The Wall

Recently I had a client who had been a runner - a 400m runner.

He decided to do marathons which completely confounded us all.

The training changed, his mindset changed and he adapted really well

to the different type of training and the endurance level he was

having to switch to.

The distances increased gradually and he cycled his training and

included sprint phases on a cyclic basis until he was ready for his

first marathon.

We had had a few bumps along the way with self belief issues but we

got all that sorted out working on the past problems he had encountered and a basic feeling of not being good enough which he found was a feature in his life generally which included career, family etc.

One thing he had never considered was THE WALL

He had never considered it because he had never had it. In all his training he had never encountered the “wall” and the only description which ever came close was that of a “feeling of tiredness” which he just ran through. He wasn’t talking with other distance runners and was only dealing with his coach so the phrase “the wall” had never come up.

The night before the marathon he phoned me and was in a very agitated state.

"What about the wall??" he said. Ah, this meant he has been talking to someone and they have told him about it, probably trying to assess how much competition he was going to be.

"What wall?" I asked

"The wall they say I will hit at about 20k"

"Do you want to borrow someone’s wall? Whose wall would you like to

have?? Why would you build a wall when you never had one?"

"Oh, I see. So - if I never had one before and I have done the

distance, why would I have one now. That’s a point" he said.

I finished off "so, you see if you never knew what Christmas was,

never seen it, never heard of it, then you wouldn’t expect it".

The next I had from him was post race. He was ecstatic and announced he had completed his first marathon in 3 hours 21 minutes and “had a feeling of tiredness” which he ran through and definitely no wall!

If you believe there will be a barrier then you will have one.

Some are there for sure and we have to work around them but if we

haven’t experienced it then why create it?