Half-marathoners: Help with hitting the wall

ilsie99

IF you increases your lactic acid threshold, what was your lactic acid threshold would be raised. SO you'd be running in your aerobic zone, allowing you to use more fat for energy.

LACTATE (you keep saying lactic acid threshold, but it's lactate- biochemically, two different things) threshold has little to do with gluconeogenesis, or your "Aerobic zone" as you state.

The way to increase your aerobic base is by running in your aerobic zone PAST the point of glycogen depletion. This is what causes your body to become efficient at gluconeogeneis, and this is the reason that the long run is critical to training, and why it is commonly referred to as the LSD (Long, SLOW, Distance).

The way to not bonk or hit the wall is aerobic base conditioning. The way to improve performance past your aerobic base is to increase your lactate threshold. By increasing your lactate threshold and constantly training within that, you can run at ABOVE your "aerobic zone" on race day.

arc918

as I understand it, a true bonk is a function of running out of glycogen stores in your liver

this usually doesn't happen until mile 18-20+ of a marathon (as the body holds about 2,000 calories of glycogen)

ilsie99

as I understand it, a true bonk is a function of running out of glycogen stores in your liver

this usually doesn't happen until mile 18-20+ of a marathon (as the body holds about 2,000 calories of glycogen)

Right. Not just your liver, but your entire body. How I understand it is that all cells in your body can create and store glycogen, but only the liver is able to convert fat stores (and irrelevant but interestingly, HFCS) to glycogen, which the body does as a last resort. Once that's gone, no more glycogen, and there's the true bonk.

Excluding the fat metabolizing skills of the liver, most have around an hour to 90 minutes worth of muscle stored glycogen. However, somebody who isn't able to efficiently convert fat to glycogen may feel those effects of muscle glycogen depletion.

ilsie99

Nice job with your half PR BTW!

arc918

Nice job with your half PR BTW!

thanks! my quads are still a little angry, but it was well worth it

registers

IF you increases your lactic acid threshold, what was your lactic acid threshold would be raised. SO you'd be running in your aerobic zone, allowing you to use more fat for energy.

LACTATE (you keep saying lactic acid threshold, but it's lactate- biochemically, two different things) threshold has little to do with gluconeogenesis, or your "Aerobic zone" as you state.

The way to increase your aerobic base is by running in your aerobic zone PAST the point of glycogen depletion. This is what causes your body to become efficient at gluconeogeneis, and this is the reason that the long run is critical to training, and why it is commonly referred to as the LSD (Long, SLOW, Distance).

The way to not bonk or hit the wall is aerobic base conditioning. The way to improve performance past your aerobic base is to increase your lactate threshold. By increasing your lactate threshold and constantly training within that, you can run at ABOVE your "aerobic zone" on race day.

Yes I agree with you. I talk about LSD in my post. Maybe I just misunderstood the original post. From the looks of it, they can run the distance. So the issue isn't really about aerobic capacity. They just want to run faster. Which I believe LT training will do.

Mrs_TrimWaistFatWallet

1. Gatorade or Gu Chomps
2. 1/2 scoop Jack 3D (GNC) + 1 scoop carb powder (GNC)
3. Will power

We got the Jack 3D (energy) from GNC. Here's their website. http://www.jack-3d.com/