Runningmonkeys

Have you ever wondered how far you can drive with the low fuel warning light flashing on your dashboard?  Have you pushed the limit to get where you were going before refilling?  In fact have you ever had to push the empty car, just to get where you are going?

There was a time in my life when I was strapped for cash so badly that I made a habit out of running out of fuel on the road.  I would carry a can in the boot and made sure I had some decent shoes with me, because I knew there was a fairly high chance that I would be walking to a servo at some time in the next few days, when I ran out dry.  Did this make things cheaper for me?  No.  Did I end up with more money in my wallet at the end of the trip?  Of course not!  All that happened was that I spent half an hour on my feet in the middle of the journey and I was half an hour late as a result. 

The big message here is that for a car to travel X kilometres (or miles) it takes no less than Y litres (or gallons) of fuel.  Now this varies with how efficiently we drive and all that, but there is a basic limit.  There is an unbreakable law.  Here it is direct from the Tom O’Leary dictionary:

We need fuel to go forward

Now I wouldn’t have wasted that bold type if I didn’t think that this rule it was profoundly important so please stay with me for a while. 

Of course, you are not here to learn about cars and I am not here to write about cars.  I only write about cars on the dodgy little car blog that I knocked up here over the weekend. 

Of course what I am leading to is that we need fuel to power our running.  This is the very same unbreakable law (if you have already forgotten… We need fuel to go forward).  To run X steps forward will take me no less than Y kilojoules (or calories, whichever tastes best).  Some runners carry around with them a module or two of fuel storage.  Some carry it around their middle, some hang it from their back end and there are others that have it evenly spread out all over their bodies.  These people are not exempt from the unbreakable law.  The only difference is that they can, if they need, fall back on (quite literally) their stored fuel if their current fuel supply is used up.

For the rest of the runners out there, our fuel systems are organised in much the same ways as our personal finances.  The term hand-to-mouth is a common way to describe how modern people earn and spend in rapid succession without there being any room for error.  If the hand receives before the mouth, then all is in a scary sort of balance, if the mouth gets it’s teeth in before the hand receives the money, then we go into debt.  Now, again, I am not writing about finance here.  I’ll save that for the tiny little newspaper I have just set up called… Sorry I have already tried that joke today.

So here is running.  We need fuel to go forward.  If we want to run faster over that distance we need more fuel to go faster forward.  If we have no fuel stored up in fat, then we are relying on our current fuel supplies.  I will simplify this by saying that these current fuel supplies are basically made up of what we have and what we take in.  What we have is the left over fuel from previous meals flowing around our bodies including glycogen stores, and what we take in is obviously what we eat and drink in the here and now.  Now for the runner who is living hand to mouth, then the order of things is supremely important.  The difference between topping up a fuel tank then running and running then topping up the fuel tank can mean the difference between a quality, session or race and terrible performance.  We absolutely have to take in some fuel before we expect to run the distance.  How is it possible to do it any other way.

If we are living close to the edge, in a fuel sense there is no logical alternative to eating or drinking fuel to top up your tank before you run.  Get out of bed after 8 hours of not eating and expect to turnout a productive workout and you will be disappointed.  Where do we think the fuel will come from?  Is it possible to run on motivation alone?  If there is not enough fat stored up to spare, and there is not enough glycogen or even raw carbohydrates floating around in your system to finish the run in the way we want, then the only fuel left is muscle.  There is nothing I like less than burning muscle.  The smell of burning hair is bad, but the idea of burning muscle, that you need in order to perform, is even worse.

So tomorrow morning are you going to risk it?  Have you got enough fuel tucked away to get you through a long and hard session before you fall apart?  If not, have you got your phone with you because you could well need a lift home.  If this doesn’t sound like your style, just eat some slow release fuel (maybe just a banana) and have a drink before you head out and you can relax knowing that you won’t have to thumb a lift home, because you won’t be running out of fuel.   

We need fuel to go forward.