I was surfing the web and reading about people's experiences with marathons when I stumbled upon this. Needless to say, I'm more than a little nervous...
A marathon by its nature is an endurance race that tests and tries the body, eventually taking it beyond its breaking point. Once Glycogen stores are depleted, and electrolytes are burned up, and proteins that the body possessed are consumed, to continue the body converts any sugars that remain into lactic acid, and starts to consume muscle, fat, and anything else it can feed on. But a marathon isn’t over until you reach a distance of 26 miles 385 yards. At that point the body is -well- broken. It doesn’t appear to matter what your level of conditioning. At the end of the run, you are broke; spent. From about mile 20 (officially referred to as “The Wall”), what draws you toward the finish line is the residual effects of months of long training runs, the confidence gained as a result of that training which says that in spite of what your body has been telling you for the last several miles, you can do it, and then ultimately shear strength of will that you muster up from somewhere deep inside. Even elite Marathoners are broken and rarely will even go for more than a walk to the car for nearly 2 weeks after a race while the body heals itself. (taken from http://marathonersrant.wordpress.com/)
4 comments:
Yikes! I am majorly impressed with the running, but man! Try not to break yourself! ;-)
Should you get a physical first??? Stress test????
Psych evaluation????
I know you can do it! Just don't get yourself permanently injured, please.
Hey Denise! Thanks for finding and quoting my Blog at www.arunnersrant.com. You can do it. I did it at the age of 53. If an old guy like me can go from virtually no miles at all to 26.2 in less than 4 months, you can do it too! I started training in June and by October, less than 4 months later, I completed the Grueling 2007 Chicago Marathon. Out of 45,000 people who entered, only 25,000 finished, but that was due to the extreme heat combined with high humidity. Philly will be a much different race. And, with your great base of weekly miles, I have no doubt that you will do extremely well. Just dont peak too soon before "The taper". Good luck. By the way, you came in 4 minutes ahead of me in the Vegas Half.
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