Deion Branch

Well I was back on the track earlier today as the marathon training got me up to the 13 mile mark. Now 13 miles is a break-point for many people because first of all it’s about 2 hours of running which obviously needs some major endurance but it’s also the first time when your body wants to give up. I’m not talking about the way the body wants to give up after running 3 miles but more exhaustion than that. This is the point where the body has run out of sugar and you have to start burning fat but if your heart rate is too high (85% of max for example) you are not burning any fat and thus after two hours you are out of fuel.


This was me this morning… not only was it a half-marathon with no fans cheering you on but it was a half-marathon at 6AM with a downpour and unrelenting humidity. For the first 9 miles, I ran pretty well but in hindsight a much faster pace than I should have which means I was burning ONLY sugar.. The sad/funny thing about this is that after your sugars are done, there is nowhere to get more energy from. The fat is sitting there but you need some sugar to start burning fat. It would be like going to your fireplace and seeing a bunch of wood sitting there but no match to turn it on.

So the last 4 miles were really painful and with the rain coming down I’m sure I was getting weighed down by an extra 5 pounds as my clothes, shoes, socks and hat were all soaked. This is when I thought to myself.. it can’t get worse than this.

Of course I was wrong, see I had started the run by taping my nipples so that I wouldn’t have any bloody nips, I had rubbed lotion on my thighs so I wouldn’t have nasty thigh-chafing and even had rubbed it into my feet so that I wouldn’t have the dry cracking blisters later on.. This is where not being with it 100% starts to affect you, see I’m running in a park I run at least twice per week and many times four or five times, on the same track, around the same bends, over the same obstacles I always do. Well at mile 12 of my run when I was exhausted and somewhat delirious I darted around a tree, jumped over a puddle which seemed to be leaking from a porta-potty, put my head down as I was about to climb a little hill

What I didn’t notice was a branch about eye-level which I used for a full on clothes-line. There I went, exhausted, tired and wet and all of a sudden I get smacked right in the face by a big wet hard branch. I stumble backwards and as I do, I step right into a big wet puddle right by the porta-johns. I regroup but I know the puddle I just stepped in is probably half piss and poop,.

I just kinda put my red-marked head down and ran the last two miles with a shoe full of homeless guy’s piss squashing the whole way back.