ignore that sepsis sometimes you have to like just push your your people you know a little bit i agree but to get the best result you need to let them know the same with people same with body same with straight it's like what is the point where i take you to the point before you break and then bring you back but if you go to the point when you break the repercussions can it took me it took me to the end that's an amazing thing yeah i love the it wasn't pretty but that that mantra of you know as in i'm i'm i'm telling you now we're going to make it together or you know those internal speaks are a huge part mine was a bit more threatening than that yeah yeah it wasn't it wasn't so much we're a team it was like if you don't play ball i'm gonna fucking kill you yeah I'm gonna take you off I'm gonna put you in the bin and then where will you be yeah that's a valid strategy you'll be off body yeah you'll never see your pals the knees and your other ever again you'll be alone I will in a ditch somewhere ashes yeah I'll burn you I'll burn you I think that's a strategy yeah which actually plays into the idea of fatigue which is we are we're in a constant dialogue between brain and body and the brain is is dictating to the body what to do the body is saying how much can i do and in some places others can just control that narrative a bit more than others some people would do cardiopulmonary testing on on people and you'd see them going the the the vo2 max test that you did some people just cite fatigue at a much earlier point in fatigue the funny thing about that test is when you test someone for a cardiopulmonary test or vo2 max you see when they actually hit maximum because as they're as the treadmill is getting faster or the bike's getting tougher their oxygen consumption plateaus they they physically can't take any more oxygen at that point you start to see some real biological markers of fatigue it is safe though to assume people probably can push a touch harder yes than they think they can right so like famously uh dearly departed friend nims persia famously said you know when you're when you think you're fucked you're probably only 40 percent fucked you know i think this similar stuff goes from i'm not talking about the science here i'm talking about like when you feel a bit of pain a lot of people don't have the experience of pushing through pain so they slow down and stop they just go this hurts i don't like this i'm not gonna do this anymore right so that that is kind of like a and there's nothing wrong with that by the way whatever nobody's suggesting you need to become david goggins but like it's that is a reason for people slowing down as well i brought this up in a conversation i was having with hercules earlier today do you know who he is he's a he's an endurance runner but he's also a good marathoner as an actual name yeah bold Hercules is it he's Greek yeah okay still bold good looking dude as well I bet yeah I bet and he he was basically like people can push through difficult things if they if they really want to agreed you know unless of course your glycogen is at zero but also just as long as you're eating your gels you can't you shouldn't be at a zero depends if you absorb the gels depends on muscle starting glycogen let's imagine you started that race with 300 grams of glycogen if you hammer a load of gels you shouldn't really hit the wall no because if you weren't carb loaded there's not enough in the 60 to 120 grams of carbohydrate if you carb load and scoff a load of gels during the race then you shouldn't really hit the wall and if you hydrate theory and you've tolerated yeah in theory and that's why it's a it's a preventative mechanism once you hit the wall you are in the hurt locker it's gonna be very difficult to get out of it prep carb loading gels hydration and race pace and amongst that couple beers couple of pieces yeah whatever but whatever gets you there in the right mindset but the wall is a true physiological glycogen deficiency in most cases plus three or four other factors and um if you've been in it let us know because it's it's extraordinary yeah send us some of your experiences DM us at untapped.podcast.

41:55We would love to hear some of your experiences with the wall.