How I Ran a Full Marathon 42.2kms*, The Marathon Mindset & How YOU Can Achieve ANYTHING You Want in Life

5 hours, 2 minutes, and 25 seconds. That’s the amount of time it took me to run my 1st full marathon. But this article is NOT about bragging my big achievement. This article is all about the marathon mindset and psychology behind achieving ANYTHING what you want in life.

For someone like me, who has been a skinny kid throughout my high school and lacking the stamina for matching up to my classmates’ speed affected my mindset negatively during my growing up years. I always criticized myself that I am not good enough and running even 5kms is an impossible task. Not too long after I resigned from athletics and football team, I switched to volleyball in my high school years. But that did not help to improve my stamina and endurance in anyway. It was just an escape.

Fast-forwarding to my adolescence years I joined a local gym and started working out 5 days a week, year-after-year. Little did I know I was building a strong foundation for the Marathon Mindset. 5 years of intense CrossFit training had made me stronger by now, albeit I never ran a long distance beyond 5kms. Sometimes there was no motivation, but I showed up every day to the gym just because I did not want to look skinny anymore. I did build some muscles and gained some stamina, still a long way to even 10kms. This process taught me (1) SELF- DISCIPLINE & (2) LONG-TERM MINDSET. See a large goal and believe in that, if you put enough effort and time into it, there is no reason you cannot achieve that goal.

On 23rd June 2017, I decided to challenge myself by doing completely bizarre i.e. drawing one per day for 365 days. It wasn’t really an easy challenge, as I was already doing my MBA + internships and on top of that there were sick days and, & on some days, I did not feel any motivation to pick up my pencil. I did it any which way, every day, because after 6 months, drawing illustrations was so deeply imbedded in my mind, that it was similar to brushing my teeth sort of an activity and secondly, I was posting my drawings on Instagram, so I had to keep the consistency. After a year I achieved my self-challenge and was still drawing incessantly and posting stuff, even after 365 days. I even made some money selling my artwork to my IG followers, who from different countries (www.instagram.com/anuj_draws_stuff). This process taught me (3) BREAKING DOWN THE LARGER GOALS & (4) SEEING EASY ACHIVABLE TASKS. Breakdown what you really want to achieve. Write it somewhere on a post-it and stick it where you can see it every day i.e. in front of your mirror. It can be your sales number, improving your relationship with your partner or as simple as switching off your phone early and reading a few pages from a book instead every night.

Fast-forwarding to 16th March 2020, a few days before the lockdown I was re-watching a great biopic ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ on my way from work commute and I decided that I would face my biggest fear i.e. running. That evening I tied my shoelaces and went for a run. I ran 11.4kms in 54:26 mins with an average pace of 4’45”/km. “Not bad Anuj…” I told myself and ran 10kms again (in 48 minutes) after a few days on 20th, a day before the lockdown started. I wrote down my fitness goal ‘I will run a half-marathon by the end of this year’ in my notepad but due to the lockdown I couldn’t train for it. I bought a pair of dumbbells and started working out from home. No so long after my dumbbells shopping, I got infected with Covid-19 virus. I was in the treatment center for 5 days because I could not breathe and luckily got recovered within a month. But that sick virus got me and severely impacted my stamina. I decided that I will do 100 burpees every day for 30 days after my anerobic training to boost my stamina. For those who does not know what a burpee is essentially a two-part exercise: a pushup followed by a leap in the air. It’s an excellent exercise to build strength and endurance, while burning calories, and boosting your cardio fitness. I surpassed the 30 days of burpees every day self-challenge. I got better right after the lockdown was lifted; the first thing I did was running 10kms & my time was: 1 hour! It was hard to run after the recovery, but I kept running once per week and included running as a part of my weekly workouts. 30th September 2020 was not a great day at work, and I was feeling quite low. I decided to meet my dear one not on my motorbike but on my foot, running. The distance was more than 21kms and that day I finished my half-marathon. (5) FOCUS ON THE POSITIVES. AND WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL. Focus on what you can affect and accept what you can’t. There are always positives to be found and focusing on them will help you get through tough times. That evening I narrowed down my focus to just meeting her and not bothering much about the pain and suffering of running 21kms . This mindset also helps me in achieving my sales numbers, & to crack a tough customer. I also wrote down a new goal ‘I will run a full Marathon in 2021’ in my notepad.

I have never run a full marathon before (which explains why I turned off the timer at 42kms mark). My running distance were limited to 5k, 10k, 15k and only once I have run 21k half-marathon benchmark. As I was listening to an amazing audiobook “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins, a sudden surge of all the tough times I had endured ran over my mind. I wanted to see what this human body is capable of with a Marathon Mindset that I have had developed over these years and put everything into a test. I started running at 8.20 p.m. and did not stop running until I was done. After 32kms I couldn’t lift my knee as my hamstrings were too tight. I walked the last 10 kms and finished my 1st full marathon. It was a great feeling and the pain that night felt so sweet that I wanted to savor it because I never experienced that pain what I felt that night.

I am from a non-technical background and currently I am learning JavaScript on Udemy. I am putting 1 hour everyday for 100 days. It has already been a month and I have already started to getting a hang of it.

P.S. Special thanks to my running coach Tushar Kaviskar (aka Nusta Running) who taught me how to run and stretch properly. Hence, having a good mentor is also very important.

Takeaways

Any large achievement is going to be 80% or more about getting yourself in the proper mindset. And it’s crucial to you as well. For any large achievement, if you have the right mindset, there is no reason you can’t achieve your goal.