Do you love the marathon enough?
3 min read
Do you love the marathon enough that you can take the pain and punishment along the way? Because there is pain and punishment in every journey. No one has ever succeeded at the marathon without being able to endure months of pain and punishment.
Whether you are Eliud Kipchoge or Oprah Winfrey the marathon is 42.2km so you better be ready or it’ll be a long day out there. Along the journey to a marathon start line there is no substitute for your long training runs.
Entering a marathon means choosing months of consistent, hard training along the way. You choose to commit to the training process that will take discipline to be able to be ready to run a marathon. Be prepared for the pain and punishment that comes with journey. The marathon like every other worthwhile pursuit in life has challenges along the journey. Training for a marathon won’t be easy, there will sacrifices to be made along the way. Training to run a marathon takes time out of your life. Time that alternatively could be spent with family or friends or doing other easier leisure activities.
So why would you run a marathon? You can quite easily choose a shorter distance and get through with much less pain and punishment. You can run a parkrun every Saturday morning for free in a million locations around the world. Why not stop there?
You’ll have your own reasons for running a marathon or further. What you’ll experience in a marathon will challenge you physically and mentally unlike anything else in our daily lives. For a lot of people running long distances is an escape from the mostly sedentary world we all live in. The marathon will give you much more back than Facebook or Netflix ever will.
If you can fall in love with the process you’ll be prepared for the pain and punishment you’ll experience. Fall in love with the solitary joy that running can bring and the marathon will reward you more than you thought possible. Or you may fall in love with the sense of community that running offers and train with a group of friends all on the focused on the same prize.
When you love the marathon enough, you commit to the training and show up on race day ready to run a great race. If you’ve done the training you’ll get to 30km and be able to give your best when it matters. If you give your best when it matters most you’ll finish the marathon with a sense of achievement like no other.
You don’t have to love the marathon every day of your life. Commit to a block of training and focus, commit and show the discipline to complete and the marathon will give it back with interest. It could be the best day of your life.
