I ran my first Marathon in October of 2021 after wanting to run a marathon at some point in 2019 and again in 2020 before things got crazy. I had never ran any officially sanctioned footrace and hadn’t ran more than a 1/2 marathon in training prior to signing up for this race. I realize this is ill advised and shouldn’t be encouraged. This post is not a guide but just a story of my experience before after and during the race. The below were my thoughts upon signing up for the race in June of last year. The first half was written shortly after signing up for the race and the second half was after doing my first run after being not able to walk let alone run properly from a bone break I got snowboarding in February.
June 2 2021
When are you going to start getting serious?
This is something I routinely ask myself if I feel as if I am not actively participating in the whacky foot race that is life. As I have said previously and reiterated that a finish line doesn’t exist to this race, so you might as well be present. Don’t take a back seat to your own life. Today I took a step into the future as I do most days but one that was done with slightly more intention.
~10 hours later in the day
This was just me calling myself out. I feel like I’ve gotten soft. I got my ankle cleared today and told myself that if this happened, I would register for a full distance marathon that takes place in around 18 weeks. My ankle is clear, so I went home and registered for the race. I don’t like running particularly. I got to a point where I could run comfortably around 7 miles at a time and once did a half marathon out of spite on the treadmill for fun. Now I’m slower than ever, weigh more than ever and am arguably in the worst position to carry out such a task in recent memory. I don’t see these as reasons not to do something, excuses? Sure. I don’t even think I wanted to run for 4+ hours at peak physical form. I’m going to grind back to where I was before and do something I haven’t done which is run 26.2 miles just because it is something I have never done. Nothing interesting ever came out of comfort and being soft. I look back at my life and see all the times I wasn’t adequately prepared but still triumphed in adversity. I don’t say any of this for the ego but for the super ego. The will, the drive, the ability to preserve lives in all of us. You just must poke it with a stick every once in a while, to let it know you’re still there. Let yourself know that you aren’t taking a back seat to your own life. Let yourself know that you have the will to let divinity take root in anything you seek to accomplish.
I write this after running 3.2 miles. The first of many runs to come. I write this not as a triumph but just overly wordy but or the thoughts that went through my head after finishing. I wrote this to hold myself accountable because if I want to prove anyone in this world wrong most, it’s myself.
Post Race Analysis
The race itself was pretty grueling as I didn’t train as much as I would have liked but I did finish with a time of 5:30:53 and pretty much completely fell apart in the second half – it was everything I had hoped it to be. Ideally, I would have been happier with a time akin to keeping a pace of 10-11 minutes per mile but I was just happy to have finished this one. I had a lot of walking on the second half because my hip adductors / gracilis muscle was completely taught and could not move in a way that would allow me to do anything more than a brisk walk. Very quickly I learned a new respect for what 26.2 miles is and how it feels – something that understandably I had to feel prior to being able to understand it. The following day, movement was almost impossible but I was able to manage and still went out on a family event that involved a lot of walking up hills believe it or not. After hearing that I completed my race, my brother decided to register for a race of his own – his first marathon. He registered on October 14th after I finished my race on October 10th. Given that I am competitive and I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to register to race the same one in hopes of shaving an hour off my time 5:30:53 to 4:30 and cheer my brother along the way. I signed up for that race on November 2nd and it is around ~6 weeks out as of my writing this. In order to get the time of 4:30 or quicker I will need to basically keep the pace I had on the 1st race but keep it going for the full distance instead of just the introductory 13.1 miles. Luckily for me, my training has been a lot more consistent and concise than it was for the previous race and I feel excited about the prospect of meeting my goal for my first win of 2022.
