In news that I’m trying very hard not to take too personally, I turn 50 next year. To make myself feel marginally better about the whole thing I’ve started to compile a list of 50 things I want to do in the year leading up to turning 50 and the year after. One of the things I’m looking to do is to run another marathon. So I’ve booked in to run the Portland marathon in November of this year.
Why run another marathon?
As someone who came to running later in life (in fact I think it’s fair to say I hated running until about age 35), there is still a bizarre pleasure in being the kid who hated running, but can now run a marathon.
I’m also fascinated with the question of whether our bodies diminish and so we stop running marathons…or we stop running marathons and so our bodies diminish. I really want to see if I can find that sweet-spot where I can train consistently enough to keep all of the parts of my body moving, without training so much that I wear those body parts out.
Last but not least, I know that my mental health is at its absolute peak when a 20km run is an ‘allocation of time’ rather than a significant physical effort. It’s a niche feeling, but it’s something I’ve only ever experienced while deep in training for a long run event.
Why the the Portland Marathon?
In terms of the marathon distances I’ve run, I’ve done the Melbourne marathon twice, and the Melbourne Ironman, both of which are pretty flat courses…and I’ve done the 50km version of the Surfcoast Century, which has a course profile that looks like my heart-rate while watching a Jason Bourne movie…so Portland looked like a course that had a couple of decent hills, but not so many that I was going to spend the whole day cursing myself.
There is also a perverse pleasure I find in working through the ‘dark place’ of any endurance event. That time when you start to question if you really can do this…and ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just stop?’
Being able to grit out a tough few minutes is one thing…but it’s the ability to work through a tough 30 minutes…then back it up 20 minutes later for another tough 15 minutes…and then maybe another 20 minutes an hour later that I think teaches you how to deal with the challenges that life outside of running throws you.
There is an 8km stretch of the Portland marathon that is pretty much dead-straight and on an exposed highway. The course map describes it as a ‘mentally challenging 8kms of flat straight road’. A few years back we were driving along the same stretch of road and my aunt mentioned that the marathon ran along this road, and I remember thinking ‘Dear God…this is boring at 100km/h, what on earth is it like at 10km/h?!!’ Well, now I’m going to find out…and when life hits me with things that are as daunting as 8km of flat boring road at the 25km mark of a marathon, I’ll hopefully have strategies to deal with it.
What am I doing differently?
I’ve never run a sub-3.45 marathon, and I’ve never run a marathon listening to music. One of those things is going to change…and it’s not going to be the sub-3.45!
I love listening to music, almost as much as I hate listening to my inner-monologue about ‘how hard this is’ when I’m running. So I listen to podcasts or music on every training run I do. But for the two marathons I’ve done, I’ve done them without headphones. I think part of this was to do with wanting to soak up the energy and buzz of the crowd at a big event like the Melbourne Marathon…but I think it was also out of a baffling belief that listening to music is a bit of a coward’s way out of dealing with the ‘dark moments’ that are part of any endurance event.
But I feel I’ve done my ‘raw dog’ marathons…now it’s time to enjoy some tunes. So I’m putting together my playlist…and happy to take (and potentially ignore) any suggestions:
I’ve also been doing Kinstretch classes (stretches to increase strength and flexibility) twice a week, and Yoga once a week for about a year now, and can’t believe how well my hips and knees have dealt with the long runs.
So, are you chasing a PB?
Nope. I want to enjoy the process of getting fit for the race. I want get to the 35km mark and still feel I’ve got enough in the tank to finish. I want to thank the volunteers at the aid stations, and maybe find someone to chat to on the 8km section of staring at the horizon. Most importantly I want to finish, and think I’ve got another one in me before I turn 60.