(Not) Born to Run

Out of curiosity, why do you want to run a marathon?

I’m on the phone in mid-May with a colleague in Colorado roughly fifteen years my senior. He’s an avid pickleball player and works in sports, just like I do. He’s got decades of insight around athletics, education, and event operations—most of it in major league ball clubs. We’re talking years of expertise that could run circles around everything I know. Which is maybe why his question surprises me.

“You ran the half-marathon last fall, I remember,” he says. “What makes you want to run the full marathon?”

“Because it’s there,” I say without thinking. Like a marathon is some sort of Everest—or, what the kids call my Roman Empire. In some ways, it probably is. “Look, if I live to be a hundred and I’m on my deathbed thinking back, I’ll be pissed that I ran the half-marathon and didn’t even attempt to run the full one, you know? Even if I fail, I’d rather say I failed than not try.”

He laughs.

“I have legs that work,” I add. “Some people don’t. I feel like I’m wasting a gift.”

“Good for you,” he chuckles. “I’d rather use mine to play pickleball.” And this is totally his prerogative, of course. “I guess I’m just not built the same way as you.”

This makes me wonder how, exactly, I am built that I would want to do this. I hadn’t actually considered that running a marathon is that wild of an idea. After all, a 2022 USA Running Report shares that almost a quarter of a million Americans run marathons every year. That’s not a small number.

However, I should probably qualify this by saying I have not yet run this marathon. Or even that I know for sure if I can. What I do know is how I got here.

My first Broad Street Run, 2023. (Does it rain every year now?)

First, I am not much of an athlete. I played soccer and softball off and on for years as a kid—specifically, I loved playing goalie because I really only had to run for ten seconds at a time, then kick really hard a handful of times. I was also a member of the marching band at the same time, so you could say I was a very passive athlete.

Decades later, when I played roller derby, it took me much longer to get my body to do things that other people seemed to pick up with ease. I stuck with it to challenge myself, and I loved it. But nothing athletic ever really came easily to me. What changed it all was my interest and needs.

In 2021, as the first COVID vaccines were rolling out, I wasn’t sleeping well. My body just ached all the time, and I was exhausted. Stress made it hard to get much rest. Also, COVID put an abrupt halt to playing roller derby, and although I roller skated in skate parks, it was hard to find the time to even drive to one.

All in all, I just didn’t feel good.

So, I started doing light runs every week—usually a mile or a mile-and-a-half—as a way to try to get my body to try to burn off a little anxiety. I didn’t have to drive anywhere, I just opened my front door, ran to a destination, then ran back. By the time 2022 hit, I finally downloaded a run app to see what my progress was like.

My very first recorded pace in February 2022 was a 14:49 mile.

More than two years later, it’s taken me a while to understand that I ran then—and continue to run now—for three reasons. Well, the third is more of a byproduct. But it still counts.

1. I run because it’s meditation. It’s me time. It’s time when I don’t have to answer an email or respond to a text; time when I’m not making a child dinner or analyzing sales projections. Running is a way to process things while keeping me in my body. Or, more accurately, forcing me to be in my body. I have to stay focused on not tripping—and especially as other folks who run in Philly probably can attest to, not getting hit by cars every few blocks. I am a writer and a dreamer, and I like lots of time to live in several of my own realities. Running forces me to be present and grounded.

2. The mental and emotional fortitude I’ve built through running has made me able to handle some pretty difficult stuff. Running helped get me through COVID, through the end of relationships, through the writing of my first book (then the second…and the third), through job stress, and so on. What’s more, I have had some pretty awful runs, some days when running felt impossible and painful—runs where I even cried because I didn’t think I could do it. Days where I did my best and my best was still pretty crappy. Running is humbling, often humiliating. Like any physical activity, it’s a practice. It takes work to maintain, and just getting out there and doing it has helped me become much more resilient.

3. Oh, and yes, there are some pretty cool health benefits. I am not a doctor, so please don’t take this as medical advice, but my blood pressure happens to be the lowest it’s ever been in my life. When my running training is balanced, I can sleep well. Because I’m running, it forces me to pay attention to things like water and nutrition. For example, I love sweets. But if I eat too many, I can definitely feel the carbs differently in my run. And when I go into a run fully hydrated? Chef’s kiss. I can feel that difference, too.

Though it’s tough for most people to keep doing something they don’t think they’re good at, what I’ve learned about myself is that failure is a much greater motivator for me than success. Candidly, it’s the setbacks that get me angry. And the anger gets me focused.

Running last year’s half marathon, though I finished it, I recall staring up a steep hill in West Philadelphia, thinking I was going to need to stop running and walk for a bit. The hill was just too much for my legs and my brain to handle. It was mile seven or eight of the half marathon, and I was upset with myself for not having planned for hill running more effectively.

Defeated, I tried to start walking, and when I did, my leg muscles clenched, telling me—like Churchill—the only way out of here was to keep going. I ended up walking for exactly three steps of this half marathon, then angrily ran the rest and finished with a respectable 10:19 per mile pace.

The 2023 Philadelphia Half Marathon. Can you spot me cheering for myself?

Fast forward to last month, June of 2024, when I ran my first mile ever in under 9 minutes, 8:42, then my fastest ever recorded mile—8:20. This progress is exciting, and a lot of it is due to some new weight training I’ll talk about in future posts. But running a mile quickly does not equate to running 26.2 of them in a row. In typical me fashion, I take this win, acknowledge it, then move on because there’s work to do.

So, while I was absolutely not born to run a marathon, my hope is that I can be molded into someone who can. I’ve given myself a 30-week timeline to do this that started in the spring. And while I’m not enjoying running in the Philadelphia summer heat, I’ve gotten really good at quieting the little voice in my head that starts whining when I hop out of bed to put my running shoes on.

Besides, there’s always a chance I won’t make it. That I’ll fail to run 26.2 miles. That I won’t finish for whatever reason. If that happens, I’ll just try again next year—this Everest isn’t going anywhere. And, hey. In the meantime, there’s always pickleball.

-E.V.