Up to a couple of years ago, had anyone told me that I would one day take part in the Malta Marathon I would have rolled over on the floor and laughed my kidneys off. You see, whilst I’m entirely capable of staying up all night drinking wine and sipping on margaritas, discussing Tolstoy and the most recent current anthropological dilemmas, I’m a complete twat when it comes to physical activity.
As a child I loved to play outdoors. I used to cycle and toss a ball around every chance I got, but I was never disciplined or interested enough to take up a sport and compete. I certainly wasn’t going to give up my weekends to train for some big game or race, and later on in life, my love for the outdoors and sweaty pleasures gave way to the temptations of snuggling up with a good book, my feet up in high places, sipping tea and eating biscuits.
But last Sunday, lo and behold, I jogged for more than two hours, covered a distance of more than 16km, pulled a muscle I didn’t know I had in the first place, sweated through three tops, and swallowed a significant amount of sunblock.
Like thousands of people I was out pounding the streets, clocking up the kilometres, and getting my final long run in the bag in time for the Malta Marathon on February 23.
I’m doing this against my better judgment, against every single cell in my body that is screaming at me to give it a break, but above all I’m doing it for charity because unlike the many hard-core athletes and runners out there, doing it for myself seems futile and a tad self-indulgent.
Here’s what training for this gruelling event has taught me:
When it comes to physical hardships I am incapable of being my own motivation; I need to have something or someone else in mind to do crazy things for. That’s how I’m wired. I need moral justification so I’m doing this to raise funds for Inspire.
I’m not a morning person, and no matter what my motivation is, training first thing in the morning is never going to happen. Never, ever.
My body screams, shouts, and cusses like a sailor. Most times I ignore it and plod on but sometimes it reacts like a woman scorned and makes me pay with my own skin.
When I first started I couldn’t run for longer than one minute, but then I went from five minutes to half an hour in one full swoop. Clearly the threshold was 95% in my head.
Training with someone will put your relationship to the ultimate test. So as an alternative to finding a patient and interesting training companion who runs at I pace, I invested in 200 hours of audio comedy and a heart rate monitor.
Forgetting to drink after an hour’s run is entirely possible.
If another big-boned wobbly person comfortably overtakes me on the Sliema front, I might have to break their leg.
It never gets easier - you just learn that there’s about 20km between that moment when you feel like you’re going to die to when you might actually kick the bucket.
Taking part in a marathon does not make me an athlete. Athletes run for the sake of running, to achieve their personal physical and mental goals, and I am not one of them! I’m still sane.
To prove it, after the marathon I will slowly but surely revert to my cosy little cocoon with a book in hand and my legs perched high until the summer months.