Zane_S's Journal, 27 November 2022

Congratulations on the marathon Zane 😊 Happy Holidays to you and your family 

wow - great run! 

Nice work. How long did it take you? I have only run half marathons. 

@golfmarina My time was 4H:36M at an 8:50 pace. Slowed down quite a bit on the backside but still happy with my time. 

@HCB. Thank you. 

@LivinBreezy Thank you. Same to you and your family. 

A lot of that is water loss don’t you think? Body will make that up pretty quickly.  

@Kenna Morton Yes, likely almost all water weight but hopefully there was a little fat loss as well..lol. Unfortunately I also have a bad habit of burning muscle on my long runs. Lets hope that didn’t happen. 

I'm very impressed with your 31 mile marathon. Job well done. 

Joel_Zane_Spicer— long distance running is not conducive to maintaining muscle mass. There is a real science behind this whole subject as well as knowing whether you genetically have slow twitch or fast twitch muscles. Really an interesting subject. This is a problem you can overcome. 

You're welcome and Thanks :-) 

Thanks @SugarPlum_ 

@Kenna Morton I’ve read a lot about it and very familiar with the “interference effect”. For me, it seems to occur worse when I’m really pushing myself on shorter runs up to a half marathon. The longer runs when I’m forced to slow down the pace tends to not be as bad. I visit my local BODPOD and nutritionist regularly to track my muscle loss. Seems to be a problem I can’t avoid as long as I keep doing lots of cardio….oh well. 

You could actually save muscle from runs as long as youre replenishing your glycogen stores. Say a bottle of Gatorade after the 1st 1.5 hrs and then a bottle every 2-3 miles after that or they have runners gel that’s denser in calories to combat the muscle burn. The reason why your body starts burning muscle is cuz it runs out of glycogen and it relies on that as it’s a fast energy production. It utilizes the most fat it could but fat for energy takes longer to produce then what the body demands, so then it catabolizes your muscle into amino acids to burn for fuel which is a faster fuel source than fat 

@Supergainz1 - Thanks, I already do a lot of that although I do get burned out on Gatorade fairly quickly during runs. I prefer gels, gu, and a mixture of solid foods (peanut butter, pickles, fruit, gummies, jerky) to prevent an upset stomach. For my longer runs I aways start carb loading several days out and I carry a minimum of 3-4000 calories with me depending on the distance to prevent hitting the wall. I mix electrolytes with every other water bottle and focus on replacing my salts. Not sure how accurate it is but my watch said I burned over 5000 calories yesterday. The real challenge is finding a good cycle to replace lost calories quick enough to keep fueling your muscles. The last thing most people want to do on a run is eat but it is absolutely essential for ultra running.  

I've run half marathons and stopped to nibble on a snack handed out at the half-way point, but eating=puking while I'm running. Water is necessary but that's just a couple of gulpfulls at a time. 

@JustBananas - Yes, a lot of people have that same problem and can't tolerate consuming food while running. Depending on the weather, I can normally make it through a half marathon without food or water. Anything longer than that becomes a bit trickier. Most people can store about 2000 calories of energy but typically burn around 100 calories per mile. That's why many runners who don't prepare will hit the wall 20 miles into a marathon, their bodies simply don't have enough energy to continue moving. Marathon runners must learn to consume calories even if it's just gels while running or they will not be successful. The other problem is eating just gels will give most people an upset stomach and that's not good on a long run :). Finding the right balance of which foods works for individual runners is key.