Giving it your all (Read 949 times)

Agreed. The 110% idiom bugs me almost as much as the phrase 'cautiously optimistic'. Please be kind to mathmetically inclined people and accept that 100% is the best it gets.

Technically, 100% is not attainable. You can get close...but not really.

Your brain can never really protect you. Your brain has no way to know how clogged your arteries are, if you have a weak spot in an artery, etc. There's two things being discussed, the ability to go further and the ability to go faster. We can almost always continue going further, the question is how much we must slow down to do so. But this will lead to a slower time. Going faster is what is usually associated with "giving xx%", and this is largely dictate by the ability to keep providing high levels of available energy to our muscle cells. There are physiological limits to how long our metabolism will support X effort. There are few times this boils down to a "safety" factor, and this is usually something you can never predict happening like Salazar's near-death in a marathon (you can't tell me Samuelson wasn't equally tough in 1984 yet she was ok) or the tragedy with Ryan Shay in November when we wasn't even running that hard. I also find that the better shape I am in, the further I can push myself. When I'm out of shape, I can give what feels like 100% in a 5K but 30min after the race I feel like I could do it again and the next day I can train fine. Conversely, if I am well-trained and push to a similar effort level, I can go far enough that I am destroyed after the race and it takes a couple days to resume training again. I do not feel this is mental, but rather a biochemical phenomenon where through increased VO2max and anaerobic training I can tolerate much higher levels of negative metabolic byproducts (like lactate buildup) before I hit the wall, thereby affecting me more after the fact.

I knew a guy who gave 103% once, but he was hopped on cough medicine and peyote. Also, he died when his previously undiagnosed brain cloud collapsed. Always get checked for brain clouds before going past 100%. It's dangerous.

It didn't kill me. I came out of the coma only months later. Took me a good three months of easy running to rebuild my base.

Was it exactly three months? Was it ONLY easy running?

I think so. I had my heart rate monitor strapped on, but it was hard to read the numbers through the purple haze.

Dude, you just gave me a wicked flashback of my 800m PR. I have never felt more wobbly than the last 100m of that relay leg.

Same thing here. I basically ended up as the rabbit - three people passed me in that last 100m. Shouldn't have run the first lab in 56 - WAY beyond my 800m ability.

Joe vs. The Volcano = underrated movie.

I was sure nobody would catch that reference. I was positive. But you gave it 101%. Well done.

Same thing here. I basically ended up as the rabbit - three people passed me in that last 100m. Shouldn't have run the first lab in 56 - WAY beyond my 800m ability.

Dude. Going out in 56 is what its all about. I wish I was young enough and dumb enough and tough enough to do that now. We still talk about them: glory days.