Breaking Through The Wall

I got the chance to talk to John Warren, head men's track coach at Rice University, Tuesday.

We were shooting some of the pieces for our marathon coverage on the morning of January 17th, and the topic was training for the race. Of course, both John (my husband, not John Warren the coach) and I are both well into our training schedules. Last week's long run was 12 miles.

I asked Coach Warren a number of questions about training and running the race, including how to avoid hitting the wall late in the race. If you've ever hit the wall, you know exactly how terrible it feels. You're exhausted, you're drained and a lot of times, it's all you can do to keep walk-jogging. I hit the wall something fierce last year. It wasn't fun. I fantasized about laying down on the race course and staying there.

Here's Coach Warren's answer to the wall: "The long runs, getting used to those long runs will help," he said. "But if you want to do something during the race that is going to be the diet. Make sure you're not dehydrated (My thought bubble: I was last year!) and if you have never attempted things like Gu, food intake, carbohydrate intake throughout the race."

Gu, by the way, bills itself as "the performance food." It's one of many brands of gooey, sweet packs of gel made up of sugars, salt, caffeine, electrolytes, et cetera and designed to get into the bloodstream fast to feed the muscles during endurance sports, like say, a marathon. I've tried other brands, like Carb-Boom, but my personal favorite is Gu. I'm picky about flavors too -- I don't like the chocolate, espresso nor lemon-lime flavor.

I have a picture somewhere of me making a face around 18 miles at Detroit, because I'd grabbed a lemon-lime Gu and ate it.

Coincidentally, I introduced reporter Andrea Lucia, who is training for the half-marathon, to Gu last weekend. I gave her one of my Orange Burst flavored packs to try.

So, I knew about Gu and I have Gu'ed at 5 miles, 10 miles, 15, 18 and 22 in my previous two marathons. And I thought that was a lot. But Coach Warren had some breaking news for me - that may not be enough and Gu may be the answer to avoiding the wall.

"Usually an hour into it, you can start taking a Gu pack, and every 20 minutes after that. That will help against that glycogen breakdown that causes the wall," he said.

This was such new information to me, and to Justin, who is running the marathon and was the field producer on the shoot, and to my husband that we had several conversations about it. I'm going to start practicing Coach Warren's method of Gu-ing on this Friday's 14 mile long run. If I can run my last 4 to 6 miles at marathon pace or faster, and I don't get any stomachaches, we're golden.

Coach Warren had a lot of great information about training and racing for the marathon that will air during our coverage on the morning of January 17th, so if you're not running or a spectator, tune in. We'll also put it online after the race, here at abc13.com

Comments

[Ivo]

Did you ever follow through on this method of taking GU every 20 minutes after the fist hour? Does it work?