Member-only story
Hmm… is it something to write a Medium story about? Not sure…
But since I have not written anything on Medium for a while. And this is currently fresh in my mind, I will do it anyway. Why? It might still be interesting to marathon wannabes who just want to complete a full marathon injury free.
When you are a runner you have a lot about being injury free. It has nothing to do with whether you are a novice or a pro. Runners of all levels have 50 percent chances of getting injured in any given year. Out of this 25% chance is just for injuring the knees. I just run slow as that protects from running injuries. I also do some basic strength training like squats on non-running days to strengthen my knees. There are many simple variations like air-squats, wall-sit which are really easy to do. You can search for them on you tube if you are interested.
If you are able to dodge the big one like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, it is the skeletal-muscular problems that gets you in old age. That is why having basic exercise as part of life is very important especially in the sedentary age we live in.
So last year in March-2021, I ran my first full marathon. It was Irving Marathon in Texas, which is a relatively flat racecourse so a good choice for first marathon. I was awfully unprepared because I was unable to do any running in prior two months. I have tried to communicate the knowledge I have built up over last five years of running that can be useful to new runners.
The Marathon racecourse in Irving, TX is somewhat confusing so I missed a .08 mile loop. So the organizers could not recognize my last marathon as complete. So they give me a full marathon free of cost for April-2022. But I had got the finisher’ shirt anyway! Which is really running full marathons is all about for most people!
But this time also I found that I could not do much running in prior two months. These days I typically run 6.1 miles two to three times a week. But even that did not happen in prior two months. In March-2022, my total mileage was 24.40 and in Feb-2022 it was 43.60 miles. So overall no real preparation for a full marathon.
To make matters worse, the evening before the marathon, my friend called me to go try…
