The bone chilling winter marathon
June 2016
A year gone in a flash, it feels like yesterday that I arrived in Christchurch as a bespectacled professional who was weary from the long travel from home. During the initial couple of weeks of my employment I was boarding at the YMCA hostel.
This hostel overlooked the beautiful Hagley Park. A sprawling park right in the centre of the city. During one of my weekends I was fortunate to witness a couple of runners from the 2015 Christchurch Marathon. That’s when a thought struck my head. How about I attempt doing a marathon.
The very thought seems daunting, the thought of running 42kms was a tall order, but we do have to start somewhere, don’t we?
Chats with friends and family and I just couldn’t get the thought out of my head. Fast forward to just 3 months before the marathon and I had finally decided that I was going to do it. Lacking a trainer and a proper plan, I sought about structuring a rough time table of what I was going to do, basically it involved running at various paces every alternate day and I was to do a long run about 20kms every weekend.
During the course of all this, I managed to get my boxing trainer to throw down some tips and finally I decided that sticking to a half marathon would be the way to go. That way, I would enjoy myself a little more.
Every weekend the long runs would knock me out for atleast 3 days with severe cramps as my body fought to get in shape for the ordeal.
On the D-day, I biked up to the event village to get the blood flowing. It was a freezing morning, -1 deg C said the thermometer at the event village, 30 minutes later, the crack of a gun and we were off, a mass of 3,000 odd people running for so many reasons. They say Marathon is the ultimate test of a human endurance, its a symphony of mind, soul and body and I couldn’t agree more, during the course of my run and as I lapped up each km during my race, I fought against each element to cross that finish line. An experience that will never be forgotten.
I now can proudly call myself a Marathoner and I am stoked about it.
Me, Moi, The Marathoner 🙂
And there goes the Crowd, Sources: Christchurch Marathon FB page
At the Village
So many reasons to endure a Marathon :D, Sources: Christchurch Marathon FB page
A Touch Emotional, Something to show for all that I had to endure 😦
The mantra for this Marathon has been Believe, Become. When we look at it as 20 odd kilometers, it seems long, as we start to run, it seems like that we weren’t meant to run this race, it just seems so hard.
The brain tells us to stop, but shut your brain out and listen to that thumping fellow driving you forward. Run with your heart and the marathon would be achievable 🙂
related links : The Christchurch Marathon
Hakuna Matata 