Marathoning: Leaping 'The Wall'

Whether you're a seasoned marathoner or a first-timer, understanding how to prepare and navigate the race can make all the difference in achieving your desired finish time. One term that all marathoners have come to be familiar with –  whether through experience of the phenomenon or word of mouth – is ‘the wall’.

Summary Outline:

• What Is The Wall?
• When Do You Hit The Wall?
• Who Hits The Wall?
• You Hit The Wall Or Did You…?
• Defining The Wall
• If Not The Wall Then What?
• Avoiding The Wall

What Is The Wall?

To the uninformed, you might think that marathons, in all their length and grueling glory may actually in fact feature a massive physical wall that runners come face to face with mid-race. However, it’s much more nuanced, and fortunately, less physical than that.

Physiologically the human body stores readily available energy (glycogen) in the muscles and liver that the body can rapidly breakdown to fuel vigorous activities like running. When that glycogen drops too low the body starts to switch to burning fat more exclusively. Unfortunately, fat is not the preferred energy source for the body and also takes longer to break down which means if you want to keep running, the pace will have to slow down. You are burning some percentage of both at all times but the distribution changes with intensity.

Think of when building a fire where the small twigs burn fast and get the fire started, but do not last so long; while comparatively, the logs light slowly and keep the fire going, but last a whole lot longer. Your glycogen stores are twigs and your fat stores are logs. 

When Do You Hit The Wall?

Every person is a little different since the amount of energy you can store is directly related to the mass of muscle available in the working muscles (i.e. legs, core).  On average a person can store about 2,000 Calories worth of energy in their muscles as glycogen. 

Because the average energy burned per mile is 100 Calories/mile run most people tend to “hit the wall” at mile 20 of a marathon. Since it takes this long to run out of precious glycogen, marathons and longer are the most common places to hear about ‘the wall’.  Fortunately we have strategies like proper pacing, pre-race pasta parties, and mid-race aid stations that help mitigate this unwelcome race guest.

Who Hits The Wall?

While many people have heard of the wall, the actual definition and understanding of how it manifests itself in a race can get a little fuzzy. In a recent published article by Jakim et al. the team assessed over 60,000 runners across 250 marathon races to get a cleaner picture of what it is and who it is that is suffering from this mid-race terror. 

Through their analysis they were able to identify runners who are most likely to feel that they have experienced hitting the wall and those characteristics look like the following:

Characteristics Of Wall Susceptibility

• First Time Marathoner: the more experienced you are the less likely you are to hit the wall.
• Undertrained: the less trained you are the more likely you are to not be prepared for the race or avoiding the wall.
• Non-Elite: just being slower than an elite runner means that the race will be longer and therefore easier to hit the wall.
• Poor Pacing: going out too hard can burn through a higher percentage of glycogen stores sooner

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You Hit The Wall Or Did You…

According to the research anywhere from 40-50% of runners report hitting the wall during the marathon (Summers et al. 1982; Buman et al. 2008); however, only 70% of those runners reported that they experienced an involuntary slow-down, a signature sign that someone has hit the wall, as a result.  This tends to suggest that as runners we tend to just assume that anything that makes the latter half of the race feel miserable must be the wall perpetuating the lore and horror of this phenomenon.

Defining The Wall

Ultimately Jakim et al. assessed the various trends of how people described their experiences during these races and the associated pacing and finish times to come up with a more objective definition:

Runner hits the wall if the following conditions are all met:

• Onset is 24KM or later into a race
• Pace slows down unintentionally at least ~7% (e.g. 8-min/mile to 8.5-min/mile)
• Pace slows down by minimum ~18% before recovery of pace (e.g. 8-min/mile to 9.5min/mile)
• Distance the wall is experienced is 4KM or longer

All other runners who experience a slowdown would otherwise be impacted by other factors.

If Not The Wall, Then What?

Sometimes it really just is that running a marathon is hard. Any one of the following can challenge you in your quest for that spectacular finish you trained and dreamed for.

Common Factors Impacting Race Performance:

• Preparation & Training
• Dehydration
• Environment
• Pacing
• Muscular Fatigue
• Nutrition
• Mental Fatigue
• Injury
• The Wall

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All of these factors can be related or compound together making the experience you perceive different to varying degrees of severity and we will cover each of these topics in depth across a variety of distances, terrains, and situations in future articles.

Avoiding The Wall

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Safe to say, no one wants to feel awful during their race, and definitely not during a race that ends up slower than they wanted to go. The best way to avoid this common pitfall though can be summed up by the following strategies:

Strategies For Avoiding the Wall:

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• Pacing: Be sure to go out at a pace that you can handle for the entire race. If you never run a 7:30-min/mile pace in practice, chances are that you should not be trying to run faster than that in the front half of the race – no matter how good you feel.
  
  
• Training: Be sure to train for the race you signed up for. If you’re looking to run the marathon you want to be sure that you have done at least one long-run greater than 12-miles in length (honestly, it should be a lot closer to 16-20 miles) before you toe the line. Your body works harder to do things that are unfamiliar.
  
  
• Pre-Race Fueling: Having a well balanced diet that is rich in carbohydrates has been found to improve endurance performance in a variety of different groups of runners over numerous research studies. Race week is the last time anyone should be going on a diet – especially in the two to three days before the race!
  
  
• Mid-Race Fueling: Unless you are an elite runner, chances are that fueling mid-race is a good idea. While the current recommendations are 120-180 Calories an hour, what exactly works for you can be different. Be sure to practice and try out different gels or even sports drinks that your upcoming race may offer to see what works for you.
  
  
• Positive Mindfulness: While less physiological, how you feel about yourself and the race is going to help make sure you set yourself up for success. Believe in yourself so you can perform when it counts!
  
  
• Coaching Plan: Having a Coach or expert help build the best strategy for you can be one of the best ways to learn from the lessons of others without enduring them yourself (hint: www.runbyryan.com).

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Remember, any race that has you running for over 2 hours is going to be a hard thing to get right even if you do everything properly. But if you set yourself up for success the odds will be in your favor.

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References

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1. Berndsen, J., Lawlor, A., & Smyth, B. (2020). Exploring the wall in marathon running. Journal of Sports Analytics, 6(3), 173-186. https://doi.org/10.3233/JSA-200354
2. Summers, J. J. , Sargent, G. I. , Levey, A. J. and Murray, K. D. (1982) , Middle-aged, non-elite marathon runners: A profile. In: Perceptual and Motor Skills 54: (3), pp. 963–969.
3. Buman, M. P. , Omli, J. W. , Giacobbi, P. R. Jr, , Brewer, B. W. , Petitpas, A. J. , (2008) b, Experiences and coping responses of “hitting the wall” for recreational marathon runners. In: Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 20: (3), pp. 282–300.