Resisting fatigue deep into a race: The importance of durability

Durability is the ability to hold your effort, movement quality and decision-making deep into a race, even when fatigue starts to build.

Backyard ultras are a great example of runners testing their own durability. Here I am deep into the night having pushed my durability as far as I could. It ain't pretty - but endurance running often isn't!

Being durable is when you can hold the same pace using the same level of effort for a long period of time. If you imagine a race getting underway and you are comfortably holding a 6 min/km pace with controlled breathing and good running form, it can feel relatively easy early on. But as the race progresses, mental and physical fatigue build, maintaining that same pace becomes much harder.

Not having good durability is the reason that many runners find that the back end of their race is a struggle street. 

I’ve certainly been there. During my first few ultra's I remember getting to that final third of the race and watching people in awe; overtaking me AND still looking strong. At the time I just thought that they were better runners than me, and assumed that perhaps I would always struggle in this way. I didn't understand at the time that my own durability was still building. I simply hadn’t trained consistently enough for long enough to build it yet.

When looking at how to build durability it's important to understand that it's a combination of aerobic, muscular, and mental resilience development, fueling and hydration strategies, and experience. It is built through repeatedly teaching the body and brain to handle fatigue over long periods of sustained effort over time.

The things that help build durability:

Consistent training over long periods of time

Regular running 4-5 times a week done for many weeks/months/years will have huge impacts on all areas of durability (if done at the right load - see below point). No single run is the be all and end all of your training - and that includes the long run. One long run a week will not build durability. Regular running, consistently, over a long period of time will.

Consistently showing up day after day, week after week is key to building durability.

This is because every time we place physical stress on our body it stimulates it to make adaptations that over time, make us more efficient and increase the load that our body can tolerate. When we train frequently we give our body the stimuli and opportunity to make these adaptations.

Consistency is HARD though and it takes a lot to put on your shoes and head out the door regardless of the weather, a messy house, a busy schedule, or the fact that the dog just threw up on the rug. The fact remains, however, that every time you push through those boundaries you are adding a little to the piggy bank of durability, which compounds over time, and rest assured, your body will pay you back on race day.

Training at the right intensity and volume

This is about having just the right mix of easy runs, hard runs and long runs for your body to get enough stress to adapt but not too much that you break.  Not enough stress and you don’t progress and too much leads to injury or a constant state of exhaustion. 

The 80/20 rule can be applied here, although keep in mind, it’s a very generalised rule and every one is different in how much load they can tolerate. The 80/20 rule states that approximately 80% of your runs should be easy and 20% should be hard and have some form of intensity in them. Intensity can simply mean increased effort, hills, tempo work or sustained climbing.

Getting this balance right is often where runners either thrive or come unstuck. Too little stress and there’s no progression. Too much and the body never gets the opportunity to properly recover and adapt.

Keep in mind that changes in training should be done slowly and that applies to adding intensity too. If you have little to no intensity then start small and build it slowly within your easier efforts. If it's easy volume you are missing then cut back on the intensity and gradually work to increase the overall easy runs. 

Long runs that develop fatigue resistance

Long runs are the anchor point of most training plans. They are fantastic tools because they not only build your physical endurance but they work on your mental endurance too. It’s a great way to work on training the gut to process food whilst on the move and also to simulate race conditions and practice your fuelling and hydration strategies too.

They train both the body and the mind and help prepare you for situations you might find yourself up against on race day so that when things do go sideways, you feel prepared.

Good nutrition and fuelling practice/systems

One of the leading reasons for people to DNF on races is due to gut issues. 

Things such as nausea, stomach cramping, bloating and diarrhoea can be absolutely miserable to deal with on race day. Of course, as soon as these problems start they make you not want to consume food, so fueling and hydration gets worse and that further exacerbates the problem. 

Consuming carbohydrates whilst you run provides a steady supply of glucose to help keep the “energy tank” topped up and slow the depletion of the body’s stored glycogen in the muscles and liver.

If blood glucose levels drop and then glycogen stores become too depleted, things can start to feel pretty awful for a runner. Pace drops, effort level rises and that heavy, yukky feeling many runners know as “hitting the wall” can set in.

At this point, the body is forced to rely more heavily on fat as a fuel source. While fat is an excellent fuel for endurance, it takes longer to convert into usable energy compared to carbohydrate. This means your body cannot produce energy as quickly, so speed, power output and the ability to maintain intensity all begin to decline.

Having your fuel and hydration dialed in on race day with some contingency plans available in case anything goes wrong, gives you much more chance of being able to maintain your effort long into endurance events.

It’s also really important to fuel properly on training runs, specifically anything over an hour as this will aid in recovery. Recovering well helps maintain consistency and overall training volume which further helps build durability. 

Strength training to improve muscular endurance

I cannot stress how important this piece of the puzzle is. Strength training makes us more efficient runners. It creates stronger muscles that can work for longer without getting tired and this reduces how much energy it takes moving forward meaning we can move forward more efficiently.

Lifting heavy, relative to your strength, is the best way to stimulate your body to make the adaptations necessary for endurance running.

It has an impact on all connective tissue structures, muscles, tendons, ligaments and even bone density is improved. It will also make tendons stiffer and springier which means you can generate more power from each step. 

All of this also goes a long way to reduce your risk of injury. This means you can tolerate more load during training and then ultimately keeps you performing at consistent speeds for longer and on race day.  

Recovery, sleep and stress management

Training puts stress on our bodies which is necessary to stimulate the body to make physiological adaptations to allow us to go further, faster. But the adaptations don’t happen whilst we exercise. We apply the stress, then we rest and this allows our body to repair itself, creating stronger systems. Without rest our body is constantly in stress mode and your body will not have the time and space it needs to repair and get stronger. Sleep is essential.

Unfortunately, unless you are a professional athlete who is literally expected and paid to rest as much as they are to train, we “normal folks” have to somehow fit training, work, parenting, plus general adulting into our day. 

It’s not an easy balance to find but prioritising sleep where possible and being realistic about the amount of load your body can carry whilst doing everything else required of you at any one time is key in your success. 

When time is poor, sleep is not something you should sacrifice in order to train. Rather, train smarter so that you get maximum bang for your buck without a tonne of training hours preventing you from getting the rest you need. 

Learning to stay calm and make good decisions under fatigue

This is made possible when all of the above points are executed. If you can train consistently, become competent at your fueling and hydration plan, keep your load at just the right amount, so that you can train smart and recover well, then you are well on your way to increasing your durability. 

When you get all of these points balanced you will find on race day that even as time progresses past the distances that you would usually execute in training, your mind can stay clear and know what to do because your body is still moving efficiently, you are still producing enough energy, your muscles still have enough power and you have had enough practice in many different conditions that you won’t be thrown off your mental game on race day. 

Conclusion 

The key to all of this is time and overall durability will be something that improves year on year. 

Building durability is not something that can be hacked, there is no singular magic pill, supplement or workout that equals bullet proof durability. It’s built gradually through months and years of consistent training and requires patience. Every race teaches you something. Every long run gives feedback. Every mistake becomes useful information for the future if you’re willing to learn from it. 

If you've recently come to endurance running and have found it hard to maintain a consistent effort level all the way through your longer efforts, don’t beat yourself up and allow negative thinking such as “I’m just not good enough”. Allow yourself to become empowered and know that you can always make changes and strive to be a little better each time you stand on a start line.  

Be patient with your body; consistency over time (as in many months and year on year) are probably the most under valued tool to becoming competent at endurance running. Don't give up!