In 2009, 124 athletes from my BC Endurance marathon training finished the Honolulu Marathon. Of that number, 48% were slowing or crashing in the final seg-ment—from 30K to 42K. It was a hot year, but that wasn’t why they slowed or crashed.
“Slowing” and “crashing” are ways of describing an athlete’s average pace on the final race segment. Since the chip-timed Honolulu Marathon puts its results online, it’s easy to calculate an athlete’s average pace for each segment. And, while our program figure of 48% slowing or crashing was lower than the 62.3% figure for all sub-10-hour finishers that year, it was unacceptable to me.
“Hitting the Wall”—as it is colloquially known—is a perennial marathon racing problem. Here, I’m talking about a crashing slowdown caused by failing energy and extreme fatigue, as opposed to anomalies such as spending lots of time after 30K in porta-potties. Hitting the wall is not fun, which is why, having had that experience, many athletes are extremely reluctant to do the race again. Those athletes also tend to drop out of my training program, which makes crashing a problem from my perspective. Thus, as a businessman, I was interested in solving the crashing problem.
I started training marathoners in 1979. In the early years I had small groups, but by the mid-2000s I regularly had more than a hundred paying customers. Thus, ample numbers enabled me to study the crashing problem scientifically, instead of individually or anecdotally. In the following series of articles, I will share the results of studies I’ve done on how recreational athletes pace the Honolulu Marathon. The goal of these studies has always been to lower the percentage of athletes who hit the wall in the final 7.6 miles. And to share my findings with the running community.
“My studies soon revealed that when it came to hitting the wall, the way athletes paced the race was the crucial factor.”
In studying the problem, the most difficult initial task was to define it. What exactly does it mean to crash in the marathon? In the mid-2000s I settled on an operational definition of crashing as being ten percent or more of one’s average pace on the final segment compared with one’s average pace for the whole race. So, if an athlete does the final segment at 10 minutes per mile and the whole race at 8.5 minutes per mile, he/she was crashing at a rate of 15% on the final segment (8.5/10) -1 = 15%).
Having defined crashing in measurable terms, how could we explain the phenomenon? What is its primary cause? I asked everyone I knew in the running community, locally and nationally, runners and coaches. They gave me a ton of conventional wisdom, starting with the proverbial last long run, usually 20 miles. If an athlete missed that workout, said the experts, they were doomed to crash.
My studies soon revealed, however, that when it came to hitting the wall, the way athletes paced the race was the crucial factor. Nonetheless, I was forced to address conventional explanations such as training mileage, prior marathon experience, or basic marathon ability. As you will see, those factors have no effect on crashing, as diverse athletes crash with approximately the same frequency, convention notwithstanding.