So, let’s get you up to speed. Many of my close friends and family are probably bored to their core of hearing me talk about running, training, recovery and general marathon chat this year. What would usually be a few months has turned into about ten months. It really has been a bizarre year and journey!
I started the year with a charity place for this year’s London Marathon. Feeling absolutely buzzing (albeit equally, if not greater amounts, terrified) to be taking part in the 40th Race, my first ever long distance anything and of course, ticking off what is a bucket list item for many. My charity place was with Neuroblastoma UK and I will write another post on the relationship with them shortly.
Now, this was more or less a ‘couch to marathon’ journey I was starting on. Less couch, in the sense that I was already relatively fit, I had a steady gym habit which I loved and was generally a very active Londoner. And, more couch in that I had dabbled in running across my 20’s but the furthest I had ever run at that point was 6 miles. And that was two years prior. Eek.
But what had never really been on my own personal bucket list (I had been known to say ‘what’s the point of running a marathon, your body isn’t supposed to, people have died doing it…’) had apparently crept its way on and I was now determined to do it!
I threw myself into my training between January and the start of March this year. I followed my beginners plan, I started running home from work, I started fundraising for my charity. Then Covid-19 hit and the rest is, quite literally, history. We all know what happened there – lockdown, staying at home, no gatherings and most certainly no mass participation 40,000 strong sporting events.
As the marathon got postponed from its traditional April home to a new tentative and uncertain temporary home of October, this was a kick in the teeth for many of us who had dedicated weeks to training through the dark winter evenings. But, this was now a global pandemic, so…perspective and all that.
During lockdown I continued regularly running (it was probably one of the things I relied on to keep my spirits up) as I knew I needed to maintain the running fitness. I capped my distances though and wasn’t tracking things too religiously.
In July at some point I realised that if the marathon were to somehow go ahead in October, I was about 12 weeks away and this was time to pick up training again. Lockdown saw me running a maximum run distance of around 15km and I had 12 weeks to get me 42km ready. Despite most of me knowing that there was no way the marathon could feasibly go ahead with Covid still around, the fear of the ‘what if it does’ voice got me. So – I tweaked my training plan, got me a Google sheet with it all organised and started on the training journey again.
Edit: I first wrote this post in September, as you’ll see below, but never got the blog live in time. I’ve decided to keep this bit in this post as a way of showing how I felt at the time! Read on to go to the past…(spoiler: there’s another post on the marathon day itself!)
It’s now now mid September and most people will know that London has turned ‘virtual’ – aka cover the distance by yourself at any point during the 4th October and you will have taken part in the event for this year. Not overly keen to cover 26.2 miles on my own, I entered a very small marathon event that was confirmed as going ahead in line with Covid guidelines. Shout out to my brother for finding it and suggesting it as it fell on the same day as the London virtual option. (Cheers – I will admit I was only partly grateful for his wonderful find…)
So on the 4th October I’m lacing up to cover the full distance. It may not be the marathon I had in mind, in fact, it couldn’t be further from it. The crowds, atmosphere, crazy fancy dress, variety of runners, London sights and prestige that make the London Marathon one of the greatest events in the world might not be there this year, but we move anyway. I’ll get to do that another year.
For now, it’s about taking ten months of training to show myself that I can actually do this, my mind and body can take me the distance and that the feeling at the end will be incredible. Oh, and I think most of my friends and family would rather it just was out of the way so I can stop banging on about it…!
T – 3 weeks to go.
Feeling excited!
Ele x
November update: Ok so the blog finally went live….
Edit: I did actually do it! You can read my marathon day experience post here.
chasingele.com 