My Marathon Journey Part 2
As a nature lover and mountain runner, the idea of running a flat road marathon around the industrial part of the city, alone, was rather hilarious. It was the stark opposite of my comfort zone, but hey, growth never came from comfort zones.
My Marathon Journey
The idea of running a marathon was a huge part of what got me into running. It is the first distance I 'trained' (loosely at least) for, and ever since crossing the line of my first one in 2015 I have been enthralled by the beauty of it. I ran my first one almost entirely with my head, just to prove to myself I could.
Self-Experimentation: Embrace Your Inner Nerd
This is where the term ‘being an N of 1’ comes in. When scientists start an experiment, they require two things; a well-considered hypothesis (what they think will happen on the basis of past evidence) and people to test it on (known as the ‘n’, for number of participants). Being an N of 1 essentially means coming up with a hypothesis that’s personally unique and meaningful for your goals, and testing it properly on yourself. When building a hypothesis, make sure it’s trying to answer something you really want to know and that you genuinely think could benefit you — that way it’s easier to stay motivated and have fun with it.
Nurture your body, invest in your mind.
Whether you have any degree of disordered eating, mental illness, or not, we all have an inner critic that can both drive and destroy us. Athletes can use it to our favour; our inner critic can spur us to attack and persevere through hard training. But currently, many of us have more time alone with our inner critic, don’t have our usual outlet of competition to keep self-criticism constructive, and have less ability to properly debrief with our social supports. Not to mention increased social media use and opportunity for downward self-comparison! This perfect storm can lead to focusing on insignificant and unhelpful outlets, such as food, body image, excessive training or worse.