This weekend is redemption part#1 as I take on my first ever DNF , the Light Horse Ultra. ( http://lighthorseultra.com.au/race-information/ ) Last year I pulled out after 3 hours, a quarter of the way through the 12 hour event. I can think of many reasons why I did what I did but none make the DNF any easier to swallow, especially as it was my first.  So what went wrong, basically I talked myself out of the event and gave myself too many reasons to stop rather than concentrating on a reason to continue.  Running is a large part mental and the mind will always try and persuade you to stop, thus limiting the exposure to the pain of competitive running, be it a 400m lap or a multi-day ultra.   Tim Noakes called this the Central Governor. (  Note: Please make sure you have a copy of  ‘ the Lore of Running’  by Tim Noakes, it is the running equivalent of the Bible and every runner MUST have a copy. ) 

The text below is from Wikipedia so it must be true ?

The central governor is a proposed process in the brain that regulates exercise in regard to a neurally calculated safe exertion by the body. In particular, physical activity is controlled so that its intensity cannot threaten the body’s homeostasis by causing anoxic damage to the heart muscle. The central governor limits exercise by reducing the neural recruitment of muscle fibers. This reduced recruitment causes the sensation of fatigue. The existence of a central governor was suggested to explain fatigue after prolonged strenuous exercise in long-distance running and other endurance sports, but its ideas could also apply to other causes of exertion-induced fatigue.

The existence of a central governor was proposed by Tim Noakes in 1997, but a similar idea was suggested in 1924 by Archibald Hill.

In contrast to this idea is the one that fatigue is due to peripheral ‘limitation’ or ‘catastrophe’. In this view, regulation by fatigue occurs as a consequence of a failure of homeostasis directly in muscles.

The 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner Archibald Hill proposed in 1924 that the heart was protected from anoxia in strenuous exercise by the existence of a governor.

The heart is able to regulate its output, to some extent, in accordance with the degree of saturation of the arterial blood … we suggest that, in the body (either in the heart muscle itself or in the nervous system), there is some mechanism which causes a slowing of the circulation as soon as a serious degree of unsaturation occurs, and vice versa. This mechanism would tend, to some degree, to act as a ‘governor’, maintaining a reasonably high degree of saturation of the blood: the breathing of a gas mixture rich in oxygen would produce a greater degree of saturation of the blood and so allow the output to increase until the ‘governor’ stopped it again. We realise the danger of a hypothesis partly suggested by teleological reasoning: in this case, however, we can see no other explanation of our experimental results 

This hypothesis was disregarded and further research upon exercise fatigue was modeled in terms of it being due to a mechanical failure of the exercising muscles (“peripheral muscle fatigue”). This failure was caused either by an inadequate oxygen supply to the exercising muscles, lactic acid buildup, or total energy depletion in the exhausted muscles.

Tim Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, in 1997 has renewed Hill’s argument on the basis of modern research.

In his approach, the power output by muscles during exercise is continuously adjusted in regard to calculations made by the brain in regard to a safe level of exertion. These neural calculations factor in earlier experience with strenuous exercise, the planning duration of the exercise, and the present metabolic state of the body. These brain models ensure that body homeostasis is protected, and an emergency reserve margin is maintained. This neural control adjusts the number of activated skeletal muscle motor units, a control which is subjectively experienced as fatigue. This process, though occurring in the brain, is outside conscious control.

The rising perception of discomfort produced by exhausting exercise progressively reduces the conscious desire to over-ride this control mechanism, which, if it were to be reduced, would lead to the recruitment of more motor units. Thus the presence of conscious over-ride would be undesirable because it would increase or maintain the exercise intensity, thereby threatening homoeostasis … as exercise performance is centrally regulated by the CNS, then fatigue should no longer be considered a physical event but rather a sensation or emotion, separate from an overt physical manifestation—for example, the reduction in force output by the active muscles. Rather we now suggest that the physical manifestation of any increasing perception of fatigue may simply be an alteration in the subconsciously regulated pace at which the exercise is performed. Hence the novel suggestion is that the conventional understanding of fatigue is flawed because it makes no distinction between the sensation itself and the physical expression of that sensation which, we suggest, is the alteration in the subconsciously regulated pacing strategy consequent on changing motor unit recruitment/derecruitment by the CNS.

The Light Horse is free to current or former Armed Forces Personnel , to quote the organiser Shaun Kaesler

I’ve participated in some pretty special events. Some short, some over a week. One thing I can promise you, this September 12th & 13th, the Lighthorse Ultra will be the most touching, emotional, respectful and memorable weekend that will pass all those events before. So many people coming together to mark our respect. This is our way to honour. Our way to remember. Our way to never forget.

The event also raised funds for Run for Resilience , a charity created by my good friend Wayne McMurtrie ( https://www.run4resilience.org/donate ) What more of an excuse do you need to run this event ?

For me,  last year at the Light Horse Ultra , at 3am in the morning my central governor offered me the chance to get into my car and drive home to a good night’s sleep. It was an offer too good to refuse !  I feel as you get older you get mentally stronger, which explains the take up of Ultra running for us older runners. There is a downside to this of course with the added time on your feet giving the Central Governor more time to get to work and try and persuade you to stop.  In my defense this was the first time I had attempted a time rather than distance race and also such a long period of time. I wasn’t mentally prepared for the 12 hours and never got my head around the whole ‘time on feet, just keep moving forward’ approach.

After Birdy’s ultra this year I was able to finally run a 24 hour race and,  more importantly , run through the night, where the race is won or lost. Running through the night is so harder than running on a beautiful day bathed in sunshine, funny that. I remember at Birdy’s as soon as the sun came up I was invigorated and all with the world was now right. All my fatigue virtually disappeared and my last laps were the quickest. What happened , I reckon, was I could see the end of the race (I have set myself a 24 hour finish) , thus the Central Governor started to turn off fatigue and let me enjoy my last few laps. If I hadn’t given myself a time limit and ran too exhaustion I feel my last few laps would have been a different story. I’ll hopefully find out next year at Birdys’, this time it will be run to DNF.

So 12 hours of fun this weekend, not really , I’m not one to shy away from a challenge and always enter the longest option so this weekend we’re going 24 hours. What could go wrong ? On the plus side it’s a 6pm start so I get the night over first and then can enjoy the second half. (Is that even a thing?) Last year it was midnight start so I was tired from the start , which made the 3pm DNF easy to embrace. A 6pm start is easier to digest, I hope ? If nothing else mentally I’m stronger with my Birdy’s experience and also the memory of last years DNF.  I shall call on my experience from last year to get me through this one and also this post and the one next week talking up my glorious run ! I don’t want another DNF post, you,  as my readers,  would expect more !

If you bored this weekend you can probably get updates on the Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/1030338320430987/ ) , feel free to sit through the whole 24 hours with me ? Now that would be an Ultra !

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