marathon man

Okay, so the title may be a misnomer. I am not a marathon man; I am however a half-marathon man. Last summer I ran my first half-marathon. I finished. It was a big achievement. I do have to say though that I am not a natural runner. It's not like I will just say to myself, hey, I should go out for a run.

My half-marathon last year was actually a bit of a fluke. I had been preparing to run a 1/4 marathon, or more accurately, run the marathon as part of a four-person team. I had been doing some training and preparing for that. Unfortunately our team fell apart and there was only two of us left. A few weeks before the actual marathon, I ran the half distance to see whether I could and figured that if I did it once I could do it again.

Come the actual day of the marathon I did the half-marathon and it was an achievement. One of the drawbacks of doing this in a small town like Name-of-town-withheld is the sheer number of people I knew involved. It's hard to do something like this discreetly the first-time when everyone knows you, knows it's your first and cheers you on.

In the days following, I did learn that I had not trained enough and was incredibly sore. This year, I decided I would do things differently and joined a local learn to run group. My usual approach to training is to sign up for a race, then have fear of humiliation be the driving factor to get me training. The group helps, however I think it mainly replaces humiliation with expectation. As is quite likely in a small-town I know many members of the group, and I know show up for my runs because people expect me to be there.

I do like the sense of accomplishment that running brings. Although I may not enjoy the actual process of running, I do enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with running a set distance and knowing you accomplished it. Each week I'm probably doing on average 20-25 km if I make all three runs. Right now I'm averaging two out of three. However, by August I will do the Name-of-town-Withheld half-marathon for a second time and here's hoping I'm not in pain for days.