If you are like me, you have searched the internet tirelessly for content on two very specific things: 1) how to train for a marathon and 2) how to fuel for a marathon. I began my marathon journey in October of 2023 with the Chicago Marathon, but, I guess, if we are being technical it was when I put my name into the lottery on October 18, 2022 and actually got selected on December 8, 2022 at 8:12am. If we go even farther back in time I had applied for the NYC Marathon lottery 5 times and never got selected. I add the time I got the selection email because all of those years I got rejected from NYC I refreshed my email over and over and over again all day long to only find that I was rejected by the end of the day. Chicago let me know early in the morning that I got in, and it was on my first try.
The marathon has been on my radar since I watched the Athens Olympic Marathon in August of 2004. I was a freshman in college, and as I was watching my mind was blown that anyone would want to run that distance and also that anyone, well not anyone- so many ones, could run at that pace for that long. My interest didn’t really resurface until around when I had my first baby in 2015, but I never found the time to train for a marathon. Two more babies later, I got selected for the Chicago Marathon after throwing my name in the hat on a whim nine months after I had my third baby.
My training for the Chicago Marathon was not great. I wasn’t getting nearly enough sleep because of the baby, I wasn’t getting the right nutrition, I was drinking more than I should, and, of course, had no idea how to train for a marathon. I bought the book Marathon by Hal Higdon, but let it collect dust and never read it. When people would ask me “are you really going to run a marathon?” or “can you run a marathon,” I would respond with “I’m gonna try!” or “I hope so.” Not really the positive, go-getter attitude you should have going into any race or competition.
I had a lot of fun planning the trip to Chicago. I convinced my husband, Alex, to bring all three of our kids (8, 5, 1). We made it a family vacation and also got my parents and my father-in-law to witness the spectacle of “Kelly’s First Marathon.” In my mind this was going to be a party of epic proportions. I spent so much time on planning and very little time on training. All my long runs that I did were hard and I had to stop multiple times during the runs because I felt so terrible. I went on vacations during what should have been my training cycle without running a single time. I set myself up for failure and, in the back of my mind, I knew it while I was running that chilly October morning in Chicago.
The day before the Chicago Marathon I walked over 12 miles because I wanted to make the most of my first time to Chicago. I wanted the kids to have fun, my parents to have fun, my husband and father-in-law to have fun and spent very little time thinking about what my body might need the days leading up to my first marathon, let alone the night before the race. My legs were aching the entire night. I barely slept. My Garmin gave me a -4 performance condition in the first mile of my marathon and I remember thinking “What the heck am I doing? Why am I even here?”
You can see my splits from Strava here.
**my official race time was 3:51:35
I’ll break down that marathon more later, but you can see that I completely fizzled out, crashed and burned starting around mile 9. What’s does it say in Proverbs? Pride comes before the fall? When I finished that race I swore I would never ever do a marathon again. While I was running I said “Never again. This is not my sport. I am not made for this” and many more negative thoughts. I was disappointed in so many things about that weekend and race and ashamed of my splits. I knew friends and family were tracking me which added to the humiliation of my own making. I felt stupid and unprepared. I cringe at the race photos from that day, but I bought them anyways because that day when I bought them I had convinced myself I was never doing that again so might as well buy the photo package.
One of my favorite quotes is “Pain is weakness leaving the body” by Chesty Puller. (Never knew who said that quote, just knew it as a phrase to help me not quit when things got tough. Now I want to research “Chesty Puller” just based on that name and find out what he was all about.) This was something I use to tell myself all the time when I was running or working out, and then I started telling to my children and nieces and nephews when the pain of being asked to clean up the messes they made was almost unbearable. You might be surprised that this never motivates them to work harder. That quote did not help me either during the marathon, but the weakness did, sort of, leave my body because by the next day after the race I was already thinking about running another one. Even though I could barely hobble through the airport, I was already scheming in my mind how I could do it again but this time better. By Tuesday, I was texting my sister-in-law, Sarah, about different marathons we could do together. I felt like I had something to prove. I know most people who set out to run a marathon for the first time would feel ecstatic to break the 4 hour mark. I know I’m probably being offensive and selfish and all the words to describe someone who thinks they are better than everyone else, but I thought for some reason I could qualify for the oldest and most prestigious marathon, the Boston Marathon, without ample training and just talent alone.
All this to say, I’m writing this blog to detail my running journey mainly for me, but if anyone else finds this interesting that will be great too! I will be sharing what I learn along the way. I will share my triumphs and defeats and everything else between. I hope you enjoy reading!
Cheers!
-Kelly
Leave a Reply