Friday, February 01, 2008

When a marathon goes wrong...

I picked this up from the blog, The Science of Sports.

The lady was simply impressive. She ran 3:20 min/km in the first 25km. Her pace for the last km was 7:50 min/km.

You can view the post here. They include a video as the marathoner finish the last km. The post and the comment follows dicuss between brain fatigue and glycogen depletion.

The post clearly shows that no matter how hard you try, there will be a point where your brain will tell your body to shuts down. This has nothing to do with how tough we are mentally (note: this is not to say that mental toughness is not important for an athlete).

To me, it is rather an acceptance that if I go too fast for my body to handle in the beginning, I will pay for it in the end. If I ignore this point and keep pushing, the brain will response.

Also as an athlete, there is always a surge to push past this point. When I push pass this point, I will pay later down the line. This can be seen from Ironman races where many have a great swim, a great bike and falter on the run (aka Ironman shuffle).

Know myself, stay humble and finish strong.

3 comments:

Melissa said...

It was so hard to watch that video. Poor thing. Thanks for the good points.

Jen in Budapest said...

Pretty excited about my first Tri, thanks.

Wow....I think the book Endurance Sports Nutrition would be a good book for all marathoners too. She talks about all that kind of stuff - refueling your body as you're "enduring"

brendaj said...

Wow, I agree with the other comment that the video was hard to watch. It was encouraging to see her still smiling, whether or not it was a real smile.