Lessons I've Learned from the Marathon: Physiological and Psychological

As I'm writing about the marathon, I have to say that I'm using the term "learned" loosely, because when it comes to 26.2 miles I'm like one of my 16-year-old students.  As much as I can intellectualize what I should do, I have a harder time following through.  I am an emotional runner, and many times, my emotions get away with me.  So maybe the title of this blog should be "Lessons I am Trying to Learn from the Marathon."  Here goes:

Lesson 1:  Respect the distance.  Every coach I've ever had has sat down with me to have "the talk" about respecting the marathon, and it's because I need it.  No matter how many times I crash and burn (6 and counting), I always get fooled.  The first half of the marathon feels so easy, so fluid, so thrilling that I forget I'm going to have to pay for every second that I misjudge.  They say that for every second you run too fast in the beginning, you lose two in the end.  I think it's a floating scale, so if you start to run more like 5-10 seconds too fast per mile, you lose more like 25-45 seconds per mile in the end.  Embarrassingly, I admit that I was entertaining thoughts about running 2:42 in my last marathon when 6:08 pace felt so easy at the beginning.  Instead, I should have been thinking "Oh shit, I just lost a few seconds on my total time."

Lesson 2:  Respect the distance.  Really.  It will hurt.

Lesson 3: You can't take Gu and Gatorade within 5-10 minutes.  I can't take credit for this lesson, but it was great advice I got from my coach (Terrence Shea of the BAA) and I thought it was worth passing on.  Before I knew this, I kept getting cramps every time I took Gu and it was annoying.

Lesson 4:  People talk about "the wall" at mile 20.  Whether runners are professionals or amateurs, it seems that the marathon hits a new level of difficulty at this mile marker.  My college coach (Robert Hoppler of UNH) explains that it's not exactly the same spot for every runner.  Instead, he theorizes that it's the final hour of the marathon that taxes the body in new ways.  For men, that means roughly anything after an hour will start to hurt a bit, and for women it should be held off until more like 1:45-2:00 into the marathon.  Hop explains that it's a metabolic problem.  The body can only store so much glycogen in the liver, and it can only buffer so much lactic acid at a certain rate before it has trouble keeping up.  This is why even marathoners have to do some lactate threshold work as part of their training, to stave off the slow-down that occurs when lactic acid builds up.  Honestly, this might be my biggest weakness when it comes to the marathon, because looking at my PRs, my weakest distance is the 10k.  It used to be that I was so unprepared for the distance of the marathon that I needed to just focus on increasing my mileage and lengthening my workouts, but now I think I'm at a point where I need to catch my lactate threshold up with my aerobic fitness. 

Lesson 5:  There is an emotional outpouring at the finish line.  I wasn't prepared for this in my first marathon.  Admittedly, the race was the most miserable experience I've ever had on two legs because my I.T. bands tightened up and reduced me to a walk-jog for the final ten miles, but after I crossed the line in pain, I started sobbing.  I wasn't sure if I was crying in disappointment, rage, or pain, but all I knew was that it was uncontrollable.  It was like all of the excitement and anticipation that built up during the long build-up for a marathon (when you can't race often) was focused on that one moment at the finish.  Each time I've collected my thoughts from the marathon, this emotional reaction has led to a renewed focus and re-dedication.  I'm not sure if this makes me a sadist or an optimist.

Lesson 6:  Two facets of the marathon that I tend to under-emphasize are flexibility and fuel use.  While I practice running for three hours without fuel to teach my body how to utilize fatty acids after glycogen runs out, I rarely practice taking on hundreds of calories on a run.  I think I'm going to experiment with this a bit in the next several months to see if I can handle about 200 calories during the first few miles and convert this energy into a usable form by the all-important last hour. 

Lesson 7:  Flexibility deserves its own lesson.  My eyes were opened to the reality that race walking is largely about flexibility when I went to the USATF National Indoor Championships in 2003.  But it makes sense to me:  when the muscles tighten, the stride shortens.  If I start out with a more flexible, longer stride, this shortening might not make as much of a difference.  I know that static stretching is being phased out across the country as research is showing that it does nothing for injury prevention unless utilized after a run.  However, I think one key for me is going to be a routine regimen of dynamic flexibility drills that I can do before and after runs.

Lesson 8:  No matter how well the marathon goes, the final 10k requires an incredible amount of focus.  Frank Shorter famously turned to his competitors at mile 20 and once said "Why couldn't Philippides have died right here?"  Even Kara Goucher admit after her marathon debut in New York (2009) that she wanted to stop just a few miles shy of the finish line.  We mere mortals attempting marathons have to remember that it will take all of the dedication that we can muster in those final miles to work through a host of potential disasters (cramps, muscle spasms, misfiring and uncoordinated muscles).

Lesson 9:  The reason to do it is because it is hard.  If marathoning were easy, they wouldn't give obnoxiously large commemorative medals at the finish line.  Simply finishing 26.2 miles can be a Herculean task for some, while approaching the marathon as a race is a mental and physical overload for others.  It is a challenge that requires practice, dedication, and above all patience.  My next marathon probably won't be for another five months . . . is it May yet?

Tune in soon for Part 1 of "Why the US Men should have a B Standard for the Olympic Trials"