The other wall..

I’ve hit the wall before. Not metaphorically — I mean the real, full-body shutdown. Mid-run, back when I was doing marathons, it was a known moment. Legs like stone. Tunnel vision. The grim, glacial maths of how much road was left. You expect it. You learn to fear it slightly, and fuel against it.

But what hit me today wasn’t that wall. This was something different. Stranger. And honestly, a bit unsettling.

We’d just finished our final long training ride. 70 miles — not nothing, but pretty much our regular training distance. I’d eaten well during the ride: gels, a couple of my homemade bars, banana, a classic café stop with cake and tea. I was well hydrated — five litres, a mix of energy and electrolyte drinks. Straight after the ride, I had a recovery shake, another banana, a few biscuits, and some peanut M&Ms. All ticking the boxes. Textbook recovery.

I felt fine. Relaxed. Satisfied. Tired, but in that solid, earned way.
And then — about an hour or so later — my brain just… went weird.

It wasn’t physical exhaustion. My legs were fine. No soreness. But my head was buzzing. I felt light, but not in a good way. Spacey. Almost emotional. Not sad, exactly, but fragile in a way that didn’t feel like me. I couldn’t focus on anything. I didn’t want to talk. I felt sort of distant from myself.

I made toast. Slathered it with peanut butter. Ate crisps by the handful. Drank more tea.

It helped a bit. Slowly, kind of.

So what was that?

I checked in with ChatGPT — my increasingly trusted sounding board for all things LEJOG and beyond — and the diagnosis actually made a lot of sense. This wasn’t bonking. It wasn’t dehydration. It was central fatigue — brain and nervous system exhaustion. Turns out, hours of balancing, fuelling, pacing, navigating, and absorbing the world from the saddle quietly drain your mental battery. Then, once the ride is done and the adrenaline wears off, your body does what it does best: drops its defences and asks for help.

Add in the fact that my brain had likely used up most of its glycogen — and hadn’t quite caught up with the replenishment — and I was running on fumes, just like I used to when running, about the 20 mile mark. Only this time, the legs were fine. It was everything else that wobbled.

So: not the wall. But a wall. A softer one. Quieter. Trickier to spot. It didn’t demand immediate attention. It just crept in and made me feel like a weird version of myself.

The lesson? Post-ride recovery isn’t just about shakes and protein and carbs and salt. It’s about fuelling your head, too. Topping up those invisible stores so that your brain, your emotions, your inner drive don’t crash even if your quads are still good to go.

I’ll be keeping that in mind when we’re deep into LEJOG and the days start to blur. Because I don’t just want to get through the miles. I want to arrive whole.

With toast and crisps close to hand.