The beginner: Carol Williamson
A few weeks ago we whinged on about the downsides of training for the
marathon and it's true there are a good few. Of late, not many of my friends have escaped the interminable boredom of me banging on about how far I ran yesterday, how far I am going to run tomorrow and how thoroughly over it all I am. And yet ... there are some great things about signing up for this insane event too.
For every depressingly drizzly morning running along Embankment when you can barely see the London Eye, there is bound to be a morning when the sun shines as it rises, illuminating Tower Bridge and the Thames, and you realise what Wordsworth was on about. London is actually quite a beautiful city and running round it has made me more aware of that - experiencing moments of physical joy in your surroundings are rare, but a fair few of mine have been when training for this marathon in one of the London parks, on a sunny day.
The other great side-effect of all this training is the attendant weight loss. After years of yo-yo dieting, detoxes and mad starvation plans, I am now eating well-balanced, nutritious meals three times a day without even thinking about it. The weight has come off slowly and steadily and I really wish I had figured out earlier that eat less and move more is all the dieting advice you really need.
The best thing about all this training though will be the day itself, if I can show that a bit of application and determination can get a fairly average body with no innate athletic ability round 26.2 miles. That will be pretty special.
After all the highs and lows of training, actually completing the event will leave a sizeable hole in my life - I suspect it could almost be like a bereavement. But I'm really, really not going to sign up for another one ...
The improver: Matt Kurton
In a Guardian interview earlier this week, Ronnie O'Sullivan talked enthusiastically about how running "clears his mind". The words struck a chord because I was wondering what to write about the highs of training for a marathon – and, by extension, of running in general – and this everyday phrase seemed to offer a particular insight.
Running always clears my mind, brushing away the early morning cobwebs or helping me relax after a dodgy day, but there are times when it clears my mind in a way that nothing else can. On days like that, I'll look back on a run and be unable to remember whole sections of the route. That's not to say I get the most out of running when I'm not aware of it – if anything, the opposite is true. It's as if when I'm most aware of the buzz of running, a switch turns to autopilot, and I relax completely. You wouldn't know it to look at me, puffing along and sweating, but it's probably as close as I get to meditating.
There are plenty of other, more straightforward pleasures too, like the peace and quiet, the solitude, and getting to watch the comings and goings of the seasons. At this time of year, the scenery changes every time I go out. A herd of cows wandered across my path a couple of weeks ago, carefully guarding newborn calves, and I've been watching a swan sit tight over a nest of eggs since the same day. As a runner you double up as a free-roaming explorer, and it doesn't even matter if it's raining, which is always handy.
In terms of the best bits of training specifically for a marathon, it's always satisfying to feel your fitness improve, and to realise that a distance which seemed impossible a few weeks ago has become manageable without you even noticing. The sense of achievement that comes with completing the long training runs is a big highlight for me, as is being able to eat huge platefuls of food (although admittedly not a tendency I tend to limit to times when I'm training).
And then there are all the things to enjoy on the day itself, from the small pleasures – like the unique sound of hundreds of pairs of trainers padding along on asphalt together – to the fact that every single person there has their own personal goal in mind, and that those tens of thousands of individual dreams add up to a giant sense of camaraderie and shared purpose.
Spend too much time thinking about it and, like any sport, running starts to make less sense. It's absurd, really, to leave home and run 20 miles, only to end up back in the same place you started. It's fairly bizarre to set yourself a target, strive towards it for months, and then – whether you achieve it or not – to set yourself another target and start the whole process again. Haruki Murakami, the marathon-running Japanese author, compares the process to pouring water into a saucepan with a hole in the bottom, and he's got a point.
But he didn't mean it as a criticism. He just knew that, as I've said before, for a lot of people running becomes an addiction. That's certainly the case for me, and I've got no interest at all in hunting down a cure; there's just too much I enjoy about it. Whatever happens in London, you can guarantee I'll be back for more, lacing up my trainers, reaching for my own holey saucepan and getting out there to start clearing out my mind all over again.
