I’m Running a Marathon – 1

Background: I’ve always been a runner. When I was 16, almost every night you could see me racing down my city’s streets, bumping music from twisted wired earbuds.

About 3 years ago, I decided to go big. I signed up for a Half Marathon a couple cities away, booked a hotel, and trained intensely for 6+ weeks. I was running 6-mile days in preparation, eating healthy, and the whole event was certainly an experience.

So, at the beginning of 2025, I signed up for the full marathon. I wanted to challenge myself, I wanted to see what I was made of. 26.2 miles, nonstop, and no one else to help run the distance for me. The race is early August, and I still have so much training to do.

Here are some of my runs from this last week:

(On the left) This is the first 10k I have run in probably over a full year! It felt like I ran all around town, and I’m thankful I still had salt pills to help with my stamina for this run. So, big win today (10k ran on 7/20, and the 5k on the right was ran on 7/19), but if my race is in 2-3 weeks? Needless to say, I am probably behind in my training! 6.22 miles is a lot different than 26.2 miles!

But signing up for this race has reinvigorated my running life. After the half marathon I really ditched running altogether, so January and February of this year, I was actually just getting used to running a single mile again on the treadmill! It goes to show you can still start slow and work yourself back up, only you are responsible if you throw in the towel all the way. The universe wants you to get out of the hole and triumph again!

What I have learned about mentality: I learned a lot from my half marathon. I was younger and I thought I could make a living off running (extremely difficult to do, not really viable, YOU have to PAY to do these races!).

I learned that when you have a big goal in sight, and you want it bad enough, you can focus your entire being on accomplishing it. I also learned that just because you accomplished a big goal, it doesn’t mean you are going to feel like a King or Queen for months and months after!

After that half marathon, and some of my delusions of grandeur wore off, I stepped away from running. I can’t make money from it, I worked so hard for it, and yet, what was the pay off? Yes I learned to be disciplined and focused, but, I didn’t have people in my corner to help me celebrate that victory. I didn’t really reward myself for accomplishing the goal. I thought my life would magically change after accomplishing this, as I’d been a runner all my life. So, when my life was the same, there was an emptiness there. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but I see now that the most important part of any goal is the training leading up to it! That’s where you find progress, not in the grand race itself, but in all the training you accomplished to get to that point.

What I have learned about long distance running: During my half marathon I used salt pills, had some dried fruit, and ran with a water pack. I’m going to be having a similar setup this time around but introducing running gels/chews. Essentially these will be easier to digest (less chewing) and should give a better boost of energy than dried fruit. However, I will be testing these before the actual race itself!

For training, I learned you shouldn’t try to run the full race before hand, or even half the race beforehand. Instead, training each day should vary. Some days you want to improve stamina, longer distance with slower times, or complete some interval training (1 minute of running, 1 minute of walking, etc.). Also, you don’t want to try to jump from running 1 mile days to then 2 mile days and then 4 mile days. Doing this will really take it’s toll on your body and may be counterproductive. Instead, you want to increase your distance by about 10% each run. So if you start by running 1 mile, next day, do 1.1 miles, then do 1.21 miles. Now, this is a general rule and can be played with if you are recovering strongly in other ways, but its a good rule of thumb for training.

There is still a lot to be learned about running and long-distance running, and I’m more than willing to accept feedback as I learn even more about training techniques! Let me know if you have any helpful tips as well.

Training from here: I placed on my calendar that I’m running a 5k almost every single day from here on out (3.11 miles). I have been working this in every morning; I have a single coffee and a banana and then I hit the city streets. I have a few recovery days in there and a few days where I want to run a 10k like I did today (7/20/25)!

I’m going to be researching a bit more on foot placement when running, water intake, look into how my body reacts to gels, looking to potentially upgrade my foot ware, and learning more about stamina (26.2 miles will not be easy!)

Takeaway:

I wanted to make this post in case there are any other runners, or people wanting to run a marathon one day. It is certainly possible; you just have to start training and not give up until you finish that big race!

I took a step away from running, but I want to accomplish this big goal, and I want to celebrate it after I accomplish it to really help integrate the person that I want to become.

While I may be a bit behind on regular training schedules, I know my grit will kick in and I have already set up a training schedule moving forward that will help me succeed.

Let’s see how my training continues, and how I am able to cross that 26.2-mile finish line! More running blogs coming soon, cheers.