A Painful Experience

Only a cancer patient can know the fatigue and pain of a chemo treatment.

So most people who take up running, never run more than 5 kilometers ever.  They get bored, or think that running is needlessly hard and tiring.

Some poeple train hard to reach distances of up to 10 kilometers.  Its true that running 10 kilometers is twice as hard as running 5.

Still fewer people train harder to reach distance of up to 20 kilometers. And it is also true that running 20 kilometers is twice as hard as running 10.

Marathon runners train their bodies to run 40 kilometers. But running 40 kilometers is not twice as hard as running 20, its a totally different experience.  Somehwere around kilometer 30, your body starts "falling apart" regardless of who you are (Kenyan, or Pakistani).

The body has a capacity to store about 2000 calories of energy in the muscles.  At around kilometer 30, all that energy has been used. This state of body (and mind) is called "hitting the wall" and most people including me dread the feeling it brings.

Your breathing rate doubles, your heart rate jumps, your muscles cramp, your mind clouds out, and you lose concentration. Your body is out of energy, and now it must "burn" itself to generate energy.  If you have not run a marathon, you have not experienced this physical and mental pain.

Running after hitting the wall is the hardest thing I have ever done, and it is the most painful experience I have ever had in my life.

There is something similar but more painful. Its chemo. How do I know? I know because I keep my hair after hitting the wall, while a chemo patient loses it.

I hope you never hit a wall, or handle a chemo session.  Please help those who are experiencing the pain of chemo at:  Dana Farber Cancer Research