No breakfast or food before and during long run. Effect?

Yeah, you hit the wall. You ran out of glycogen. But you can easily train the ability to run that long without breakfast or food during the run. I've run morning runs of up to 22 miles on nothing more than a cup of coffee with a little milk in it, and water during the run.

As you push your LR out in distance, you'll increase the glycogen storage ability. You're exactly right: your 13 miler(s) and accumulated weekly mileage got you to 16 miles, but then the glycogen ran out. If you'd had Gatorade or a gel at or before that point, you'd probably have been fine; same if you'd had half a bagel or a banana beforehand. If you're training for a marathon, you actually want to run some LRs just the way you ran this one, with nothing before or during (except water, of course.).

No, the training you did does NOT burn away muscle. It burns away a little fat. And no, it doesn't have a negative effect--as long as you replenish your carbs once you're done. I like smoothies with yogurt, fruit, honey, ice, a little strawberry jam, orange juice. 4 parts carbs, 1 part protein is the ideal ratio for a post-run drink. Chocolate milk is also good, they say.

Thanks. Are you saying that it is beneficial to push through it and run a couple more miles after your glycogen runs out, or to just call it a day once you feel like you have "hit the wall"?

Another thing: Would these kind of long runs be beneficial for 5k xc or even 1600 and 3200 races? Im still in high school so I won't be running a marathon anytime soon. However, I am interested in running them in the future, which is why I am trying to build up my aerobic base while I am a teenager.

Maybe do that on occasion, but if you want to improve aerobic ability, it's more important to focus on the basics - lots of consistent mileage every day (twice a day if possible).

what are you training for? You're 16 and likely not done growing. I'd worry about fasting runs increasing your risk of injuries like stress fractures as your muscles fatigue and you run out of nutrition.

Unless you're training for a marathon or longer, fasting runs probably aren't in your interest anyway. For marathons and ultras I do agree fasting long runs are key.

You ran out of fitness, not glycogen. Otherwise you wouldn't have to train to run longer, you'd just keep shovelling coal in the top. It doesn't work like that.

Slayer of Sloths wrote:

You ran out of fitness, not glycogen. Otherwise you wouldn't have to train to run longer, you'd just keep shovelling coal in the top. It doesn't work like that.

What does "ran out of fitness" mean? I'm not familiar with that phrase.

I am, however, very familiar with the feeling of extending my long run in a given training cycle, and I've learned what it feels like to run out of glycogen on a given LR when I'm doing that. The surest way of encountering that moment is on exactly the kind of run the OP described: extending your LR by quite a bit more than the 1-2 miles I add on any given week.

OP: If you ran out of glycogen, then that moment presented itself as a period of five minutes or so where you suddenly felt different. Your pace probably slowed, suddenly, by at leat 30 seconds a mile; your breathing rate may have suddenly increased. Interestingly, your heart rate may NOT have suddenly increased--unless you started pushing extra-hard in order to maintain the same pace. My own subjective experience is like a car switching over from gasoline to kerosene: you lose 25% of your power and smoke starts coming out the back.

Sometimes the wall is accompanied by a little lightheadedness as the last remains of liver glycogen vaporize. Usually I just notice that something is suddenly off. Your body, exhausting glycogen, is shifting over to fat. I usually DON'T notice any sudden cramping, or leg pains. I just don't feel like running very much.

I've learned to slow and roll with it. Getting to that "wall" moment in a training run is actually a great thing. It shows you exactly where your glycogen-storage threshold is. Just keep on jogging along. Every mile you do after that--within limits--is a stimulus for future glycogen storage. Read McMillan running on the two kinds of marathon long runs:

One other very important note: hydration. I lose roughly 3 pounds of water every hour I run; a bit more when it's warm, somewhat less when it's 50 degrees or below. If you fail to replenish this water as you go, and especially if the temperature is 70 or more, you will absolutely slow down--and if you're new to the whole long run thing (2 hours or more), you might confuse the effects of dehydration with the effects of glycogen depletion.

One difference is that the degrading of your power plant with dehydration manifests on a different curve. On a warmish day, any run where you're sweating in a significant way, you'll notice effects after 45-60 minutes--much sooner than you'd notice the effects of glycogen depletion. Usually dehydration manifests as a progressive slowing, not as a sudden thing. Then again, sometimes it's the first followed by the second: first slowly, then a surprisingly quick falling off.

I get my water by caching water bottles along my route. On really warm days, I'll do a long run in a park, a 1.5 mile loop, and rehydrate every loop.

Glycogen depletion, by contrast, tends to show up somewhere in the 1:30 to 2:00 range--for me, usually between 1:45 and 2:00, unless I've pushed the barrier back.

It means your fitness won't carry you the extra distance. That's why we build up to longer distances, we don't just eat a bigger breakfast and gulp gels in order to run longer.

Your next post is archaic in its understanding of dehydration. Your feelings of dehydration are mostly in your head.

People talk about hitting the wall on runs in the range of 16-24 miles, as if it is an unavoidable certainty that comes with running those long distances. While I have never run or raced a marathon, I have run quite a few 16-23 milers at a range of easy and near-maximal intensities, and I think that with proper training there is no need to "crash" during these runs, even without food or drink during (I take neither).

From my experience, there are several different "feelings" that might be interpreted as having "hit the wall": most commonly, a muscular failure accompanied by soreness, cramping, or even mild pain; or a "metabolic failure" accompanied by increased heart and respiratory rate as well as increasingly heavy legs. This second "wall" can usually be held off somewhat by slowing down. I imagine these are familiar to most readers.

In my experience both these aforementioned "walls" can be avoided by training properly (which almost certainly means different things for different peple, but in my experience meant ~4 months of doubles 5x weekly, an increase in weekly mileage from 45-60 historically to roughly 90-100mpw, VERY easy running 2-3x weekly for recovery, and - by circumstance, not intention - significantly decreased caloric intake before runs and in general).

When properly trained, I actually felt symptoms of the "metabolic shift" other posters allude to, but this was actually a feeling of lightness and a shift to faster paces even at the end of a 23 miler, almost as if I had "unlocked" some new and more efficient energy source. It sounds ridiculous, even to me after having experienced it and read relevant training/physiology, but it was the case week after week for me. My high-end speed capability was seemingly diminished (running 65 second/400m pace felt harder at mile 20 than mile 10, and running any faster was near impossible - not surprising!) but running near tempo or threshold pace (~5:20 or so) felt so much easier, almost effortless, while this pace would be difficult if not impossible at the beginning of the run. I found this to be amazing, that I could practically "PR" in tempo runs after having already run 18 miles. By which I mean running at around 5:15/mile for several miles at a lower perceived effort, and probably HR if I had worn a monitor, than if I had started at that pace when fresh. I am curious whether others have had this experience.

Slayer of Sloths wrote:

It means your fitness won't carry you the extra distance. That's why we build up to longer distances, we don't just eat a bigger breakfast and gulp gels in order to run longer.

You do BOTH you idiot. You have either never run a marathon or bonked all your attempts.

avienr wrote:

Slayer of Sloths wrote:

It means your fitness won't carry you the extra distance. That's why we build up to longer distances, we don't just eat a bigger breakfast and gulp gels in order to run longer.

You do BOTH you idiot. You have either never run a marathon or bonked all your attempts.

Do you seriously think it's necessary to eat breakfast and drink/eat during a 20 miler in order to avoid "bonking"? Because that's absolutely not true.

stochastic_track wrote:

avienr wrote:

You do BOTH you idiot. You have either never run a marathon or bonked all your attempts.

Do you seriously think it's necessary to eat breakfast and drink/eat during a 20 miler in order to avoid "bonking"? Because that's absolutely not true.

Not if your glycogen stores are topped off to begin with, which they probably aren't unless you ate well yesterday and are rested.

For 26 miles you have to do one or the other, preferably both.

stochastic_track wrote:

]

Do you seriously think it's necessary to eat breakfast and drink/eat during a 20 miler in order to avoid "bonking"? Because that's absolutely not true.

By the way, either of those things would have avoided bonking in the OP's case, so sometimes, yes.

avienr wrote:

stochastic_track wrote:

Do you seriously think it's necessary to eat breakfast and drink/eat during a 20 miler in order to avoid "bonking"? Because that's absolutely not true.

Not if your glycogen stores are topped off to begin with, which they probably aren't unless you ate well yesterday and are rested.

For 26 miles you have to do one or the other, preferably both.

Consider this scenario. ~90 miles last week, 90 miles week before, 70 miles so far last 6 days. 12 miles yesterday from ~7 min down to ~6 min/mile with some hill sprints and surges. Roughly 500 calorie light lunch, no breakfast, run 5 hours after lunch. Run: reach 20 miles in roughly 2:05, feel great, keep going for another 5k at around 5:25 avg. No food or drink during run, and no bonk.

I'm NOT a fast runner but I've done that many times and I'm 1000% sure that others here have done something similar while running faster and going longer, without gels and other garbage, and without bonking.

23 isn't 26. But at a training pace and not race pace, it's ridiculous to insist that "bonking" is inevitable over that distance without taking food or gels or tapering.

stochastic_track wrote:

23 isn't 26. But at a training pace and not race pace, it's ridiculous to insist that "bonking" is inevitable over that distance without taking food or gels or tapering.

I didn't insist that.

avienr wrote:

Slayer of Sloths wrote:

It means your fitness won't carry you the extra distance. That's why we build up to longer distances, we don't just eat a bigger breakfast and gulp gels in order to run longer.

You do BOTH you idiot. You have either never run a marathon or bonked all your attempts.

No. You must be a Gallowalker. The kid is not in shape for 18 miles.

Slayer of Sloths wrote:

Your next post is archaic in its understanding of dehydration. Your feelings of dehydration are mostly in your head.

If you'd like to point me towards current or recent research on the topic that substantiates your claim, please do. I'm always willing to learn something new.

My own claims are based on 10 years' worth of training and journal keeping in all four Mississippi seasons, wearing a GPS, most of it with a heart rate monitor. To test my insights, I've weighed myself before and after long runs to assess water loss, taking water consumed (or not consumed) during the run into account. I'm not just making shit up.

I listen closely to what my body is telling me. What it tells me is that when I run 14 miles on a warm, humid day and drink one 16 ounce bottle of water at 5 miles and a second bottle at 7 miles, I'm sweating more at 9, 10, 12 miles, and running more comfortably, even though the sweat isn't evaporating and cooling me. When I skip (or forget to stash) that second bottle of water, I run into trouble by 12 miles, I'm forced to slow my pace, sometimes quite a lot, and I'm not sweating as much when I do. It's about water loss--dehydration--and not overheating. Heat-provoked dehydration is the primary degrador.

You can just google it and find it quickly. You've already made up your mind but don't tell other people that you are correct.

Slayer of Sloths wrote:

You ran out of fitness, not glycogen. Otherwise you wouldn't have to train to run longer, you'd just keep shovelling coal in the top. It doesn't work like that.

This.

You tried to run almost 50% further than your previous longest run. What did you think was going to happen. As far as not eating before or during a long run if you do it early morning and ate normally the night before you should be fine. No reason not to have any water before though.