There was that time I had the brilliant idea that I should try to run a full marathon. Now, this would have been a fair goal if it wasn't for one tiny detail; I am and always have been a terrible runner! When I was a child and teenager my worst nemeses had always been gym class ("humiliation class" was more like it!). I even remember one specific incident when I was about 12-13 years old and our gym teacher had decided rather brilliantly that we should all run the 400 metres around the athletic training field and have our times meassured and compared! How great! (irony might occur). For me this resulted in my rather pathetic attempt to drag myself around the 400 metres field while panting like crazy and trying not to look too much like I was in terrible distress (how did you think I succeeded? Take a guess, come on!). But of course, at the end of it I had to go ask my teacher "so how did I do?", knowing my performance had been neither fast as intended nor elegant - to which she replied "I just stopped meassuring because you were way too slow!". Gee, thanks, just what an insecure teenager needs to hear.

Now, taking my questionable history as a runner into account, running a marathon wasn't really in the cards for me, one would have guessed. But the thing is I only need to be presented with an extreme example of an activity I am terrible at before I am intrigued by it (because that's just how I function as a person). This is exactly what happened. In the fall of 2013 I watched a two hours documentary on Discovey Channel about the North Pole Marathon (yes, there is such a thing!). Apparently every April, about 50 runners venture to the North Pole to complete a marathon in minus 30-40 degrees celcius - and learning about this event was just about enough to get me interested in running! I have a thing for cold places combined with tough excercise, and now with the eventual goal of completing the North Pole Marathon in hand (just need to raise the 12.000 Euros for the entry fee, no biggie!), I was motivated like ever before to find out if I could even run a marathon at all. Having also a passion for ancient history, the original course from Marathon to Athens that started the whole thing  in about 490 BC (the one the Athenian soldier Pheidippides dropped dead doing) seemed like an obvious choice to me for a first marathon (save for the fact that the first 32 km of the total 42 km course was up hill - yeah, I had forgotten to check that out before signing up!).

Marathon Day!

On the day of the run, I hopped on the bus early in the morning, heading for the city of Marathon. I was a nervous wreck, but I believed I had done my research to be properly prepared. I had trained for six months (yes, I kow you are supposed to train for longer, but that's all the time I had), and I had read up on dietry advice and had brought my own supply of gels and energy bars for the race. I was less convinced about my leg's ability to carry me through the 42.2 km course, as my longest run up until that point had been just 25 km. Also, I had not trained for uphill running (hey, don't judge - Denmark is flat!), and I had been forced to change shoes just a week and a half prior to the run. This had been necessary when I had discovered that there was no support left in my worn out old running shoes, which had resultet in hip pains that lasted for a few weeks. So yes, I guess you can say that dispite my best effort to get ready in time, a few things definetely hadn't gone according to plan. Nevertheless, crossing the start line I felt great, and I could tell I was having a good running day right from the start!

The route was excruciatingly long, but I was mentally prepared for that, and I kept stuffing my face with energy gels every 30 minutes all throughout the race (those things are disgusting - seriously!). The gels did wonders to my stamina and much to my relief, I never hit the dreaded "wall" that runners talk so much about. At 21 km I was a little behind my usual half marathon time, but with all the hills, that was expected. I wasn't trying to finish fast, that would have been utopia - I was really just looking to finish! At 34 km, I ran into trouble (see what I did there with the wordplay!) - the muscle in my left calf started to twich and I felt like it was going to snap, so I stumbled and was now limping to avoid putting pressure on the muscle. At this point a woman came up to me and told me that the race medics were right at the edge of the road and I could come to them for help - I declined, fearing they would pull me from the race. Later, once I had long crossed the finish line I learned that what they in fact do is to spray something on your muscles that makes the cramp go away so you can keep running - dammit, I would have liked to have known that!. Instead I took to limping the remaining 8 km. About 4-500 metres before the finish line at the olympic stadium, the cramps stopped though, and gave me the pleasure of crossing the finish line at 5:40:23 without limping! The run left me unable to walk or climb stairs for two days though, but still - victory!