My First Marathon

This morning, I left my house at 6:30am with the following items:

• A small bag of salted pecans for energy refill
• Keys to my house and office
• My Penn ID card
• My phone for emergency
• My fitbit to keep track of distance

5 hours and 20 min and ~52,000 steps later, I have traveled 26.73mi (~43km) with my feet, roughly the distance of a marathon.

My route for completing 26 miles

I ran the first 10 miles along the Schulkyll river trail by myself, and met up with a friend at around 8:30, we ran together for about 6 miles, ended up back at Penn’s chemistry department building (where my office is).

I used my office as a service station (this is why I brought my Penn card, to get into the building), where I had some water, electrolyte, a banana sponsored by (stolen from) my roommate, and an energy bar. I drank, ate, used the bathroom quickly, and went back to Schulkyll to finish the last 10 miles.

I did not bring water with me, as I know I’d pass a water fountain on the trail at about 9 mile and 23 mile mark, and I get to drink at 16 mile at my office, so it worked out fine.

Thoughts about/from the run

1. My luck with weather & booze with friend.

• The weather was beautiful - around 41F (5C) when I started, so I didn’t sweat much, and the temperature rose up to around 50F (10C) later, it was ideal for jogging.
• I went out with friends the night before and had a bit of beer. The booze and company were wonderful, till I woke up the 4th time for bathroom in the middle of the night and thought maybe drinking the night before marathon was not an ideal thing to do. Still, good memory there :)

2. Runner’s high?

• The first 10 miles (2hrs) felt really good, I think at some point I got the “runner’s high”. It’s still unclear what causes the runner’s high - it’s believed to be beta endorphins plus some other neurotransmitters.
• It came as a surprise to me, cause running rarely feels THAT good. To me, running is more like coffee, I don’t mind the bitterness in it, and I especially like the effect afterwards.
• Still it’s different than the mainly dopamine induced “high” I feel with video games or social media, which often comes with a pulling force and an addictive aspect of desire - I want more.
• Anyway, not sure if it was runner’s high. My body loved it, but honestly I don’t know if I’d call it “high”, cause it was a pleasant yet pretty calm emotional state.

3. A marathon is both easier and harder than I thought.

• It was easier cause for a long time I wasn’t sure if I could do it - until 4 days ago, I came up with a plan/route that seemed doable, and the run actually felt easier than the first half marathon I did on an impulse, at 11F (-11C), 9 days after I had just finished the first 6mi (10k) run in my life - but that’s story for another time.
• It was harder because I wasn’t aware of how much pain I’d feel for the last 10 miles. I did it a bit on purpose - to not think too much about the pain beforehand, to stay in the ignorance bliss, or else I might get scared out of doing it in the first place.
• A side note: From my own experience in life, I think there’s an amplifying effect of our brain, in our heads the good feels better, and the bad seems worse.
  • On one side, a lot of rewards are much more attractive in our heads, and don’t feel as good once it becomes reality.
    • It’s the nature of our dopaminergic reward system - like the quote from Charles Bukowski “Love is a fog that burns away with the first daylight of reality.”
  • On the other side, the fear in our head is often amplified too - the monster under the bed becomes real if the brain believes so.
    • The thought of “I can’t do it”, is just a thought, and sometimes we need to think carefully of who put that thought in our head.
    • Sometimes friends and family will tell us we can’t do it, from a place of love and care and protection - they don’t want to see us get hurt, and sometimes we just gotta take their love and ignore their advice.

4. It’s supposed to hurt.

• During the last hour, my thighs and shins and calves were shouting pain, and I was struggling. I reminded myself that a marathon is twice as long as the longest distance I’ve ever run - it’s supposed to be hard, and in a weird way the pain is a reward - it’s the medal I get after putting in more than 20 miles.
• Be silly, be stupid and don’t overthink - go out and make mistakes. It’s supposed to hurt. Failures are among the best teachers out there.
• Like Ginni Rometty (former IBM CEO) said “Growth and comfort don’t coexist.”

5. The cliché is right, it’s about the journey, not destination.

• Here’s what I hope to remember about the run:
  • The cherry blossom was beautiful along side Schulkyll. The pedals were flying and dancing in the wind as my friend and I ran by. It reminded me of a very old Chinese video game called “仙剑奇侠传”, when the heroine dies at the end (oops, spoiler alert), the cherry blossoms flew all over the screen.
  • My roommate’s banana at 16mi tasted amazing.
  • The water from the fountain at 23mi tasted incredible.
  • After more than 5 hours of running, I finally got home, and celebrated with a small hot meal, some coffee and a no-fun-keto snack bar. Then I put on warm clothes and fuzzy socks, sat down and wrote this thing as my futile effort to capture life’s good but rare moments like this.

Recently I’ve been feeling a ton of stress as I try to wrap up my PhD and graduate, but it’s moments like these that made me think: “Life’s good, and I’d be an idiot for not enjoying the heck out of it.”

Special thanks to the friend who kept me accompanied for 6 miles, my roommate for the banana, and friends I had beer with the night before. I love you all. ♥

Grey

2023/04/08, at Philly