Get Ready for a Marathon

By Jessica Greif

"I could never, ever do that."  Have you ever thought those words, or even said them aloud?   I have, hundreds of times.  I've always been a sitting-down type of kid, more curl-up-on-the-couch-and-crochet than run-around-outside.  I always wondered what the point was.  Why get all sweaty and tired out when you can be warm and cozy inside?  In fact, I confess that I am writing these very words stretched out on the living room couch with a blanket over my legs and my laptop balanced on top of them.   So a marathon wasn't at the top of my list.  In fact, it wasn't even on my list.  Marathons are for crazy athletic types, people who don't know their own limits, who disobey the laws of nature-human and the outdoor kind-to train for months on end and ultimately subject themselves to hours of...of what?  Travel on foot to a destination that would be far more conveniently reached by motor vehicle?  Potential injury and dehydration-or worse-just so they could say they'd done it?  Not quite my style.  And yet...I couldn't stop thinking about it. 

The surest way to get me fired up about doing something is to tell me I can't do it.  And that was what I had told myself.  "Oh, yeah?" I started saying back.  "Oh, yeah?  Well, just watch me."  And I suppose that was how this odyssey began, how I found myself logging on to marathonguide.com and reading the runner comments and settling on the Flora London Marathon, which will take place on Sunday, April 13, and will, like all marathons, be 26.2 miles long.  I decided to walk the marathon, because I'm not a runner and have no desire to become one.  As of today, a little over two-and-a-half months after I began my training, I have walked 165.18 miles and burned 18,375 calories doing it.  That feels pretty good.  There have certainly been days when I had to talk myself into going out to train-mid-January in Brooklyn is pretty darn cold-but having the marathon to look forward to has, so far, been enough to keep me going.

And so, with this marathon project as my inspiration, I offer you a guide to following your dreams and doing things you never thought possible:

1. Have a specific, concrete goal.  "To be better at guitar" is not a specific, concrete goal.  "To start a band in which I am the lead guitarist and play a gig between now and the end of the school year at Coffeehouse X" is.  If I had merely decided "to get in shape," I'm not sure I would ever have gotten off the couch.

2. Seek support.  Whether it's a guitar teacher to help you with tricky chord progressions or a group of friends to jam with, there's no reason to reach for your dreams alone.  I recruited my dad to train for the marathon with me, and even though we live 200 miles apart, we regularly bemoan the weather or talk sports drinks on the phone or over e-mail.  It makes a big difference to know I won't be walking for six or seven hours by myself when Marathon Day comes.

3. Break your dream into manageable chunks.  Thinking big can be daunting if you don't take the time to divide your project into smaller steps.  Start by putting up posters at school for band auditions, then hold some rehearsals, agree on songs to work on, etc.  If I had gone from thinking about a marathon one day to trying to finish one the next, I doubt I would have made it without some serious difficulty.

4. Don't play small.  Sometimes, particularly as women, we are taught to undervalue our accomplishments and what we are capable of.  When someone says: "Wow, you walked 10 miles in this weather?  That's incredible!," I am tempted to say that it wasn't that hard, that I was dressed warmly, that I'm sure they could do it, too, and all that self-effacing nonsense.  And the more I say it, the more I believe it.  It's time to leave that lifestyle behind.  When someone is impressed with you, why not be impressed with yourself? What you are doing is difficult, and you are putting in the time and effort to get where you want to be.  That is utterly worthy of praise.

And so, with that, I send you off into the world to dream as big as your imagination will allow, and know that you have the power to make anything happen.  If I can do it, so can you. 

Follow Jessica's training progress at unlikelymarathoner.blogspot.com.