Learnings from the Marathon

On Sunday, 2 years after I began training for a race that was supposed to happen in May 2020, and 3.5 years after completing, but feeling utterly overwhelmed by, the extraordinary experience that is the London Marathon, I ran another marathon, 26.2 miles around the coast of beautiful Guernsey.?It was a big deal for me: the training is a big commitment, and there was a lot of self-inflicted pressure bound up in trying again to do something I felt I hadn’t got right before.?I had one goal, which was to run every step of the way, without stopping, and I feel over-joyed (and very relieved) that I managed it.?Along the way, I had a few thoughts about the learnings I take from the experience: a couple of people have been kind enough to ask about those, so I thought I would share the below.

Life lessons from the Marathon

1 You can only run the mile you’re in

I realise it sounds like stating the blindingly obvious but the truly overwhelming thing about a marathon is the sheer distance. By that I mean, any fit, healthy person blessed with the appropriate limbs in working order can run a mile if they really have to. Two even. Probably five. But 26.2 miles is really a lot, and at various points during training, that magnitude, the hours it would take, felt just too much. How is it possible, I found myself thinking, knackered at mile 16, that I will do this, and then run another 10 miles (plus a bit)?

What I came to realise, and eventually be able to internalise, was that panicking about mile 21 when I was in mile 9 was pointless. You only get to mile 21 (which I think is, in fact, the hardest one), by completing all the miles that precede it, just as you will only sit Finals, or lead a pitch team, or manage a career-defining project, when you have done the work that equips you to handle those things. Messing up the mile - or project, or meeting, or party - you’re in by worrying about one ahead of you that sounds intimidating is supremely unproductive.

All you can ever do is run the mile you’re in.

2 Learning emotional discipline is important

Of course, you have to build the strength in your body and the capacity in your lungs and the metabolism to fuel 3,800 calories of activity, and training makes that happen. But the thing I found hardest to learn was how to manage my emotions. I am an emotionally demonstrative person, and as you can probably tell from point one, an occasionally anxious one. I would hear people beginning to engage with something difficult and then saying, “I can’t think about that now” and moving on, and wonder how they could park their emotions in that way.

As I’ve become more experienced at work – and now I have small children at home - it’s become more and more necessary and helpful for me to be able to park some of my emotions some of the time, and to manage my interactions with deliberation and consideration. Practising “I can’t think about that now” through my long runs, when the challenge seemed just too much, has really helped me to do that in other parts of my life. To be clear, I don’t mean sitting on emotions forever, I just mean being able to do something about the fact that sometimes your feelings are not going to help you handle a situation well, and the best thing to do is come back to them later.

3 Hard work pays off

One of the things I like most about long distance running is that it rewards consistent effort. Trying hard, getting your miles in, going out when it’s drizzling, doing your hill runs when it’s hot, going to the gym even though it’s dull (to me at least, I know some of you love it) – these are the things that make a marathon runner. Of course there are people with natural talent, or the physical build for an ideal power weight ratio – but I am very definitely in neither category. The reason I can now run 26.2 miles is because a long time ago I staggered through 6 blocks of 3 minutes of jogging, gasping for breath, in the dark, on the quiet roads of West Hampstead, and then I just kept going. I am a committed and hard-working person and I like the rewarding of effort that endurance training gives.

4 Experience is a good thing

Whilst we all know, intellectually, that we are likely to be better at something at the second attempt than the first, the messaging women in particular get about ageing -which of course is intrinsically bound up with building experience - is rather more mixed. Getting towards the end of a decade I feel quite mixed about leaving behind, I have recently wrestled with not being sure I want to own the experience and learnings I’ve begun to build through my life, because of what they say about the number of miles on my clock.

Training for my second marathon has been so much smoother than training for the first one. I designed a better programme. I took on my long runs, my hill runs, my strength sessions, with much more equanimity. I was smart enough to cut back on my drinking and I ate better. Most importantly, I got through my runs with an inner conviction that I could do it, a conviction which was missing three and a half years ago.

And really taking in that I am just better at this now has been a helpful counter to the endless barrage of are you worried about your skin, and did you know your metabolism is going to slow down, and should you have another baby, and most women don’t put enough into their pensions, and why aren’t you worried about your skin that we are bombarded with. I feel much better able to own the experience I’ve gained, and that has to be a good thing.

5 You have to take responsibility for your achieving your own goals

At various points in my training, I have been pathetically keen to have someone run with me, or at the end of a ‘phone, to talk to and to share the struggle with. And because I am fortunate enough to have good friends and a lovely, supportive husband I have had some good phone calls while I’ve been running, all of which were a useful distraction – and sometimes a distraction is the thing you need most.

There comes a point, though, when a long run gets really hard, or the race is really dragging on, when the only person who can succeed at this difficult, stretching goal that has been hanging over your head for such a long time is, in fact, you. Struggling at about mile 20 with “I can’t do this”, I remembered a conversation with the midwife who helped me have my first baby. At some point in the grimness, pain and panic of delivering him, I said to her that I just couldn’t do this, it was too much and I couldn’t cope. “You are doing this”, she replied, “This is what doing this looks like”.

And that was what I thought as I ground my way through mile 21, and 22, step by aching step. “You are doing this. This is what doing this looks like”. Running a marathon is hard. The only person who can run your marathon is you.

6 But running, like life, is a team sport

Whilst it is true that the training, and the running, was on me, there is no question that I have been helped and enabled in achieving this personal goal – as we all are, in most things. My husband took on a lot of weekend time with our children while I slogged through some long runs. I had a brilliant physio who rescued the whole plan when my hamstring decided not to cooperate back in the spring. I have a couple of friends who know far more than I do about the physiology of training and distance running and they were generous with their knowledge and ideas. The kinship that many runners share with each other meant I had pathfinder marathoners around me who encouraged me when I was wracked with self doubt. My mother is the best cheerleader in the world. And a good friend travelled with me to Guernsey, spent their Saturday afternoon walking with me up the steep hill immediately after the start so I would know what was ahead, ate a lot of carbs with me, and then cheered me on as I ran. The experience would have been infinitely poorer without them.

Even in this most individual of sports, as so often in life, we are stronger, happier, better when we are together.

7 Pride is powerful

I found running this marathon, and all the training that led up to it, really hard. And that is why now, having done it, I feel a sense of pride that I think we can be a bit apologetic about, but which is good for us. Building our sense of confidence is an important investment in the impact we might be able to have on our world, and I’m glad I feel, today at least, that I can take that on. Of course running a marathon isn’t the only way to build that confidence; it may well not be the best one either. But it is an option - and one I am very happy to discuss with any of you if you’re still reading and wondering whether you’d like to take one on one day ??