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First off, I am going to open this article by strongly advising you not to do what I just did this morning. By all accounts, it is quite likely to earn you some sort of injury and put you in physio for the next 2 months. That said, I ran a marathon this morning, with no training, virtually no hydration, no nutrition. Just me and my iPod. It wasn’t an organized marathon. It was 26.2 miles (42 km) on a stretch of road where every half mile and half kilometer is marked. And if you’re contemplating a marathon, this will give you a few tips on what not to do – and it will also hopefully prove that if I can do it under these conditions, then you (properly trained) should be able to achieve your goal.

MY MOTIVATION

A good friend of mine had recently trained for and competed in a large marathon. His motivation had largely been the fact that he was never any sort of an athlete. As a result, he followed a detailed training regimen for a few months, carefully adding distance to his runs. He was ultimately successful, finishing his marathon in just under 5 hours, an accomplishment that brought him to a new athletic peak and which he recounted as one of the greatest challenges and most emotional experiences of his life.

Conversely, I actually am a pretty well-trained athlete, though not any sort of a distance runner. I ran 10 miles once, and that was a long time ago. I train mostly in weights, and while the resulting musculature may look all right at the beach, it is of no use whatsoever if it is being dragged around for 26 miles as extra weight. Biceps might as well be a backpack full of sand.

Anyway, I pretty much woke up today (Sunday) and decided that today was the day I was going to run a marathon. I had nothing better planned. Why not cross off a goal and achievement from my list of things to do if I can? Hell, I’m in pretty good shape. Should be a piece of cake, right? If my buddy the non-athlete can do it… Oh, and the bad news, a lot of sports have left we with a pretty lousy back and knees. I wonder how they’re going to hold up. Actually, best not to think about that right now.

MUSIC SELECTION WILL GO A LONG WAY

That said, I was neglectful and lazy in this regard as well. I didn’t spend the last two days making my special “Marathon Tunes” playlist or anything of the sort. Like I said, I did this pretty much on a whim. But what I did have in my arsenal was a pretty solid website I regularly frequent, called Retro-Remixes. Retro-Remixes is maintained by “DJ D” and is a constantly updated site with multiple remixes of classic 80s and 90s tracks.

What did I do? I pretty much just downloaded 30 or 40 of my favorite songs from his library, each one involving maybe half a dozen remixes. I put them all on my iPod and hit “Party Shuffle.” Normally, shuffle mode is guaranteed to make for a lousy listening experience, but I have to say that over 26 miles of running, I only fast-forwarded or skipped a song maybe four or five times. Let’s give the DJ some credit.

THE COURSE

The course is a long stretch of runner’s road that runs for about 8 miles, but I quickly learned today that much of the road was closed off. That meant I only had about 2 km (1.5 miles) available to me. I would have to run the 2 km stretch there and back, ten separate times, then an additional 2 km. It would be monotonous, but it would also make for bite-sized mini-goals along the way. Should be fine.

PREPARATION

Training? Zero. I can run a mile in under six minutes if I have to but don’t ever ask me to run two in a row. Food? I had a Starbucks coffee and a Starbucks breakfast sandwich on the way to the stretch of runner’s road. Since I’m entirely on my own, there won’t be any hydration or calories along the way. No water. As I walked to the starting point, none of this seemed like a terribly important issue to me. At the time.

I reached what I had set as the starting line, mile zero, and pressed “play” on the iPod. I said to myself, “This is going to suck,” and began running.

THE FIRST 13.1 MILES

Given that my self-proclaimed unathletic buddy had managed to squeak his marathon in under five hours, I set that as my rough goal, though internally I thought something more along the lines of four or four-and-a-half might be achievable if I really gave it. During the first 13.1 miles (21 km) I passed familiar faces once or twice in my laps of the 2 km stretch, but never more than a couple times. Nobody was out here to do more than a 10 km run, and really, nobody in their right minds would be.

I kept up a pretty brisk jog, challenging myself but definitely not going at a speed that would drain me and leave me in trouble for the last, well, three quarters of the marathon. Everything after mile ten was uncharted territory. I had loaded the iPod up with songs that had catchy beats, stuff like Madonna, Rockwell, Human League and Phil Collins. Not the toughest music of all time, not something I would use to power through the weights. But when it comes to motivating one step after another, it does the job.

A couple times I passed a crew of about 40 runners all decked out in pro gear, unlike me in my cheap-ass duds, but after two laps they were done. It was a positive sign, though, that I seemed to be going their speed. In fact, over the course of the first half-marathon, I wasn’t passed by anybody on the stretch, even people doing much shorter runs. At least for a while there I was feeling like it was time for the Olympic trials. That didn’t last too long.

After about mile ten, I began to really get concerned about not having any water. I was feeling pretty dehydrated, but what was I going to do? As I approached the 13.1-mile mark, I actually considered the possibility of calling it a day, as I had now already set a personal best. I looked down at my stopwatch: half marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes. I wasn’t feeling great, like it would be easy to do the exact same thing again right now, but for a first run, that seemed like a respectable time. I gave some thought to whether I should bother continuing. I mean, why was I doing this anyway? As I considered whether to quit, I kept running, and after a couple minutes, I was committed to keep going. Otherwise why had I run those extra couple minutes?

MILES 13-18

Before long, I am rewarding myself with some brisk walking to allow my legs a chance to recover. If I keep up this speedwalking for a couple miles, I should be able to pick up right where I left off. But damn, I need some water. And one thing I didn’t take into account was that once you start walking, well, it’s hard to go back to running. It gets pretty easy to just keep walking. My feet are killing me. My back is killing me. I’ll just keep up this brisk walk for a few miles – a walk that gradually becomes less brisk.

At about Mile 17 I nearly punch myself in the head. Off to one side of the road, tucked away amidst some trees, is an outdoor water fountain. Now, who knows what has happened in this fountain, what sorts of pratical jokes or fluids have been perpetrated on this fountain by men or beasts. It doesn’t matter. It could be a bucket full of a crack whore’s urine. If I don’t drink, I am going to die.

After some gulps of water, I am feeling ever so slightly rejuvenated. My walk returns from normal to brisk. I think ahead to the end of Mile 18. That would mean I am two-thirds done the marathon and fully committed to finishing. In the meantime, I am losing ground on any sort of decent time goals I may have been hoping for.

MILES 18-24

I am struggling for motivation. Even walking slightly briskly is a chore. A well-endowed woman passes me and jogs ahead. Ugh, well, you have to grab motivation wherever you can. I pick up the pace but after a minute she stops jogging and starts walking. Oh well, I keep jogging. My feet are moving again and that’s what matters. After another half mile, my feet are too sore, my back is too sore. For some reason, my shoulder is sore. I can feel a blister on my ankle has developed and broken. Time for some more brisk walking.

It is said that Mile 20 is where the body starts to quit on you, and that is if you are properly trained. Mile 20 comes and goes. I don’t feel any worse than I did at Mile 16. It’s been pretty crappy since then. Just to convince myself that I am impervious to physical limitations, I briefly pick up the pace.

MILES 24 to 26.2

What are my legs using for fuel? I have no idea. I had barely eaten before I started and hadn’t eaten since. Any fuels stored in my muscles had been exhausted long ago and my body was pretty much just cannibalizing itself now. Had I thought ahead more than an hour at a time, I might have carbo-loaded the day before. It is pretty much just willpower being used to drive these rubbery legs forward.

In fact, there are two miles left and at the pace I have been walking for the last several miles, I will actually take more than five hours to cross the final marker. This brisk walk punctuated by jogging isn’t going to cut it. It is going to hurt, but it’s time to man up. I remember a scene from Ali where Will Smith’s character is exhausted in a fight (against Joe Frazier, I believe). He knows he has to move his legs to avoid a punch that his mind knows is coming. “Come on legs,” he says to himself, but the legs won’t respond.

Come on, legs. They begin to pick up the pace a little bit. Come on, legs. A little more. Come on, legs. I’m jogging now, as fast as I was for the first mile. And when I reach the end of mile 25, there is only one more to go. I can take the suffering for a mile. I pick up the pace some more. For the last half-mile, I am in a flat-out run. A couple miles ago, if you had asked me, I would have been happy to achieve a slow jog at this point. All right, let’s do this thing. Come on, legs.

ALL SAID AND DONE

I crossed the finish line and looked for a place to sit down. I was starving. I looked down at the timer. 4 hours, 54 minutes, 26 seconds. I had achieved my fairly modest goal of five hours or less. I tried to stand up and my legs were close to seizing. Now that my body knew it didn’t have to keep going, it was going to try to shut down on me. I made sure to do a few stretches so that I wouldn’t be completely incapacitated the following day and began hobbling back home. Of course, with my classic lack of foresight, home was a good mile and a half away. This was a very long and unpleasant walk.

The end result? I was actually pretty happy with the performance. There had been no runners to compete with, nor to provide support. No crowds to impress or bring up the adrenaline. So, at least for the way I get motivated, these were pretty much the worst mental conditions there could have been. I think I might actually do all right at this if I were to not be an idiot and prepare myself. All in all, pretty good use of what would have otherwise been a wasted morning. That said, half the credit definitely goes to the music.