Bonking, or "hitting the wall," happens in endurance sports when your muscles run out of stored carbohydrates (glycogen) for fuel, causing sudden, extreme fatigue and performance collapse because the body can't produce energy fast enough. It's caused by insufficient fueling before or during prolonged exercise, leading to low blood sugar and brain fog, forcing your body to switch to slower fat-burning, as your easily accessible sugar reserves deplete.
Bonking occurs when the muscles become functionally depleted of glycogen, the carbohydrate energy stores by which the body fuels itself. Even in the worst bonk, the muscles are not completely empty of glycogen, with somewhere between 10% and 30% of the original supply remaining.
In endurance sports such as road cycling and long-distance running, hitting the wall or the bonk is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.
How to avoid bonking
Bonking is running out of blood sugar, put very basically. It happens if your exercise intensity outpaces your bodies ability to make energy for you out of it's energy sources (starting with sugars in the digestive tract as the most available / easiest to use and probably ending with body fat as the hardest to use).
The 75% rule in cycling training means that 75% of your total riding time should be spent at an easy, aerobic pace (below 75% of your maximum heart rate or FTP), with only 25% dedicated to high-intensity efforts (Zones 4-5), to build endurance without overtraining. This approach, often called polarized training, emphasizes building a strong aerobic base through Zone 1/2 riding, preventing burnout, and ensuring high-quality, effective hard sessions, leading to better power and endurance gains.
Mental Health Awareness: Many runners—especially Gen Z—cite running as a way to cope with anxiety and stress. It's not just about fitness, but feeling better, thinking clearer, and taking control of your day.
The 80/20 rule is simple. It states that you should spend 80% of your training time running at an easy, conversational pace, and the other 20% at a moderate to hard intensity.
Muscle growth varies from person to person, largely due to genetics, eating habits, hormone levels and even specific training techniques. Unfortunately, you can't change all these factors by yourself.
But one plan that's been popularized on TikTok may have some staying power. That plan is called the 30-30-30 rule. It's a simple but catchy idea that encourages you to eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up and then get 30 minutes of low-intensity exercise.
It can take several hours for the body to fully replenish glycogen stores, especially if you fail to consume enough carbohydrates during the recovery period. In extreme situations, where the bonk has led to dehydration or other complications, recovery may take even longer, possibly extending to several days.
The hardest part of running a marathon isn't running the marathon. It isn't getting up on race day and running 26.2 miles. The hardest part of running a marathon is training for a marathon.
Bonking, also called “hitting the wall,” is when your body runs out of glycogen (energy). Depleted energy stores cause an energy crash and extreme fatigue, mental fog, and the inability to continue at a normal pace.
The 70/30 rule in fitness suggests that 70% of your physical results (especially weight loss and body composition) come from nutrition and diet, while only 30% comes from exercise (gym workouts), emphasizing that what you eat is far more crucial for changing your physique than just working out, though both are important for overall health and muscle building. It highlights that while the gym breaks down muscles (the 30% effort), the kitchen (the 70%) provides the essential fuel, protein, and rest for them to repair and grow stronger.
Two of the best ways to measure your rate of force development, and measure your athleticism in general, are the vertical and the broad jump. These two movements are indicators of not only how much force you can produce, but also, how fast you can do it.
Cardio is mainly oxygen delivery to the muscles. One thing the body does to improve cardio is to produce more blood (plasma) so that more oxygen can be carried. If you stop exercising, there is no need to produce all this extra stuff, so you lose your cardio.
Strong Beats Skinny for Longer Life. People are constantly being told to watch their weight, but perhaps the advice should be, “Watch your muscle mass.” Research published in The American Journal of Medicine suggests that muscle mass index serves as a better predictor of long life than weight.
The hardest muscles to grow for most people are the calves, due to their high percentage of endurance-focused Type I muscle fibers and constant use in daily activities, making them resistant to growth. Other notoriously stubborn areas include the forearms, upper chest, and rear deltoids, often because they're frequently used or neglected in workouts, requiring specific, high-intensity, and varied training to stimulate growth.
Normal ranges for muscle mass are: Ages 20-39: 75-89 percent for men, 63-75.5 percent for women.
Yes, it's true that a very small percentage of people run a marathon, with estimates suggesting less than 1% of the world's population has ever completed one, and some sources place the annual participation even lower, around 0.01% to 0.1% of the global population. While millions finish marathons yearly, the total number of individuals who have ever completed the 26.2-mile (42.195 km) distance is a small fraction of the total world population.
Oprah's marathon time was 4:29.
Maybe it's simply because because she was the first celebrity to shine a light on the marathon and prior to her the only standard runners had was that of a Boston Qualifying time.
The 5-4-3-2-1 running workout is a fartlek (speed play) interval session, involving running segments of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 minute at progressively faster (or goal) paces, with recovery jogs in between, typically 60 seconds, to build speed and endurance for races like the 5K or half marathon. It includes a warm-up and cool-down, with the key being to maintain intensity during the fast parts and use the shorter intervals as a mental boost as fatigue sets in, making the end feel manageable.
Whilst boomers and millennials may use the 😂 emoji, this has long since been deemed 'uncool' (or 'cheugy') by Gen Z. Instead, this has been replaced by the skull (💀) or the crying emoji (😭), dramatising the idea of 'dying with laughter'.
Have you heard coaches (or parents) say, "Running is 90 percent mental." That's a silly idea. If that were true, there would be tens of thousands of aspiring high school athletes lying on their backs in bed visualizing their way to PRs (though there is a ton of value in visualization, which I'll get to in a moment).
RUNNER'S HIGH This refers to a euphoric feeling or sense of well-being you experience during or after prolonged aerobic exercise. People believe it's caused by the release of endorphins, which are natural chemicals in the brain that produce feelings of happiness and reduce pain perception.