Ich Bin Ein Halbmarathoner
There was nothing unusual about receiving an email about upcoming running races. Ever since I ran the City to Surf in 2012 Iâve entertained the idea of running a half marathon. When I got one of these emails Iâd get excited for a split second, âYeah, Iâm gonna do it.â would very quickly turn into âBut really, I canât be arsed training for it.â
This time, however, an impulse took over. And before I knew it I had entered myself into my first half marathon race. I was eight weeks away from race day. So I skipped the first two weeks of the training program from Strava (a run tracking app I use) and started following the rest of the program to prepare my body and mind to run twenty one kilometres without ending up in the arms of a paramedic, or worse, the news.
The training program came in the form of emails. Each afternoon I would receive an email outlining if I should rest, or the kind of run I was to do the next day, as well as an overview of the current weekâs program. I chose a program tailored for four runs a week. So for me, each training week was as follows...
Monday - rest
Tuesday - medium duration run
Wednesday - rest
Thursday - medium duration run but a bit shorter than Tuesdayâs
Friday - rest
Saturday - short duration run
Sunday - long duration run
From eight weeks to race day, the training program increased the duration of each weekâs runs until about two weeks from race day, then it started tapering. This meant I ran less leading up to the race to allow my body to recover and be in tip top condition for the race.
The ramping up weeks were testing. As each weekâs runs got longer, I felt my fitness increasing, my legs grew stronger but yet more weary at the same time. I could not start my runs with the same power as before. My legs needed to ârun inâ before they performed as expected. Luckily one of daily emails mentioned that it was perfectly normal to feel that, and that really helped put my mind at ease. It was during the ramping up weeks that I began to develop a mindset to trust the training, no matter what I was going through.
On the tapering weeks, I found myself second guessing if I should be running more, not taking it easy. It felt counter-intuitive to slack off. Lo and behold, a training email assured me that it was normal to think that but also to remind me to trust in my training.
It was like they knew exactly what I would go through as the weeks roll by, and each day the email included a short quote or advice that was perfect for my head at the time. Colour me thankful and impressed.
I welcomed race day with a bit of side eye. I knew I had trained, but still, I had never run a half marathon race so I wasnât entirely sure what to expect. But with a handful of half marathon training runs under my belt, I knew that I would at least finish the race. What I did not count on was the fact that the race started later (6:45am) than most of my training runs (5:30am) which meant a fair few degrees warmer, and that the race course contained close to five times the climb than my training runs. With these oversights, and a last minute decision to wear slightly thicker socks, I achieved my goal of a sub two hour finish by willing my legs pass the finish line at 1:59.39 with an angry blister under my left pinky toe. Compare that to my training half marathon times of around 1:50:00, this was significantly slower, but nonetheless goal achieved, and Iâm a happy chappy.
Running my first half marathon race was certainly a challenging experience in more ways than one. And perhaps because of this experience, in some ways, I finally feel sufficient legitimacy in calling myself a runner.
