Hitting the wall

I was asked on Runmania what caused me to hit the wall. I posetd a reply and will post it here for furtuer reference.....

. There are just so many variables that it’s hard to nail down just what it caused the problems. I have been thinking it through and have a few ideas so here are my thoughts...

•Nutrition/Hydration/Electrolytes , too much or too little and your done! I did 8 Gels ( 800 Calories) . took plenty of water and did 4 Eload Caps at 18 and 36K. This is a formula that has worked in the past!

•Training, too much , too little or not the right kind. Things were hurting after last season so I backed off the long runs Nov/Dec logging 200K/month. Around Christmas I was beginning to ramp things up again but came down with Bronchitis and didn’t run until mid January and logged led then 150K that month. Feb and March were 310/320K months , long runs once a week. A few weeks before Boston I did a 30K run at my 5:00 Marathon pace. Weekly I had been doing tempo runs. So I felt reasonable prepared going into the Marathon.

•Health, this was my first Marathon run with a head cold. It would be easy to use this as an excuse but I don’t believe that it was the root cause of my poor performance.

•Weather , wind and heat are huge! I prepared for Sun , white hat , white tech T and shorts. When the temps creep up above the mod teens I start to slow down!

•Luck!

•Post race there was one clue that helped me to understand what may have happened. 24 hour after I ran I developed a rash over my upper body. There are two things that cause this, a fever due to illness or excessively high core temp due to running. I did 14 Marathon or longer races through last season and the rash only happened a couple of times. Boston was 15C at the end , Sunny all the way and we had a tail wind which didn’t provide much cooling.

•14 days before I BQed the 2010 STWM running a PB 3:29:09 I did a miserable 50 miler at Halliburton. At Hali I had a Knee issue and couldn’t run down any hills. It took me nearly 12 hours to complete the run. After Hali a road Marathon seemed like a walk in the Park.

If there is one thing I have learned about all this running stuff it is that there is no magic formula to guarantee success.