There will be no crowds to cheer us on. There will be no mass start. There will be no mass warm up. There will be no queues for the toilets (not a bad thing). There will be no high fives on the route. There will be no people with signs urging us on. There will be no hugs at the end with my running buddy. There will be no goody bag at the end. There will be no one to hang the medal around our necks. But there will be a marathon on Sunday. And my friend Jeanette and I are going to run it.
Virtual runs, like the one we are doing this weekend, can never replace fully the atmosphere you get on the day of a real race. The nerves, the excitement of the runners massed together at the start, the approach to the line awaiting the bouncing heads to start and know that you are about to start running and embark on another timed adventure. But virtual races are pretty much all we have these days, and for me, a virtual marathon will be the toughest of challenges.
At the start of the year, I had no real thought of running a marathon in 2020. In 2019, I had run further than I had ever done in a year and after completing the Barcelona Marathon in March last year – and having such an incredible experience doing it – I thought I might never run another. And if I did not, then that would have been such an incredible, memorable way to end my marathon career. My blog about that race day is here
But then this year happened, and running became my solace; my place and space to think, to relax, to put the stresses and challenges of the day behind me and spend some time doing something for me. Lord knows there were plenty of days where the main thing which kept me going was the prospect of going for a run in the evening. But even then, I did not think there would be any races this year. Real or otherwise.
“the challenge I find so crucial to maintain motivation”
However, the rise of the virtual race – where you run a certain distance on your own (or with a small group of others) – has come to offer the only real opportunity to set a goal and provide the challenge I find so crucial to maintain motivation.
The Dublin Marathon is one that I really would like to do, but as this year it moved to a ballot – where you have to apply and then hope your name gets drawn at random – I did not even think about entering. But it, like almost every other race this year, was cancelled and then the organisers made the decision to transform it into a virtual race. Run the distance in your home town, but do it knowing that others are also challenging themselves at the same time as you.
I signed up towards the end of July, spurred on by a friend who had run it twice previously and was all ready to make it three in a row this year. By that point, I was already running very regularly. As I am no longer travelling with work, I found it easy to slip into a training plan of running five days a week, including a long run at the weekend of anything up to half marathon distance and more.
“I really began to feel the benefit”
Though I found running the longer distances in the summer months much more challenging than my previous marathon training – the two others were Spring marathons so the training was through the winter – as the temperatures cooled down and we moved into Autumn, I really began to feel the benefit of those warm weather miles in the bank.
Jeanette was training for the Amsterdam Marathon so we began to do our Sunday morning training runs together. It was due to take place last weekend, but also got cancelled. However, Jeanette decided to keep training with a plan to run the Dublin race with me too. Having trained on my own pretty much for the previous marathons I have done – certainly for the long weekend runs – it has been a real pleasure to run together as the mileage has built and built.
“the hard work is done”
The last week has been full on taper time, that part of training where the hard work is done and it is just a case of keeping things ticking over before race day. This does not mean not running, but it does mean scaling things back massively from what we were running a couple of weeks ago. It has also meant quite a lot of time resting with my feet up and eating loads!
Last Sunday was our last run of any serious distance before this weekend’s race, so we ran a ten mile route, which, in distance terms, felt really short. However, I chose to make the route as hilly as I could to deliberately make it hard. In fact, the elevation gain for the run was around the same as we will face for the marathon course!
The other advantage of doing a virtual race is that you can choose your own course. In our training we have run on almost all the big hills in the city, including our regular three mile hill to get back to our houses (we live quite close together). In planning the route, therefore, the last thing I was going to do was finish on an uphill section. It is impossible to avoid all the hills, of course, but in choosing the route, I have tried to make it as flat as possible. A marathon is difficult enough without making it even harder than it needs to be. My favourite place to run in the city is along the beachfront, so we will finish down there.
But when we get to the end – and we will get to the end, I am sure of it – we will be met by our families (hopefully) and that will be it. No fanfare. No sprint to the line and hearing the beep of the timing chip registering for the last time as you complete the challenge. No marshalls pointing you to the water points or to the volunteers congratulating you and giving you the goody bag and the medal.
There will be none of that. But in many ways, because there is going to be none of that makes the challenge all the more special and meaningful.
Marathons do not just happen on the day. They are made when no one is watching. They are made on the cold, wet Wednesday nights when you drag yourself out the door to tick off another training run from the plan. They are made on the days when the last thing you want to do is run. They are made on the days when it is a struggle. We have been through all of that. We are stronger for it. Both of us have run two marathons before. We know, in our heads and in our hearts, what it takes to run twenty six point two miles. And on Sunday we hope to make it three. We are ready.
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