I’m afraid this post isn’t nearly as exciting as the title makes out!
I’ve read a lot about triathletes and endurance athletes hitting the wall or ‘bonking’, and to be honest it’s always sounded pretty horrible. Taken from Wikipedia, it is described as:
“In endurance sports such as cycling and running, hitting the wall or the bonk describes a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles, which manifests itself by sudden fatigue and loss of energy. Milder instances can be remedied by brief rest and the ingestion of food or drinks containing carbohydrates. The condition can usually be avoided by ensuring that glycogen levels are high when the exercise begins, maintaining glycogen levels during exercise by eating or drinking carbohydrate-rich substances, or by reducing exercise intensity.”
Well, on Sunday, for the first time I got first hand experience.
Being the last week of the ‘build’ part of my training for The Vit, it was a heavy week – particularly weekend. Friday night involved getting home from work and doing a 2.5 hour brick session (45km on the bike and about 15km run at threshold). Saturday morning was my only chance to go swimming for the week so I went off to Salford Quays for the USwim session – 3km. Feeling pretty tired by early afternoon I delayed the day’s 3 hour planned ride as much as possible finishing at about 7.
I’d love to say the weekend’s activity so far had prepped me well for Sunday morning’s 3.5 hour brick session with Rick, but it hadn’t. 2km into the 70 km ride and my quads were screaming at me. I soldiered on, trying (but often failing) to stay on Rick’s back wheel chomping down bars and gels to try and get me through. I made it to the end, albeit with legs feeling like lead. And it only got worse.
Our run was supposed to be 12km. 2km in I was struggling to get any blood flowing to my legs at all, and was slowing with every step. Having trundled to 5km, much to the dismay of Rick (who looked like he had a marathon left in him!) my run slowed to a walk. Now I’m not one to give up easily but I physically couldn’t lift my feet. My body was starting to feel like it was trying to eat itself ( I was out of all nutrition at this point). I started to wonder how on earth I was going to get back to the house! That was soon the least of my worries though, as when I tried to get moving again my vision became blurred, I felt like I had no control of my legs / feet and I was weaving all over the pavement, struggling to not veer onto the road. The best visual comparison I can come up with of how I felt, is of Alistair Brownlee’s meltdown at Hyde Park last year:
Dramatic London Triathlon for Brownlee by itnnews
Having cut the run short the last few km of walking / staggering back, needing to hold on to Walls, fences, trees and anything that could support me was hellish. I could barely string a sentence together once we got back to the house, and while chocolate, protein shakes and bacon sandwiches kindly provided by Rick helped a ton, I felt ‘wrong’ for the whole of the rest of the day. The drive home was nothing short of dangerous and as soon as my ass touched the couch I was asleep for 3 hours. Monday at work felt better but not great – almost as if I’d had a really heavy weekend on the ale that my body was trying to recover from – couldn’t be further from the truth!
So – why did it happen? Well I’m no expert but going off how I felt, I’d say too much intense exercise in the run up to Sunday and not enough nutrition during Sunday’s session. I used Nuun electrolyte tablets rather than my normal Lucozade carb drink while on the bike and didn’t have enough energy bars / gels to make up the deficit. It’s the first time I’ve ever truly had nutrition problems during training – I certainly won’t be going out under prepared again, and all I can say is I’d rather have this happen now than in a few weeks during the Vitruvian!
On a lighter, more entertaining note to end – this video of the ultimate bonk in Kona back in the 90′s never fails to amuse me (in a sadistic, “that must be horrible” kind of way) and makes me realise that when you think you’ve pushed yourself to your limits, there are always people who will push it further!
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