Running a marathon had been on my list of things to do.
Get groceries, pick up dry cleaning, run 26.2 miles. The usual things to cross off, right?
Well last year I ran the Space Coast Marathon and here's a few takeaways I had.
But first, here's a quick recap of how it went.
I trained for about 3 months leading up to it, running 3-4 times a week usually 3-6 miles at a time. I think I put in about 3 runs of 10-12 miles in that time, so I was what you'd call "undertrained". But being confident (or stupid depending on how you look at it) I was excited to take on the challenge.
At the ass crack of dawn on December 1st I lined up with a few thousand other psychopaths, uhh I mean runners, to start our adventure. It was a chilly morning and I had my airpods fully charged with hopes that podcasts could drown out the sounds of my legs screaming. The first 10 miles felt surprisingly good, I was cruising along at the roughly a 10 minute mile and the energy from the crowd helped carry me along. At mile 13 the full marathon crew split from the half marathoners, and ohh how we envied them...
The next few miles were uneventful, and it was about mile 16 where I started to fatigue. This was the first time I had to walk (other than the water stops from earlier) so I switched to a run/walk method of 2 minutes of running and 30 seconds of walking. The strange thing was my muscles felt great, it was the bottom of my feet + knees that were hurting. The next 8 miles went on like that and I was sweatin like a pig at a barbecue. Miles 24-26.2 weren't so bad since I knew the end was near.
One of the things I didn't expect was that the running didn't really get harder as I went on. Miles 1-16 were fine, and 16-26 hurt, but the pain at mile 18 was the same as mile 22. I thought there would have been more fatigue and suffering as I progressed. Afterwards I got some pizza and a medal and more importantly I was finally able to sit down.
Here's some takeaways from that experience...
- Start a bucket list, but more importantly start crossing things off of it. This has been on mine for awhile, and unless you take action those bucket list dreams will never happen.
- Just sign up and do it. You could be thinking about doing a race, entering a powerlifting meet, taking classes to get a degree, or anything else. Right now just sign up and give yourself a target deadline. You'll take that goal much more seriously once you have a concrete date to work towards.
- Switch up your workouts. The general joke in the lifting community is "haha, cardio kills gains". But doing the same workouts for years on end kills the excitement. Try a new routine or style of workouts to switch things up. As long as you're doing SOMETHING to stay healthy, I'd say that's all that really matters.
- Doing it with others is better than doing it alone, and yes I'm still talking about running... Get friends involved in whatever your endeavors may be to make them more bearable.
- It won't be as bad you're picturing it in your head. This applies to anything. We get consumed with the negative thoughts in our head running through all of the bad scenarios. Whatever it is you've been putting off, just do it so you can breathe a sign of relief.
Until next time friends,
Nick