The Secret of The Fat Marathoner

 

 

          So, the most I have ever run is 5 miles. And, I thought I would die when I accomplished this monumental feat. Well, last weekend I ran a real race for the first time. I actually entered, ran, and completed a 5k race. If you are like me, I had no idea what a 5k even was. Well, a 5k is 3.1 miles long. It is the distance most high school cross country runners compete at. So, this was our goal from the beginning; to at least be able to compete on a high school level (This seems awfully silly now that I see it in black and white).

          Well our race was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. There were lots of hills on our course. Hills!!! Yikes, it was a major miscalculation that almost had me walking in the middle of the race. But, I finished, and eventually went to a social event where many other runners were gathered and only slightly modestly talking about what they had accomplished earlier in the day. The vast majority of them had not run in the 5k (my paltry level), the 10k (something I only dreamed of), and had instead run in the half-marathon.

          As I looked around the room, I could see how this was possible. Everyone there weighed 142 lbs, and looked like they had chests of iron which would allow them to run and breathe indefinitely (kind of an iron lung reference). But, then, my eyes rested on one guy. He easily weighed 75 more pounds than I did. He was laughing it up with the other half-marathoners and talking about having completed the half-marathon as well. But, what was his secret to finishing a race 4 times as far as the one I had barely just completed? What was the secret of a fat marathoner?

          He simply said, “You just pick a slow pace you can move at, and then, you move until you’re done. It isn’t that bad at all.” Seems so simple, yet how many of us run way faster than we are able, stop being able to breathe or move, then say we hate running, and can’t do it?

          I even picked up a copy of How to Train for a Marathon (or some other equally generic title) from Runner’s World, and they also said that “if you can’t breathe or carry a conversation with someone the entire time you are running, you are doing it wrong.” With this advice, I went out the very next Saturday and completed a 10k distance (6.2 miles). The fat marathoner’s advice was right on the money.