The first man to ever run a marathon died immediately after. It seems his message went to voicemail because millions more have tried, many successfully and thousands have died trying. Why is it so hard? Well cause you run 42km or 26.2 miles. Put simply the human body was not designed for such an ordeal. If your struggling to conceptualise that distance here is a handy photo of the route.
The next logical question is why! Why would any sane, God loving, Lagos traffic dodging Nigerian take on such a task? Well I can’t give you an answer to that but allow me to instead carry you on a little journey on how I decided to run and marathon and to share some of the valuable life lessons I picked up along the way.
So like everyone at some point in their life I always thought it would be great for me to get fit. I like most people joined a gym and as per usual went for a few weeks stopped and then kept paying for months after because cancelling my membership would require me to admit failure and make me a pussy quitter. Other times I set myself an elaborate timetable and did the first 2 days, never to return to the plan again. But at some point in late 2017 something changed. I met a lovely Vietnamese lady called Liz that agreed to be my personal trainer and that bring me life lesson number
1) Get help!
It’s nice to think that we can do it all with will power but hey even Beyoncé has a voice coach. Back to the story so me and Liz trained very well for a few weeks and then it happened I got another one of my crazy Genius ideas and thought why the hell not run a marathon, you only live once right? Before the idea could settle my brain scanned the records and pulled up the file of when I heard of a nice young lady with a promising career who died running a marathon. Life Lesson number 2;
2) Somebody has died/failed doing pretty much anything you can think of. Don’t ever let the fear stop you. (except you are jumping out a plane without a Parachute)
That being said its ok to take your time and start small. So before I let myself over think things, I went online and paid for a ticket to run the next half marathon I could find. Life lesson number 3;
3) Commit yourself so you have no other choice.
(as Sun Tzu wrote in the Art war, On Death ground [a place of no return] the men fight the hardest)
Not wanting to die run alone, I managed to talk one of my friends into buying a ticket to run the half marathon with me. With the help of my new BFF Liz I then began training. Running long distance is weird because it hurts while you go through it but when you’re done you feel like the birth child of Superman and Wonderwoman riding on Godzilla!
One week before the race I get an email/text to say the race has been cancelled because of the snow. My friend who had not been training all this while couldn’t have beep more devastated happier. He collected his refund and happily shelved the dream of putting his body through that bullshit. Life Lesson no 4;
4) Shit Happens, find another way. (if can go over, go under, go around or my personal favourite blow that shit up)
Having trained for weeks I wasn’t about to give up, a quick google search later and I had tickets to the Sheffield Half Marathon in 2 weeks. The time flew by and boom it race day, flanked by Liz and another friend (In life don’t expect everyone to turn up) I marched my way to the starting line. To be honest I took comfort in seeing some of the fat big bodied people there because I thought to myself, God knows if they can run this then so can I.
Running a Half Marathon.
How can I sum up the feeling? Well first there is the adrenaline and excitement from the realisation that this is finally happing. Then you get to the point where you start to feel the pain and are heartbroken when you lift your head up only to see that you are only 10 km into a 21km race. I will be honest I might have dropped one (super masculine) tear while running (Obviously because it was windy). Somewhere close to the last 5km a random old guy clearly seeing the distress on my face offered me some kind words of wisdom which we shall call life lesson; 4.5 “Take it like a Man”.
It snapped me out of my self-pity and sulking phase and helped me regain some sense of control. I had set myself the ambitious target of finishing the race in under 2 hours and although I had to sprint the last 3km and yes I did have to jab some innocent people out of my way (PS: My apologies old white dude). I actually made it. I was ecstatic! It took me 3 days to regain full functionality in my legs, but like ever over ambitious young man with more heart than sense. I started thinking about running the full marathon almost immediately. Why!? Because “Half” of most things in life is just pathetic:
“I bought half a house” “I half kissed Beyoncé”
You see it’s ridiculous
Running the full Marathon
Less than 6 months later I messaged another good friend of mine who I knew does a bit of running, here is a screen shot of the exchange.
In truth I should have been a bit more suspicious when someone agrees so easily to running 42km non-stop. Because due to some ‘cool story’ he cancelled on me 1 day before the event. This was very unnerving; in truth I guess I had looked forward to having someone by my side on this long journey. Let me add I don’t blame him at all, poor dude had work on Monday so why stress himself. That leads me to Life lesson no 5 which is pretty much the same as lesson number 4
5) Shit Happens, Don’t be afraid to go it alone.
Now is a good time to mention that 2 weeks before race day I had pulled my MCL (important muscle in my right knee) and couldn’t do any running for 2 weeks prior to race day. I didn’t go to the hospital because I was sure any reasonable doctor would have told me to park the idea of running a marathon on an injured leg. So instead I bought pain killers strong enough to sedate a horse, some muscle spray and some bandages determined that even if I had to crawl across that line I would. I was understandably scared though, I could completely tear my MCL which would require an operation to correct, and might never heal the same again. Which brings me to life lesson number 6
6) Don’t be afraid to take risks (Just make sure they are worth it)
Now I can imagine someone saying how is it worth it to risk being hospitalised and potentially damaging yourself forever to get a fake ass gold pendant. You are right I can’t defend the logic. But if you ever drove drunk, had unprotected sex (without testing your partner) or did any drugs you can shut right up.
It was fun to start with but quickly got very tiring and painful. There were plenty of moments where i asked myself WTF are you doing! Despite the pain i pushed on surviving mostly on the cheers and mad support i got because I decided to run in my NYSC Uniform (Yep I ran in my full 7/7 with Jungle Boots!). During the last 5km I had to call two friends for encouragement, one was very loving and told me she had no doubt I would be able to finish it. Crazy thing was she was laying flowers at her little brother’s grave at the time and still answered my call and offered me encouragement (some people are phenomenal). The second was my guy friend who I called while I sat on the floor certain I couldn’t continue. That conversation was less sweet, he told me to shut up and stand up and finish what I started because “nobody sent me message“ or something like that. Both were a blessing! At this point I have to reiterate life lesson number one.
1) Get Help! (No one on this fucking planet is the badass they appear to be from far, we all need somebody sometimes to lean on.)
I fished the race and It took me 7 hours (it should have taken me 4) but at least I still got a medal. I also got several egg size blisters, leg pain, body pain and lost one toe nail for my efforts. I was filled with a great sense of pride despite the pain and felt fulfilled for a short while at least, until that voice said “you have to try this again but this time without an injury”.
The final and arguable most important lesson I learnt from running a marathon is this
7) Practice, Practice, Practice
By my estimates in the one year leading up to my marathon I ran over 1000km, basically I ran 1000 km to prepare to run 42km, that sounds crazy but in truth it’s the only reason I was able to run that 42km even when my body failed me. Of that 1000km I ran many kilometres were on days I felt great, some were on days I would rather have been anywhere else. I ran some of those 1000km at incredible pace others I basically walked but the main thing was I did them. Its why I intend on writing so many articles, some will be great, some terrible but I will write`. The day I finally write a book, it would be phenomenal even if I write it upside down.
In conclusion life in many ways is a marathon;
· Full of Ups & downs, moments of pain & Joy.
· You meet people along the way, some you overtake, some overtake you. To be honest some of people you overtake will overtake you later on and Vice Versa. Don’t be filled with pride or don’t be disheartened. So long as you can say “Yes, I did the best I can” Then fuck forget everything else.
Here is the weird part in the end when you hit your goals you’d probably just end up wanting something else. But that perfectly fine if you remember to enjoy the journey. In closing enjoy the rollercoaster of life and and choose to be happy and help as many people as you can along the way.
PS : I will be running the Abuja marathon in December feel free to #joingang
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