Marathons: For People who Like Excessive Pain

"Um...okay."

These were words I muttered to my mom in January 2017 when she asked if I'd run a marathon with her. I had just graduated from BYU in December and was looking for ways to create purpose in what I presumed would be a downward spiral of existential angst without the learning structures of school.

So I said okay.

Post Marathon. Trying to pretend my body
wasn't actually jello.

I've been running for many years. I ran my first recreational mile with my mom in 2007 and it was awful, but eventually running became a healthy, consistent way to manage stress and be healthy and promote positive self image. I'd been asked many times along my running journey if I'd ever run a marathon and the answer was always, "Well, I've run several half marathons, but no, never a full one. That's a special type of pain and I'm not that crazy."

Not yet, I wasn't.

Like Tim Urban in regards to his goals of giving a TED talk, running a marathon was always something I wanted to say I had done. Past tense.

So when my mom suggested we sign up for 26.2 miles of discomfort, I said okay. I was working with German-speakers for my job at the time, which meant I woke up at 3am to be at work in American Fork, UT from 4am-12pm, and then drove to Orem to teach German at a charter school from 12-2pm.

Which left the afternoons for running. Which meant I could make time to train for a marathon.

My mom and I committed by paying the registration fees for the Salt Lake City Marathon and my dad signed up for the half marathon portion.

I called my mom during a few of my long runs so I could pretend we were training together (she and my dad were in Colorado, I in Utah). I knew we wouldn't actually run the marathon together as we have different paces, but it was nice knowing she was going for those painful 16 mile runs too.

The training was hard on my body (as was the waking up at 3am and trying to go to bed early), but it wasn't terrible. I mean, I got to run up snowy canyons and explore dirt paths in the foothills between Provo and Springville. I had a handful of really nice Saturday runs where signs of spring shouted the promise of warm weather, where I felt totally powerful and in control of my body, where I cried listening to Harry Potter for the twelfth time on audiobook because (SPOILER ALERT) why did Dobby have to die?! And then there were the training runs where it was way too cold, where my stomach cramped, where my legs insisted they were actually made of lead and not muscle.

But I followed my chosen training plan well and was excited to have done a marathon.
Once again, past tense.

Race day came, end of April. My parents flew in from Colorado and we all geared up to embrace our chosen method of torture.

It was a beautiful day. Everything you would want in an early spring morning. My legs felt good. I was genuinely excited to be there and be running. I didn't have a goal time; I just wanted to cross the finish line.

My excitement stayed with me throughout the first several miles. I smiled. I teared up (not in pain) when Fred Weasley died at mile 10. I shifted to Meghan Trainer after Harry sent his kids off to Hogwarts. I even chatted with a few people as I jogged (mostly merrily) along.

And then I hit mile 20, the longest I'd done for a training run.
The thought hit me that I still had 6.2 miles to go.
A whole 10k.

I could feel my body start to resist my will to go on.

I took a few walking breaks but pushed myself another couple of miles.

Somewhere around mile 22 or 23, I heard myself begin to audibly yell.
It wasn't intentional. I was just trying to exhale and instead of breathing, this strange animalistic sound exited my mouth. I've made strange sounds during races before, usually in the last mile or so of a half marathon when I'm really drained, so theoretically this shouldn't have been anything new. But it never had been so hard to get my body to make any kind of forward motion.

At mile 24, I saw a biker and considered throwing myself in front of her.
A bike was too small of an object though.
A bus.
I needed a bus.
I needed to find a moving bus to throw myself in front of.
Anything to stop the pain.
Just make it stop.

I give myself an A for effort at this point of the marathon, and definitely an F for form. I'm sure I looked like a 102-year-old woman with scoliosis trying to go for a walk by herself. My mind willed my body forward (and away from thoughts of busses), but my arms felt detached, my legs bundles of mush, my stomach full of rotting garbage. So I spent the last two miles moving in a disjointed type of random motion while groaning in pain (so loudly I'm sure many bus drivers actually considered putting me out of my misery but failed to run me down because of the certain negative legal consequences).

I ran across the finish line, swearing mentally but only physically exerting noises like unto "AHHHHH" and "UUUFFFF."

It was awful.

But I had done it. Past tense.

My mom came a little over an hour after I did. She'd run into some knee problems and because my dad had finished his half marathon much earlier and still had energy, he ran back to jog the last two miles with her. It was adorable. I cried for maybe the sixth time that day watching them gimp over the finish line together, broken but finished.


I'm not planning on doing another marathon unless someone manages to make me forget the excessive pain that a marathon entails. I'll stick to my half marathons, thank you very much.

But I am very glad that I ran a marathon. In the past.


Running makes for great metaphors.
Because we all have things we slog through, desperate to finish. Desperate to be proud of finishing something insanely hard. It may not be pretty, we may be broken or ailing, but there's something amazing in that moment of crossing a finish line (assuming the desire to puke hasn't entirely consumed you). That your mind willed your reluctant body through major physical challenges.

There is something redemptive in pain. Something beautiful in finishing, even if we finish crippled. Because we are more than our sufferings and pain doesn't last forever. It will eventually be past tense. So scream and grunt and moan during any literal or figurative marathon you're completing. Anything that looks even a little bit like forward motion.

Maybe it won't be pretty. But it'll be done.
And that's okay.