Coronavirus- "a marathon not a sprint". 🏃♂️🏃♀️
Hey friends, I keep hearing that the race we’ve all been involuntarily entered into is a ‘marathon not a sprint’. I’ve been chewing on this for a while so, having run a few marathons recently, I’ve jotted down a few thoughts/tips 🤔 and if it helps, great, if not, well it was good for me to get it down in writing and it helped me process a few things in my own head.
Caveat: I’m not an expert. I’m not a scientist, coach, athlete nor healthcare professional. I’m a guy in his mid 40s who’s run a few marathons - I’m in the middle of doing 15 in 15 months, with 6 down and 9 to go. It’s been a real journey of self-discovery and I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. I thought a few of these may be applicable to our current situation so I share these insights/ramblings in the vain hope they might be mildly useful. 🙂
1. Develop a Marathon Mindset. I encourage us to not set off at 100m or even 5k pace. We may look back on the weekend just gone as being the ‘easiest’ of the lot, we did a few fun things as there was lots of good weather, Mother’s Day 💐 to enjoy, the children hadn’t started home school yet, and the fact we were not quite in lockdown yet. There’s lots of ideas on social media of ways to keep us and our families entertained and healthy. But really we’re in the very early stages of what is going to be a marathon - or even an ultra-marathon. So we need to save energy- emotional, mental and physical- 💪 for the hard yards which are yet to come, and will be gruelling. That advice might not so quick in coming; the sun may not be shining; there may not be anything to celebrate and the end may not be in sight. Nothing prepares you for that period between 17-23 miles when you’re really aching 😬 and the finish line is a long way off. It’s so important to pace ourselves and to get our mindset right.
2. Control the controllables. There’s things we are in control of, and there are things outwith our control. On race day I can control the race I run, no one else’s. I can’t control whether the aid station has orange lucozade and not blackcurrant🍹. I can’t control what the government impose. I can't control whether Coronavirus comes to our village, but I can control my attitude, the prevention of its spread by washing hands, educating children, keeping my distance, being resourceful and not complaining that I’m having to eat a can of kidney beans mixed with spaghetti as I couldn’t get hold of lean mince and Parmesan cheese to make a proper bolognese.
3. Take on board the encouragement of others🙌 , and offer encouragement to others too. I ran my first marathon in London in 2014 and without doubt would not have made it round the course without the kindness of strangers, people you’ve never met urging you on as they call the name on your shirt. And I’d have never made it through the first six of the current 15 marathon challenge without the support of close friends, families, co-workers and co-runners 🤗 . Helping to prepare, offering lifts, dropping texts, sharing training runs. And it’s great when a fellow runner shouts you encouragement, as we’re all in it together. It’s the same now. Get people around you, reach out to those you’ve not seen for a while, not everyone is on social media. it does us all good and helps you run the race. As a family we are trying to call or WhatsApp one group of friends or family every day, this is already helping build up mutual resilience which we all need. Do call me or message me if you’d like to, I’m not going anywhere soon! 👍The truth is, we are cheering each other on in an endurance race we never expected to be running. The difference to the usual marathons is that we are all running it, whether we are young or old, fit or unfit, rich or poor. We need that encouragement now more than ever and we will need it in the weeks ahead. So 'keep encouraging each other, just as you are doing.'
4. Stick to a good nutritional plan🍽; let’s eat well, so far as the shops’ shelves will allow us, and let’s not binge or blow out on the first lap. We need our immune systems to be as strong as they can, so let’s resist temptation to over eat or drink ‘because what else is there to do’. It’s true the weekends will bleed into weekdays and vice versa, but if you tend not to drink alcohol or eat certain foods during the week, keep your discipline now more than ever and enjoy Friday evening and Saturday evening drinks 🍻🍸 as you would usually. I've learned a lot more about nutrition and preparation for marathons recently (thanks Peter Cheeseman) and it makes a big difference.
5. Enjoy the sights, sounds and smells. Always early on in a marathon I try to take in the surroundings ☀️ 🌳 🦅 . Where possible during this time, breathe in the sunshine and the smell of the flowers and sound of the birds, it will be uplifting. So take photos, record your kids playing, the sound of nature if you’re lucky enough to go outside during this time. This will also help us build resilience against ‘injury’ or other problems later in the race.
6. Wear the right kit👕🥾... If Saturday was day 1 or mile 1, what does day 20 look like three weeks from now - or day 36? Be prepared- I don't mean panic stockpiling but prepare other resources. Can you cook something now and freeze it in case one of the family needs you, or your neighbour needs it next week, or if you or your partner/family are ill/ quarantined? What’s going to hurt you most? Can you plan ahead and mitigate it? For me running marathons it's at 20 miles and it’s bleeding nipples😱! So I put the plasters on before the race. They seem pointless for 20 miles and you literally feel a bit of a t*! 😂 but thank goodness I put them on. It's agony when you leave them off. Are there things we need to put in place to prevent 'injury' later on in this race?
7. Prepare your route 🗺 🧭 - again this is easier said than done in the current situation. But do you have a plan as to which room you’ll quarantine yourself in, what you’ll do with the kids’ food if you're unable to cook, how you’ll cope if a family member elsewhere is severely ill or dies, and you can’t visit? Have you shared your bank website login details with your nearest and dearest in case you can’t access anything for a week or longer? It's worth having some awkward discussions😬 now rather than leaving it too late😥.
8. Recognise that there are many more bumps to come. The first few miles may be reasonably smooth but the blisters will start, they’ll be rubbing🥵, and it will be painful, so be prepared for the things that annoy you most to be really hurting after a few days or weeks - do what you can to prevent it, but know what helps to cure or soothe it too. If you're an introvert🤫, how can you get time alone? If you're an extrovert👐, how can you share your energy when you're cooped up indoors? In a marathon you may expect there to be an aid station at 15k but when you find that it's at 15 miles (21k) it can be a real shock. 6k is a big difference - so you may have to dig in for those extra few miles unexpectedly😬. The race maybe longer than you thought. When I ran the Portsmouth coastal the mile markers were not syncing with my GPS watch; in the end I ended up running 27 miles not 26. It was agony in the last mile. it took 11 long minutes but felt like 11 hours. Be prepared that the markers are wrong and we may have to run further than we thought.
9. Celebrate the small successes. Getting through every day is a win! 🙌Getting to the end of our first ‘school day’ yesterday felt like a good success. Just like going past every mile marker, or getting to the first 5k, or reaching a certain landmark. Celebrate the small things - a few of these added together make us feel good that we’ve achieved something bigger and helps us towards the main goal. 🏅
10. Listen 👂 to your coach. Many of us are not specialist healthcare professionals. I’d never run a marathon before 2014 but had a coach who had, and she guided me through. Her experience was vital particularly when I hurt my knee four weeks beforehand and thought it was all over. But I trusted her and we changed the training plan and made it through🙌. Clearly no-one has been in this position in our lifetime, but our coaches i.e. the Medical Professionals and Chief Scientists have studied epidemics and pandemics for years, and they have a far greater understanding of how we prevent it, mitigate it or in time cure it, far more than I do. So if they say isolate or distance ourselves we should trust their judgment.
In closing I totally get that these analogies have their limitations; for the majority of us marathon runners it’s because we’ve chosen to run it and/or we’re a little crazy😜, we’re running for charity and we have our different motivations. Mine can be found at www.marcathon.blogspot.com
But the reality is that we’re running an endurance race 🏃♂️🏃♀️we didn’t choose to run, and as such we’ve not done months and months of training ready for the big day. That’s true, there’s nothing we can do about that. So even more so we have to get our minds and bodies ready for the long run ahead.
And develop a marathon mindset.
love and strength to you all.
M
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