I vaguely remember being in complete awe as I stared at a real London Marathon medal hanging on the wall of a friend's home. At the time (probably around 2003?), I was a full time Primary school teacher with no children and certainly no desire to run 42km for 'fun'. I destinctly remember the friend at the time saying to me that anyone can run a marathon with the correct training and state of mind. As much as I wanted to believe him, I never thought that I could, or would be one of the 1% to join the marathon club.
To cut a long story short (and my journey might be explored in future blog posts), I got married, had kids and needed to lose a bit of weight so took up running as a cheap and convenient hobby that could be carried out under the cover of darkness when the kids were in bed. This was 2010 and all thoughts of marathons were buried in the depths of my mind as I puffed and panted for an eternity of running-or 20 minutes in normal terms. Another friend who had joined me on the 'getting fit' journey suggested we enter the 'Race for Life 5km', a ladies only charity walk/run in the UK for breast cancer. We had both been fairly sporty kids and longed to relive those childhood years of running around all the time with no detrimental effect on the body!
The Sunday race came around and the competitive child in me showed up determined to run the whole 5km. I was pretty successful and ran pretty much the whole thing. I had no idea what a reasonable time for a 5km was, but timed myself and came in around 29 minutes. When I shared this information at work on the Monday, I was told that anything under 30 minutes was very respectible, which made me feel incredibly proud, but not much fitter.
Despite what anyone says to you, finishing a race gives you a natural high which seems to erase all the hours of pain and torture that go into training for it. Once I had conquered the 5km, I was getting ideas of grandure and picturing myself being a 'runner'. 5km became 8km, which turned into a 10km race. A half marathon was the next goal and then I got a bit full of myself and decided to enter a trail running event called Race to the Stones. This event offered a Saturday and Sunday course of 50km each with the option to do 1 day, or 2 days with an overnight stop. Or you could start on the Saturday and do 100km non-stop. To this day I have no idea what made me decide to do the 100km option but I was now the kind of person who enjoyed a challenge. So in 2014 myself and my husband set off into the unknown and learnt exactly how far 100km is on foot. I think the last 50km of that race were probably the longest 10hours of my life! Yes it was slow, no it wasn't pretty, but we finished and we weren't last!
Ok, it did take me a bit longer to recover from this event, but I was soon back planning my next challenge and hoping to learn from some of my niave mistakes. I hit the trails again in December that year at the Portsmouth Coastal Marathon. I actually enjoyed this run and genuinely thought that I had found my favourite running distance. From 2014-2020 I have covered the Marathon distance 19 more times in varying marathon, multi day marathon and ultramarathon events. I am proud to say that yes, The London Marathon was also one of these events in 2015. There was even a marathon at the end of an Ironman thrown in there for good measure. My running journey then came to an abrupt halt in 2021 when I had to have a back operation to have my spine fused due to degenerative disc disease.
It is now 2024. The operation recovery time, immigrating to Australia and navigating perimenopause now means that running a marathon seems like a distant memory. Therefore, I thought it would be a great time to challenge myself again by signing up for the Sydney Marathon on September 15th this year. I'm 3 months into building up my long runs and each time I increase my distance it is the furthest I have run since September 2020. Despite knowing how to prep my body and having a wealth of previous running experience to use, this already feels very different. My body has been through a lot over the last couple of years and is not as forgiving as it used to be. Nothing is 'easy' any more and the mental challenges I am facing to battle through the aches and pains are unlike anything I have ever experienced.
I plan on documenting my marathon journey in this blog, as well as sharing some general fitness/running tips and information. Luckily many of my previous successes have been recorded for prosperity in a blog I used to write from January 2015. If you are interested in reading this blog, you can access it here. https://karens40by40.weebly.com).
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