@jerry-d
Statistics consistently show that there are an average of 1.3 million people in the world every year who run a marathon. Thatâs 0.01% of the worldâs population. Marathon runners are a rare breed.
If you find yourself contemplating or starting to train for a marathon, youâll hear people throw around words like dedicated or tenacious to describe these athletes. I thought I knew what those words meant and I thought they described me. It wasnât until I actually began training for that distance that I came to realize there are degrees of tenacity that are measured by most and when the measuring stick ends, thatâs where they stop measuring. And thenâŠthere are extreme degrees that few people measure themselves up against, that are not on most peopleâs measuring sticks because most donât even consider such degrees as it borders on insanity. Who would run for hours in one go and more importantly, why?!
Well, Iâm first-born in my family so Iâm already one of those type A personalities. I was also diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma in my early 20s and had been living within those invisible walls for well over a decade. Have you ever not been able to breathe? Or taken a full and deep lungful of air without collapsing into a coughing fit? If you live with asthma, you know what Iâm talking about. Itâs like sipping at air never to take a full gulp of it. Itâs like tasting life and for all of its delicious wonders, never being able to completely enjoy it.
In my youth, I despised my health challenges and thought them a cruel fate. The very blood coursing through my veins, my weak genetics, an all-enveloping 24/7 reminder that I could never be whole - not like other people. I donât know if I can explain how crushing it is, how suffocating, and how that diagnosis was a stifling life sentence.
One particularly merciless Spring day, the pollen was floating so thick like cotton balls in the air, they might as well have been Claymore mines all facing my direction.
It was enough. In fact, it had been far more than enough for years. I had enough. I decided to ignore my doctorâs advice and started running. Just a few jogged steps and I was already coughing and out of breath. I didnât care. I kept running. I got to a block down the road, what air I had in my lungs was on fire, but I took my small victory. It continued to grow from there. 2 blocks then 3. In a week, I got to half a mile. In another, I got to a full mile and started driving to the local high school track. My lungs were still on fire and I ran with sips of air combined with coughing spasms, but that didnât matter. I kept training almost every day until I could run 4 milesâŠ16 laps around the track. That was my first mental ceiling and while I was now running for time, my body wouldnât be able to go more than 4 miles.
So, I forced it to go more. I started running at the beach because they had mile markers painted onto the sidewalks. I threw up a few times, my diaphragm felt like it was hitched onto something, stitches in my sides, pain in my muscles, injuries like plantar fasciitis, but I eventually got it to 6 miles before all my muscles would seize up. I never had a running coach so I joined a running club and bought a book they recommended written by Jeff Galloway. He talked about the run-walk method, about ice baths, about interval training and hill repeats, and much more. I did them all and eventually got up to 18+ miles/week. It still wasnât enough for marathon distance. In the book, he talked about the all important âlong runâ each week. Long runs broke the next ceilings for me. My resting heart rate started dropping below 60 and I could breathe more easily. When ârestingâ, I just didnât need as much air or maybe my body was getting better at using the air it had. I also didnât need my rescue inhaler as much anymore.
Fast forward to a couple months before my first marathon, I was running my first 20-miler and hit something that runners call âthe wallâ. The was my last mental ceiling. Itâs when youâve burned through all the energy in your body (all the carbs and sugars) and thereâs nowhere else to get energy except from your fat cells. But pulling energy from fat cells takes a lot of effort from your body so when youâre trying to maintain a certain pace at mile 18, 19, 20, itâs much more difficult to do. Thus, âthe wallâ. I never found a great way to get past the wall myself - I just trained with more pain in the later miles and became accustomed to it.
I finished my very first marathon in 2004 with a finishing time of 6 hours and 25 mins. Since this one, Iâve finished a total of 5 marathons with my best chip time of 3 hours and 58 mins.
As an asthmatic, Iâd never be able to achieve a VO2 Max rate comparable to a fellow marathoner with the same amount of training as me. During my interval training, I was still gasping and gulping for air while I maintained an 8:34 min/mi pace for 8 miles on the treadmill. My peers would be running on the treadmill next to me holding the same pace and able to hold an effortless conversation at the same time. I was mostly okay with this, with my bodyâs limitations, because I was a runner through and through. Doctorâs diagnosis to the contrary be damned.
A full marathonerâs training schedule is usually mapped out 5-6 months before the event. 6 months of blood, sweat, and tears. In talking with other marathoners, their reasons for undertaking such a challenging event are varied, but a common theme among them was a âcallingâ or a marker in the distance...like mountain climbers effusing about the height of their aspirations being âEverestâ.
For me, itâs all about taking that lungful of breath with no fear. For me, having run a marathon has made me whole. Itâs my âwhyâ. And life is good. đ
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