Note: This post was originally written in Chinese here. This is the English translation.
People want to keep fit and lose weight, and running a marathon is one of the best ways to achieve this IMO. I want to tell everyone with my own story that running a marathon is fun, and it does not require a strong body to be a marathon runner, and maybe you are just one or two little tricks away from being one.
Let me start with my own story.
My body is kind of strong. I ran long-distance races when I was in middle school, but I didn’t run very much in college. As a result, when I participated in 5,000 meters in my junior year, I was the last finisher. Later, in 2015, I was 32 years old and my weight was a bit out of control to 80 kg, so I decided to pick up running.
However, it was hard to be a long-distance runner. There is this one simple trick here, but without somebody else’s inspiration, no matter how smart you are, you would probably never get it. At first, I ran by myself for more than half a year, and I didn’t lose any weight. At that time I lived in Yanshan University, and every time I went to the playground to run, I felt tired after three kilometers. I ran four or five times a week, and I felt tired every day. Luckily at the end of the year 2015, my coach showed up, he was the ‘someone else’s inspiration’. A few months later, I finished a half marathon in 92 minutes, and I lost a significant amount of weight. Before that, I couldn’t open my eyes in the day even after a long night of sleep, now my eyes have been widely open every day and the world has become more clear.
At the time of writing, and running has become a hobby of mine. Although I don’t control my diet, controlling weight is not that hard for me now.
Now is the time to tell you this one(maybe two) simple trick. Running a marathon is a very useful lifelong skill. It’s a bit like riding a bicycle. Once you learn it, you will never forget it, but if you have not taken the leap of faith, you might never be able to learn it. But actually getting started is really not difficult, you can do that on your own if I can get you convinced about the two tips below.
The first one is having faith in your own body, believing that long-distance running is within the boundary of basic human ability, and you do not need to be particularly strong for running. My coach himself is 72 this year(Edit: At the time of me writing this English version, the year of 2021, he is 75, and still finds it easy to finish half marathons). A lot of people from our running group are in their 50s or 60s, some are overweight, diabetes and high blood pressure are not uncommon. But turned out, everyone finishes the 42.195 kilometers given proper 2 or 3-month training, diseases are also more or less healed. Sitting down and think of why I failed when I tried to train myself in 2015, I think that was because I was convinced that, anything more than 3km would be too much for me, definitely harm my health, or at least stop me from being efficient at work. That’s because I did not know anyone who could do more than 5km easily until I ran with everybody else from the running group, so never be too sure about anything.
This takes us to the second tip, be slow. If there is one real trick in this piece of writing, it is “be slow”. At first, I found out that running 3 kilometers was very tiring for me. I kind of figured out that I might have been running too fast, so I started to jog, but still, after 5 or 6 kilometers, I was exhausted, and the tiredness would last for days. Now it was the time when the coach came and get me inspired, I knew I needed to be slow, but the trick is how slow should I be. The answer was “the slower the better”, as a complete beginner, just go a little bit faster than walking. When my coach took me to run for the first time, we ran at eight minutes per kilometer. You know what, I could run more than ten kilometers at that speed easily without feeling tired the next day. If you don’t believe me, think about it, when we go to travel, sometimes we walk 10 to 20 kilometers a day, and most people will not feel a thing, so as long as it is slow enough, you may be able to finish the same distance by running. On the other hand, practice always brings improvement. After a few weeks, when you feel that you can run faster naturally without pushing yourself and getting your muscles tense, that is the time to go faster.
So this is the trick I want to share: Firstly, get convinced that you can do it, secondly, be slow. It seems dead simple, but without the exterior guidance and pushing, I am afraid I would never learn it. This trick is all you need to know if you want to finish your first marathon. Of course, if you want to be fast, you have a lot of advanced knowledge to learn, e.g. how to swing your arms, how to adjust your diet, and how much training before the race day. That advanced stuff is enough for a book, and I will not start here.
But besides the tricks, I think I need to tell you one thing to get you really motivated to start running. Newbies always suspect it is boring and miserable to do the marathon. But for the runners, without exception, they all love this sport very much. Sometimes I may find it torturing, but a marathon is by no means boring. Passion is the word for it.
Running helps with the releasing of excitatory hormones, I’ve heard a thing called dopamine. I don’t know what that is, but I feel that running has the same effect as seeing beautiful women or views, which makes people secrete excitatory hormones. When I ran, I feel happy. It is a fantastic experience to feel the gradual changes of my body at different phases of the whole marathon race, my body is exhausted gradually, but the pain brings more willingness to test my limits. Sometimes when I finish the first ten kilometers, I get high and only wish the course longer.
People are social animals. People who run marathons usually join a running group and run with others. I am in a running group organized by my coach. We run in Beidaihe or the Garden Expo Park every weekend and occasionally go to other cities to run. The embrace of nature during the running process is thorough, the mountains, flowers, sweat, and laughter are all part of my best memory.
Out of my own observations, I can safely say that most marathon people are addicted to it.
Now you know the trick, be slow. And how slow? Very very slow. But one last thing before I leave you, don’t push yourself too hard for the first month or so. Take me as an example, after my first 10 kilometers, I did not give myself enough time to rest, minor inflammation happened to the outer sides of my both knees, the pain lasted for more than two months. Again, it proved how important it is to be guided, if it was not for the encouragement of my coach who told me it was no big deal, I would have stopped for that period of time, and my earlier effort would be in vain. So go find your own local running community now.
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