Psalm 91:1 NKJV He who dwells in the secret place

I had a similar experience on Tuesday. There should be enough glycogen in the muscles to get you through 6 miles of a tempo at those speeds. I think the problem is that when the blood sugar stays low for long enough (and it can when you are doing high mileage) the brain starts shutting down and throwing curve balls at you - e.g I am running a tempo, everything feels fine, very consistent - 1:25-1:24 quarters. Speed up to 1:23, hold it for a bit, then all of a sudden slow down to 1:24 and it feels hard, the next 1:24 feels harder, and then the same effort gives me 1:29 on the next one! 20 seconds per mile slow down in a quarter! This type of thing has happened more than once.

When you feel this happens is it than a good idea to cut your miles back. I think part of my problem is I really didn't do much of a recovery after Boston and the Teton Marathon. I went right back into training. Right now I want to focus on speed to get faster in marathons and that could be apart of it too. Sasha, thank you for the information your always helpful.

I've tried it both ways - cutting the mileage and keeping it. My conclusion is that you can keep the mileage as long as you make sure to properly carbo-reload your way through it and get enough sleep.

I think that's probably been part of my problem is getting about 6 hours of sleep, and the last couple weeks I've been so busy where I haven't been eating as much during the day, and then carb loading on the dinner meal.

Have you felt a point where you've been able to push through a run to achieve a faster pace before your legs get tired or VO2 hits when your fatigued to start the run?

Kory - what do you mean exactly?

I guess what I mean is sometime in a run you can have dead/fatigued legs, but then all of a sudden they come alive. Now I know this can happen at the beginning of runs where your getting warmed up. But sometimes you can have dead legs in the middle of a run, and all of a sudden they come alive. What would cause such a situation. Maybe the Glycogen giving more energy to the muscle. I've had this happen before. This is without taking anything on a run.

Kory:

I think this is definitely some nervous system issue. It probably responds to something, panics, shuts down the muscles, then you get a break, the panic substance levels drop, and then you are OK again.