#RunVan Update 2 – My History With the Marathon

I’m currently training for the 2013 BMO Vancouver Marathon and am one of the official bloggers. Each week I’m providing updates on my training and experience leading up to May 5.

My journey to running marathons was a very random one.

One day in the fall of 2009 my sister told me she would be running the BMO Okanagan Half-Marathon in Kelowna. I guess I thought ‘well if you can do it, then I can do it‘ and registered for the half-marathon on a whim. I went to the start line with ZERO training. I had bad shoes. I had no concept of nutrition during running (‘What’s a GU?!‘). I had probably never run further than 6 or 7km in a single running effort before. Looking back, its funny how little I knew about running. I finished that race, but it destroyed my body and I posted a miserable 2:15 time.

I remember loading my dishwasher 3 days later and my back seized up to the point where I could only walk bent over, like a very old man. The doctor figured my spine had suffered enough stress that my whole back became swollen/ inflamed to limit mobility and reduce risk of getting damaged. But I quickly recovered and moved on, putting running behind me.

Then a few months later, during Christmas dinner, my Uncle mentioned he was going to run the full BMO Vancouver Marathon in May 2010. I guess I thought ‘well if you can do it, then I can do it‘ and registered for race and a whim. However, this time I decided to do some training.

On Jan 2, 2010 I started training for my first marathon, the BMO Vancouver Marathon. I grabbed a training book for newbie runners which made the sole promise of getting me across the finish line. The training was very basic. 4 runs per week. 3 during the week, and 1 long run on the weekend, with the distances gradually progressing each week. That’s it. There were no tempo runs, interval runs, hill training, fartleks, striders, strength training, core workouts…. nothing. I didn’t even know what those things were.

The first few months sucked. I never saw the point of just running. Why do it? It’s so boring. I had always played competitive sports, but never understood why people would just run for running’s sake. There was no point. No person to chase down and slide tackle, no ball to kick, no heated rivalries, no winning. Only pain.

But I stuck with the training, and slowly but surely I was able to go further and further without needing to stop and walk. At first I could go 10km, then 15km, then 20km….. Eventually even the constant back-pain that had accompanied my training subsided.

I can’t nail down a specific day when my mindset changed, but all of a sudden I found myself looking forward to the training runs. 3 hours of running around the sea wall in Stanley Park? Let’s do it! I’d throw a banana and a sports drink in my car, run laps of the park and refuel after each lap.

Before long race day came, and the whole experience was a blast. Very, very painful (as you can witness in the top photo), but a blast non the less. I wrote a kilometer-by-kilometer recap of my race and the thoughts going through my head which you can read here. Looking back at that post, apparently the first thought in my head was ‘My nipples are going to bleed’)

I finished my first marathon and took some time to rest… and then I did something weird. I started running again. My original plan was to run a marathon and call it a career. I just wanted to be able to say I’d run a marathon and that was about all the motivation I had. But I soon found myself signing up for races for this crazy thing I heard about called trail running. Trail running would be the final straw, I was completely hooked. I ran through the end of the year, and have since continuously tried to improve my times at the marathon and other distances.

In my second year I really pushed my training, and had another great experience at the BMO Vancouver Mararthon.

I’ve now run a total of 3 marathons – all of the the BMO Vancouver Marathon. My time are:

2010: 4:14:25
2011: 3:29:56
2012: 3:16:43

So that’s it. Just 3 marathons over a course of 3 years for a total of 126.6 km. Not an experienced marathoner by any stretch.

But, in that time I’ve also amassed over 5,000km of total racing and training, on the road and trail.

Hopefully this year I can get my time down to 3:04:59.