Lessons From a Marathon

“Life is like a marathon.” Dad used to always recite this adage to me. I can’t remember the specific contexts, but he would use it whenever I was upset about something to tell me that everything will be okay. As a metaphor, it made sense. Life is long, like a marathon. And because it’s long, there’s going to be room for error and opportunities to make a comeback. As I heard it repeatedly over the years, its meaning gradually faded and I simply received it at face value — as words of comfort and nothing more. However, the past couple of years have been especially hard, for the world, and for me personally. Though I used to think these words as a rather stale form of consolation, they have surfaced quite frequently in my mind during moments of difficulty.

A few months ago, when I was at a low point mentally and emotionally, they found their way to me again. However, instead of feeling better, I felt frustrated. Frustrated, because for so long I had taken them for granted, and the effect they used to carry was no longer enough to revive my spirits. Frustrated, because ironically the person who used to say those very words to me was part of the pain. So, I decided to understand these words more thoroughly, by understanding through the best way to understand anything — experience. I signed up for a marathon to really know what it’s like, to be able to extract lessons from the process and enrich the meaning behind those five words I’ve heard so many times before.

I signed up for the race in August, and it was going to take place three months later in Philadelphia. I had exactly 14 weeks to train, which was quite ambitious considering I hadn’t run all that consistently the past few years. Before I began training, I set a few rules for myself. Safety was first. After my half marathon, I couldn’t walk straight for weeks after because I didn’t train properly, so this time I did a lot of research to minimize injuries. The second was motivation. I wanted to run this race for myself. I have always wanted to run a marathon, but subconsciously it was always to make other people proud, like many other things I do. This time, I wanted to make myself proud. The last rule was honesty. At the end of each day, I would color code the grid in my training plan based on whether I completed the exercise goal. Green meant I completed it, orange meant it was completed but with a slower pace or a shortened workout, and red meant I didn’t complete it at all. When there’s no one to keep me accountable, I had to keep myself accountable. It was tempting at times to round up so that a whole row would be green, but seeing the reds and oranges forced me to confront the shortfalls and pushed me to work harder the next day.

Slowly but surely, I got back into running. As the weeks went by, my long runs started getting longer. When I hit 11 miles, I could hardly believe it. Once upon a time I had trained a whole summer to reach that mileage, and now I was there in just three weeks. For someone who could barely run a mile, this was already an achievement. The fourth week, however, I encountered my first roadblock. I came down with a bad sinus infection and was coughing non-stop. It was then that I learned my first marathon lesson: control. I had to understand what I could and could not control. I was upset that I lost a whole week of training and was annoyed that I seemed to have gotten sick for no reason. But annoyance wasn’t going to alleviate my cough, so instead I did everything I could to get better as soon as possible. By the next week, I was back at it.

For a while, things were going well. I did a half marathon, then 15 miles — the most I had ever ran. But just as I was gearing up for my next challenge, I hit another roadblock. A day after my 15-mile run, my right shin started to hurt. It was mild at first, so I lightened the training load, though that wasn’t enough. By the time Sunday arrived for me to do my long run, I could barely put pressure on my foot to walk. Reluctantly, I gave myself the following week to rest. It was extremely difficult to not run, knowing each day that passed meant another lost day of an already shortened training window. I made drastic changes to my plan, replacing runs with biking to sustain cardio capacity. Every morning I woke up hoping the pain would miraculously go away, and when it didn’t, I would grow more antsy. By the third week of this lull, I was mentally preparing myself to withdraw from the race. It just didn’t seem realistic to me that I would be able to keep training. I told myself I’d give it one more week, one more week of religious icing and stretching before I called it quits. That week, I learned my second marathon lesson: patience. When my training was thwarted, it was easy to become distressed, but practicing patience calmed those anxieties and allowed me to stay productive in alternate ways.

Eventually, I was well enough to start training again. By then, I had only 5 weeks left until the race. I was eager to get back and pick up right where I left off, but after all those painstaking weeks of recovery, I forced myself to take things slow. This was my third marathon lesson: pace. That first week back, I only ran 7 miles for my long run. Though the distance was relatively short, it was a stepping stone for the following week when I doubled that mileage. Pacing myself was critical for easing back into training and eventually, completing the course on race day.

In the last few weeks, I slowly but surely built up distance. Because I had lost 4 weeks, my plan looked very different from the original. Nevertheless, it got me to where I needed to be, and by week 13 I had reached 22 miles for my long run. Throughout my training, the long runs became my favorite day. I usually ran through Rock Creek Park, a beautiful nature reserve stretching from DC to Maryland. On a Sunday morning, the park would be alive with families celebrating birthdays, friends cycling together, and couples going on a stroll. As Autumn began to settle in, the entire park transformed into a golden sanctuary. One morning, the park was rather empty of people. As I ran, chipmunks dashed among the fallen leaves, birds chirped up a symphony, and a buck and doe gazed steadily at me just several feet from the trail. At one point, I heard some ruffling above me in the trees then felt a big thud on my head as a pinecone rolled onto the ground. As I turned the corner, a ray of sunlight shone onto some leaves drifting down from their branches, illuminating their yellow into gold. I will never forget that morning. It was days like this that made the long runs so enjoyable, and from them, I learned my fourth and fifth marathon lessons: look up and be present. It’s good running form to keep your head up, but I do it not just to maintain posture but to enjoy the scenery around me. I stopped wearing headphones too so that it was just me, my thoughts, and my surroundings.

Finally, race day arrived. The morning was chilly, but the skies were clear. When the gun fired and I took my first steps, I recalled the lessons I learned to myself. The first half of the race was pleasant. I made sure to keep a steady pace and observed the quiet city-scape. It had been over a decade since I visited Philly so I was excited to get a tour throughout the race course. As we winded through the streets, the city began to wake up and more and more people came out to watch. The second half felt longer than the first. By mile 18, I was no longer observing the scenery and focused on motivating myself to keep going. Earlier I had felt a sharp pain in my left foot which I hadn’t felt before. When it didn’t go away, I slowed down the pace. The pain came and went, but by mile 20 I couldn’t ignore it any longer and stretched as I took some sips of water. Even that small pause went a long way to helping me finish the rest of the race. The last mile was by far the longest. Though people had been cheering us on throughout the entire route, it was that last mile when their yelling and clapping and cow-bell ringing gave me the boost I needed. I kept looking for the finish line in the distance but couldn’t find it, so resorted to my inner will to push forward. As I passed my waving, clapping, and screaming friends, I knew I was close and sprinted to the finish line.

The end was rather anticlimactic. I took my last two steps of the race and slowed down to a walk as someone handed me a foil wrapper and another hung the medal around my neck. I stumbled through the racers’ tent and grabbed a bottle of water before plopping down onto the ground. I was done. I completed the marathon. My body didn’t feel like itself but a big smile stretched across my face. I was on the other side, which had seemed so far away just hours ago, even farther away a couple of months ago, and almost impossible a few years ago. Reflecting back on my training, did I ever doubt that I was going to finish the race? Honestly, no. For some reason, from the moment that I decided to run this marathon, I knew I would cross that finish line. Despite the short training time, the sickness, the injury, at no point along this journey did I think that I wouldn’t. So here was my last marathon lesson, and perhaps the one that I needed the most: I can do anything if I set my mind to it. It sounds like a corny motivational quote you’d see printed on a pillow, but for a while now I have doubted myself for various reasons, and finishing this race was my way of proving to myself that I have what it takes, and because of that, I made myself extremely proud.

The rest of the day was a blur. By the time I got home I was exhausted and hungry even despite having eaten a few hours prior. As I collapsed onto the couch and flipped through the photos my friends took of me after the race, I burst into tears. Seeing those photos, I felt like I was looking at somebody else. I saw a young woman with a big glowing smile, arms stretching the foil wrapper behind her as if she was flying, biting into her new medal, and surrounded by a group of friends who all came to support her. She looked invincible, like she could take on anything the world threw at her. I cried because she looked so genuinely happy and proud of herself, and it made me happy to see her happy, to see that she finally did something that made herself proud.

While training for my marathon, I was dealing with difficulties in my personal life that ironically paralleled the setbacks in my training. There were times when I felt completely defeated and desperate, times when I felt like I wanted to quit. But in those moments, I would think about the hills I had overcome during my training and how I pushed myself through; I would remember the lessons I was learning, which gave new meaning to those five words and helped me to remain patient, look ahead, and have hope. After filling out the last grid on my training plan — green for completing the race — I admired its imperfection and saw how it mirrored life itself, with the planned trajectories, the sudden pivots, the highs, the lows, and everything in between. There were numerous other lessons I encountered on this journey, but I won’t recount them here. Like life, I think everyone’s marathon is slightly different. Though I would expect most to agree that there is something special about persevering through the grueling pain, pushing over the hills and the doubts then flying down with arms open, seeing how far you have come, and basking in the overwhelming emotions at the finish line. It is a testament to not just the strength of the body but also of the mind.

Finally, don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that everyone needs to run 26.2 miles to understand the meaning of “life is like a marathon.” I did to internalize the lessons they carry and experience them in my own way. And I am very glad I did.