I got a comment from someone, which I have to say, I totally appreciated, saying that my nausea at mile 18 in the marathon was caused because I had hit the wall.
Hmmm... I didn't run out of energy, I was mentally still "there," no fuzziness in my brain, my legs didn't feel like lead...I was just nauseated. I have hit the wall before! And the wall was not being hit last weekend. I have been in races where I was completely DONE, physically and emotionally. But, I started thinking, maybe I don't know what it feels like to hit the wall, so I googled it...Nope, I know what it feels like.
Of hitting the wall, Dick Beardsley said,"It felt like an elephant jumped out of a tree onto my shoulders and was making me carry it the rest of the way in."
George Ringler said, "At around mile 23, I was beginning to feel like the anchor was out."
"The Wall." It evades easy definition, but to borrow from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of obscenity, you know it when you see it--or rather, hit it. It usually happens around mile 20, give or take a couple of miles. Your pace slows, sometimes considerably. Some runners say that it feels as though their legs had been filled with lead quail shot, like the stomach of Mark Twain's unfortunate jumping frog of Calaveras County. Others can't feel their feet at all. Thought processes become a little fuzzy. (Mile 22, again? I thought I just passed mile 22!") Muscle coordination goes out the window, and self-doubt casts a deep shadow over the soul. (This was taken from an article written by Sara Latta called "Hitting "The Wall")
What it all boils down to is that "Hitting The Wall" is basically about running out of energy!
Apparently, it is a common occurrence in distance runners to have nausea, either during or after the race. (I get it during and after, a lot of the time for the rest of the day, yeah me!). It can be caused by the sugars in the gatorade or Gu, which, I use both. I have tried pretzels and fig newtons, real food, but I still get nauseated. I read eating a packet of salt before and during the race can help. Has anyone tried that before? What about ginger? What are your rituals before, during and after a race?
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