My marathon - an idiot's guide to how not to run 42km

Hold your hand out from around belly button. The distance from your hand down to the ground is, give or take, a metre.

Now picture 42,194 more metres stacked up on top of that.

Cover that distance and you've done a marathon.

It's one twentieth the distance from Melbourne to Sydney, three times the city to surf, 138462 feet. It's a long bloody way.

I'd never run anything like it before.

I had run a half. Did okay too - came in just on two hours. Therefore I told myself in the lead up to the full that this was good preperation. Twenty one kilometres is a big run, ergo if I can do that I could do the bigger run of forty two kilometres.

Well I now know I could but trust me a half is not proper preparation for a full.

Because it is the sheer grinding immensity of the full distance that only really strikes you as you get into the second half of it.

Let me illustrate by outlining the mental games I played. The first was breaking the course into chunks. For example at the two km (excuse the shorthand or I'll get sick of typing kilometre all the time) I told myself I only had 21/22nds to go. At the 5km mark I'd one almost an eighth of the whole thing and then I hit my two favourite markers the 6 and the 7.

See I'd been looking forward to these because I'd worked out earlier (at around the 4km if you're wondering) that at the 6km mark I would have done fully 1/7th of the total but at the 7km mark I would have done 1/6th the total. A significant advance in just 1000 metres.

But all this playing with numbers goes out the window when you hit half way. From here on in I stopped congratulating myself with each km and working out kooky little ways to make the next km go by faster.

That all seemed a little pointless when I looked back over how hard I had worked, how many steps I had taken and how much it had cost me only to realise I had to do the whole amount all over again.

I began to ignore the ultimate goal and target more obtainable goals. From 20km all I focused on was getting to 25km. From 25km it was all bout the 30km marker.

Those five hurt and it was during those five that I came closest to giving up. Especially the 28km point. Because it was when I saw that marker that I calculated that I had now covered 2 city to surfs end on end.

Idiot.

You see I then realised that regardless of how far I'd come I still had another whole city to surf to go. All the pain I was in could be halved and then added on.

Oh and a couple of hundred metres after working that out I told myself I really should factor in an allowance for distance travelled - eg that the last third would hurt more than the first two thirds and so a simple half and add wouldn't work (I finally decided on a forty percent uplift to the original 50% and came to a conclusion that the final third would leave me hurting about 70% as much again as I already did).

Nerdy idiot.

But then 'just' two kilometres along I was joined by Ros (with HP in the backpack) and the 500 metres or so the walked with me gave me a massive boost.

The remaining twelve kms was a mix of grinding pain and grim determination.

The crowd were great; though I was sorely tempted to tell people that - yes 7 kilometres to go out of 42 total is 'nearly there' but no it is not close. Seven km is a good jog for most people and when it comes on top of 35km already traveled it's fucking agony so while I appreciate your sentiment I'm not 100% with you on how you choose to express it. Luckily I was too tired to be so mean to people who were just trying to help.

Anyway cover those remaining seven kilometres I did and by the time I got to the MCG I was a little delirious, very very sore, and just quietly I was gut bustingly proud of myself.

I did it last Sunday.

It took me five hours and twenty four minutes.

I can still hardly walk but I'll be back to do another one and I'll smash five hours when I do.



Lastly if I may be so bold as to give some tips to anyone considering giving a marathon a go they'd be:

1. Do your first one on your own. It really is a journey of discovery and on your own you can take it at your own pace and fight your own battles.
2. Have a great support crew - if I hadn't had Ros and Harry cheering me on throughout the day I reckon I would have given up
3. pick an 'easy' marathon - Melbourne is relatively flat, big enough to have a good crowd and small enough to not be uncomfortable I heartily recommend it
4. do more training than I did - if nothing else you'll cover the course in less time and that can only be a good thing because,
5. you have to be prepared for a long haul of self inflicted pain, it's a little twee but 'ninety nine percent agony and one percent ecstasy' really does sum the experience up.