Why we race — a debrief on the LA marathon
On balance, pain, and happiness
On the same day I finished the Los Angeles Marathon, I saw this meme on Instagram: “Do people who run marathons know they don’t have to?” (_theblessedone). I smiled and instantly thought “they don’t get it”.
Fair point though because.. ..What is it exactly that they don’t get? It got me thinking why finishing that race was such a highlight. What was so special about finishing a marathon and beating my PB?
I learnt a few things in the space of a few days...
Part 1. A balancing act
As I read on runner’s world (paper version, I have no link sorry), running is indeed a balancing act. A balancing act between the miles you suddenly need to put in and your life that still goes on... A balancing act between training enough to make sure you make progress and resting enough to prevent injuries... Most of all, a balancing act between setting yourself a nice challenge while making sure it’s a positive experience and not one that fills you with guilt whenever you don’t reach your goals...
I only realise now how poor I have been at this balancing act recently.
- So I had this fairly busy but manageable schedule for February and the first half of March: a “regular” full-time job that keeps me busy 10–11 hours a day, a 2-day work trip every two weeks, a weekend away with friends in Hastings, another weekend away in Budapest, and of course, the best of the best: 20 hours of reading per week for the CFA level 3 exam (for those who know..). I decided to throw in a sub-4-hour marathon challenge with a crazy stupid training plan (which I was somehow very proud of) that consisted of running 240km in February and 160km in March. I managed to keep up until 2 weeks ago where I felt like giving up on everything. I was behind my CFA schedule, I was in a bad place at work, I was injured and behind on my marathon training goals, I felt like a failure in everything I did. That’s where I decided to reprioritise all my little projects and give myself a break.
- My training plan itself was the opposite of what you would call a balancing act. It consisted of running 5 days a week in a row like a maniac and then rest for 2 days, and then repeat. It could work with strong discipline around nutrition (being vegan), injury prevention (recovery runs, ice baths, stretching, foam rolling, massages) and a bit of core strengthening (burpees) — none of which I followed properly (read: at all). So I ran “only” 170km in February and 81km in March, mainly because by week 2 of my 7-week programme I was injured, and it only got worse with time. My spirits were crushed and my goal felt more and more out of reach.
- Finally, I forgot that it was JUST a marathon and that I am not a professional athlete, so no my life, career or even happiness did not depend on it. Whenever I could not execute my training plan because of an injury, a work trip or something else, I felt really bad and anxious. Whenever I had to stop running and go home after 5k because of shin splints, I was truly devastated. Whenever I had no pain or injury, I felt truly ecstatic, only to realise that I lost lots of my “cardio” abilities and was out of breath at speeds that felt so easy at the beginning of the training, and be devastated again. I failed at realising that this was not my world, that it was supposed to be a fun experience and not one to add to my worries.
So yes, I failed miserably at this balancing act. As the article mentions, balance and moderation are not in fashion, it’s all about the hustle, the extremes, the dedication, the madness, the Serena “crazy”. Because of this, I put a lot of pressure on myself, I injured myself, and overall I just felt quite bad about myself. Hopefully, I know now, and this will not happen again, not because of a race.
The Race
A few days have passed and I am still not entirely sure how I managed to run this marathon in 3h58m26s (5.39 km pace). While it was my goal to run it in sub 4 hour — a long-dated cherished goal actually, I could not run at this pace during any of my training sessions, for much smaller distances, except on treadmill and with much difficulty.
The course
“From the stadium to the sea” is the tag line of the LA marathon. Los Angeles is so big that unlike most European marathons, the course is not a lap but almost a straight line.
The race starts at 7am so we woke up at 4.20am as it’s a 45min drive from where we were (by the finish line!). It was really cold but luckily we started on time and at 7.01am I crossed the starting line.
The course felt easy to me but it is probably not in reality. It felt mostly going downhill. My friends and my Garmin disagreed: total elevation gain was 262m (NYC — reputably known for its hills: 166m). And add to that the heat from 9am onwards.
Yet for the first 2 miles, it was downhill (as per below), and so it was a nice way to start, and it set a nice tone for the rest of the race. I decided to take advantage of it as much as I could and definitely won precious minutes here. I did the first half in c. 1h57m (5.32 pace). I did not worry about overpacing. I figured I would go as long as my body let me. I was relieved to start running with no shin splints (my worst fear). Also, when you need it the most (i.e. last 2 miles), it’s nice going down until the very end, and that also made a difference to me.
Overall, the marathon is fairly small compared to Paris or NYC, only 18,000 runners crossed the finish line (vs 50,000). That made it easy to navigate but also a tad lonely. There were some good crowds towards the last third of the race but overall it was fairly calm, crowd wise.
The course is a lot of concrete and big boulevards. Yet it felt quite different than other cities. Maybe it’s that crazy blue sky, maybe it’s the palm trees — palm trees do scream holidays to someone living in London. All in all, it was a very enjoyable course. The good thing with hills is that you see all the runners in front of you, and it’s always a special sight for a runner to be surrounded by so many people going through the same thing as you.
The finish line is incredible. There are lots of good finish lines out there, Los Angeles (and Santa Monica) did not disappoint. As you go downhill on the last mile or so, you start to see the sea. Then the ocean is on your right for the last km. The supporters are somehow packed on that finish bit and they really scream and cheer you. As the path is very wide and runners are scarce, I personally felt all those screams and cheers were directed at me, and just like a football player who scored a goal, I asked for more cheers and claps, and they just gave it to me. It was really really magical to have thousands of people cheering me, I was suddenly flying up my pace without realising it.
Got to say: positive splits can be nice
It’s the first time I ran a marathon in positive splits (i.e. I ran the first half faster than the second half). I know a lot of people claim the merits of negative splits and all, and I have always done so myself. In all my previous races I guess I had enough in the tank to push further in the last 10k, or even the last 3k, and that’s great. And I probably was overall faster because I did negative splits. Yet for once, I really enjoyed not feeling like chasing time for the whole of the second half, i.e. constantly looking at my watch and thinking “fuck fuck, I need to push, let’s go” (ok I still did that). It was nice to think “right, I am on track”.
Part 2. Embrace the suck
“Please give me 4 extra hours”
I started the race very anxious that any of my injuries would awaken during the race, mainly: left butt pain, right shin splints, right inside ankle pain, left foot pain. Luckily none of these pains seemed to manifest when I was going downhill. However, on a flat course, when I was trying to go a tad faster, my left glute (butt) would awaken and remind me “Hello I am here”. I am not religious per se but I do believe there is a superpower out there, and I swear I looked up at the sky as we started running, and I literally asked my legs to give me 4 extra hours. That’s all I wanted. Give me 4 extra hours and I promise I will treat you better in the future. I asked again after 1 hour “just 3 hours now, please, that’s it”, and so on. Whenever the left glute pain manifested, I respected it and slowed down. In the end, it never kicked enough to force me to stop running. Given how I recently mistreated my body, I am really thankful for that.
Embrace the suck
I remember the exact moment when I decided I would run a marathon. My brother was running the Paris Marathon, it was April 2015. I joined him for the last 9km, to support him. He clearly wasn’t very disciplined in terms of keeping a steady pace as he basically ran the last 10k at a km. pace 75 seconds slower than the first 10k. As he was running fairly slowly the last few kms of the race in the Bois de Boulogne, I remember him saying “This pain. This pain I am experiencing, there are very few times in life you experience this kind of pain. It really is something”. And it was true — in our family we had been lucky enough to be healthy and also never quite pushed the limits of our bodies, physically speaking, so it was probably a fair statement. Call me a masochist, but that sentence, that’s what made me want to run a marathon. I was just curious: what did he mean?
And so I ran the Paris marathon twice, the Burning Man Ultramarathon, the NYC marathon, and yes they were all not a walk in the park. The Burning Man Ultramarathon prove the most difficult from a psychological point of view.
Physically though, I have never experienced pain as I did during the last 12k of the LA marathon. It was basically running when you just did not want to run anymore. At km30, my quads started to feel really tired — like really tired. By “tired” I mean PAINFUL — like I have never experienced after running 30k (which I have done several times). I could feel the lactic acid building up and burning me, I was already so sore.
I realised that this pain would eventually fade and be gone and that I would be left with my achievement only. I decided that my pain will be a small thing in the big scheme of things. I focused on the following to keep myself going:
- I remember what my good (very fast) friend Nick told me once before a race when I was trying to do a HM in sub 2 hours (never did btw!): “When you want to slow down, DON’T. Remember me saying this to you. Instead, just KEEP PUSHING”. It’s really basic and silly, but it’s bound to happen at every race: there is that inevitable moment where I want to slow down, and I think about him saying this to me, and I just keep pushing, as he said. So I did just that.. ..for 12km. It was a long long push.
- Like always, I identify the remaining distance to something familiar: 12k: that’s just 2 rounds around Victoria Park! 7k: that’s just one round of Victoria Park (I can do maths, it’s just that it’s 3k to go to Victoria Park fyi). 2.2k: that’s just under 14 minutes, that’s nothing. So whenever my legs burnt and hurt, I just ignored them, and I “embraced the suck”.
- I thought about all those people who could not run, and how lucky I was to have functioning legs and how I owe it to them to keep pushing.
- I thought about Kipchoge (I had rewatched the last 20 minutes of Breaking2 the day before). While he achieved something truly extraordinary, he also failed at the goal of breaking 2. Watching the documentary, you have mixed feelings of joy and sadness, thinking the guy is truly awesome and you wish he achieved his goal, while at the same time acknowledging he did an incredible performance too. When interviewed after the race, Kipchoge sends an incredible message of hope and community with so much humility:
“The goal actually was to break the 2h barrier. And I did not manage to do that. But the world now is just 25 seconds away.”
“It was hard for me to shed all those minutes. But I think it will be easy for another human being to shed those 25 seconds.”
“No human is limited.”
- I love that he believes that him shedding these minutes makes it somehow easier for humanity to do so. He truly is an inspiration and I kept thinking “Kipchoge is awesome. He runs like a god and all you have to do is run a marathon in sub 4 hour, this is nothing, you can do it”.
Part 3. Happiness
You know how sometimes you live happy moments, probably the happiest moments of your life, and you don’t necessarily realise it as you live them. I don’t know if that race was one of them, but clearly given the fact I have decided to retire from the marathon game — for a good while — well, I’ll definitely remember that “last” race.
I have failed many times in my short life so far. The taste of failure is unpleasant and familiar. Part of me entered this race thinking I could easily fail because I failed before. Some of my failures include not getting into Sciences Po after high school, countless interview rejections, never quite succeeding at running a half-marathon in sub 2 hours, and so on.
In his book, Flow: the Psychology of happiness (disclaimer: I only read a summary), Csikszentmihalyi says “Contrary to what we usually believe the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. […] The best moments occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile.”
Happiness is “flow” — a state of optimal experience when we feel in control, focused, successful and satisfied. To achieve that state of flow, we need to aim for the right level of difficulty. If the challenge is too little, we are bored; if the challenge is too hard, we are overwhelmed and anxious. At the right level, we can focus on the task and build the skills we need to meet it. The best and happiest of times will come when the challenge is hard enough and we overcame it.
I think that’s what happened to me at the LA Marathon. I took on a challenge, I trained hard for it, I faced obstacles, it was tough, I pushed my limits, and I conquered. And that’s what makes it so awesome.
