Hitting the wall — it’s as devastating as it sounds

I'VE completed 10 Comrades Marathons, and quite a few standard marathons. There’s a moment during the race when you hit the wall. This moment comes at different points for different runners. The first time I encountered it was at around SOkm into the race, and it is devastating. Nothing prepares you for it. Your months of training, dietary discipline, early morning conditioning runs in the cold and dark mean nothing when you hit the wall. You reach a stage of tiredness that feels like a threat to your very existence. All you want to do is give up and take a nap on the side of the road.

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Your joy disappears, and you feel loneliness and self pity in your very marrow. You meet desolation. The antidote is to keep moving. You must resist the urge to stop and rest, and keep going forward, even if it isa mere shuffling of your feet. You must just keep moving, no matter that everyone is passing your snail’s pace. I have never timed how long it takes to emerge on the other side, but you find an energy reserve somewhere deep inside you, and despair is banished.