Half Marathon
In September, I'll be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon. When I say running, I could say re-running. This course was the first half marathon I ever participated in.
More specifically, it was the only long run I'd even ran before. What constitutes a long run differs for everyone, based on physical ability or even philosophical outlook. But to me, 10km doesn't count as a long run. Anything beyond that, from 11km onwards, is long. 21.1 kilometers is definitely a long run. I'd never done even a 10-kilometer run before, never mind something close to a half marathon.
My exposure to running was through my mum, a late discoverer of the joys of running and a militant parkrunner. I started attending myself after doing the Couch to 5k program, of course. This was all I knew of running and everything beyond this distance was nebulous. I read up on training programs, tried to conceptualize running over four park runs in one go back-to-back but couldn't. Part of this was that I never had easy access to running routes. Durham, where I studied at university, was so small that it was difficult to run any distance at all without running into dangerous A-roads. London, it's hard to find anything not on road, which I find demoralizes me. I don't run to watch cars and breathe fumes. To complicate things, I also tended to run at night during this time. Sometimes at 11pm or midnight even. All in all, I wasn't running far enough.
Then I began following a training program. Twelve weeks to half marathon, only I had eight weeks. I was a pretty last minute sign up via my old school running for charity. After a few weeks of hard training my legs began to hurt when I ran. Shin splints I guess. This was to the degree I had to buy new shoes, chunky hulkers to try and cushion my stride. Despite this aid, the longest I could run in my prep was eight kilometers, meaning race day was three times my longest run's distance.
The straw that almost broke the camel's back was joining a friend for a gym session the week before and trying to deadlift for the first time. 48 hours later, I awoke at 3am with my back in absolute agony. I was in bed out of action for three days. I must have seriously strained my back. Not a surprise given my novice technique. I had a tendency to do this: try something new with a little too much enthusiasm and come a cropper. I then even succumbed to a cold just to really seal the deal.
Race day came, still with back pain, still having not run enough. But as it was for a charity I would not bow out. The weather was on my side though, or so I thought, and as I headed down to the start line in Hyde Park, sun shining, crowd chatting relaxed. It was hard to reject the insidious optimism creeping in.
The first 7km went well, though I approached them cautiously, focusing on my stride and posture to try and protect my back. At 10km in, I saw a friend in the crowd which renewed me, and by the time I saw my now-wife at 13km, I was actually feeling good. In my mind, I was breaking the race up into subdivisions. At 7km, I thought, I just have to run this two more times. And at 15 kilometers, I convinced myself there was only a parkrun to go. It's not a positive way of running, but when you're trying to convince yourself not to give up, it's effective. But actually running that last 5 kilometers was absolute agony. The next day I could not walk, just hobble.
An insidious pain crept into my knees and soon every step was painful. And my split slowed right down. Towards the end of the route, the road was particularly exposed to the elements and that gorgeous sun-filled day became cruel and unrelenting and I had to stray off the road just to find shade and keep from overheating. But with two kilometers to go, I was suddenly sure I could do it. Despite the pain, not finishing seemed impossible. The last 400 meters, with great crowds cheering. It felt magical and I cried, smiling at the achievement. Obviously it could have been far easier had I had a proper training regimen but it still felt like a massive mental achievement and it was definitely a long run.
Six years on I'm participating again but under very different circumstances. I've got a few disadvantages: diabetes, age. 31 is still young but it's certainly not 25, and fitting training around the demands of a baby. And yet I'm in a better position than I've ever been. Over December I ran this distance once a week. A half marathon suddenly, without me even realizing it, became easy.