I ran a half marathon on Sunday.
The Hackney Half. Thirteen miles around London’s hip East End.
I hadn’t trained. A quick Google shows you should start training for a half marathon at least twelve weeks in advance, slowly increasing and decreasing the length of your track and pace. There’s surplus dietary advice available, too. You should carb-load for the four days leading up to the race, and arm yourself with isotonic gels to suck on throughout the race. Then there’s your running shoes and clothes…
But thanks to my three-month New Zealand trip film Camp Be Better, I didn’t train. Instead, I went for a five-kilometre run last week, ate some pasta the night before, and told myself I’d stop running if I felt like I was risking injury. Ego be damned!
But hey, I did it. I finished it. Not a bad time, either — 2 hours and 10 minutes! I was stoked. The final stretch was gruelling. A proper unfun time.
🏃 Why Do I Run?
Upon hearing I enjoy running, most people have this face: 🤨
Confusion, suspicion, stupefaction. “How can you enjoy running?” “Do you actually enjoy it, or are you just saying you enjoy it?” “What’s enjoyable about it? Is it the chafing? The painful joints? Or do you like getting uncomfortably puffed?”
My genuine answer is that running is the closest I’ve ever gotten to giving my mind a break. I’ve attempted meditation. About three years ago, I meditated every day for three months. And guess what? I didn’t feel any of the positive effects I was told I’d feel! I’d given it a damn good go, but I am simply shit at it.
Running parallel to my journey with meditation was my journey to find the right exercise. I need to exercise. Like, we all need to. I have an auto-immune disease that is slowly trying to immobile me. It’s called Ankylosing Spondylitis. It’s a form of arthritis that attacks the spine and tries to turn it into a hard rod of bamboo. And the best form of therapy? Exercise.
After flirting with weight training, pilates, swimming, boxing and yoga, I found the most effective form of exercise to ease my back pain to be running. My rheumatologist was surprised by this but when I asked if I should stop, he said, “Hell no. Keep going. Everybody is different and every body is different. If running works for you, do it.”
My affair with running started as a necessity. But oh, how the relationship grew.
Now, running gives me time off from thinking. The first couple of kilometres is always a grind, but after cranking music in my earbuds and pushing through, my mind slips the noose and wanders.
Usually, I think about whatever story I’m writing. With Camp Be Better, I had a playlist and as I’d run, I’d imagine what the characters would be doing for each part of the song and what camera angles I’d want to cut to.
Music is a shortcut to emotion so I’ll often tear up when I’m imagining a particularly emotional beat between characters, or my adrenalin kicks in during certain parts of songs when I imagine a character standing up for herself or having some sort of epiphany.
An hour will pass and I’ll barely notice the pain in my legs. I’ll come away from the run bubbling with ideas of what to write next or how to improve a draft.
✨ What Got Me Through?
Yeah so, the half marathon.
Full disclosure, and I’m sorry if that sounds unbearably flippant, I found the first eighteen-nineteen kilometres of the half marathon pretty chill. Because I knew the track was twenty-one kilometres, I didn’t let myself even think about getting tired until I’d made it over halfway. I’ve never run more than twelve kilometres, so this surprised me. I think the atmosphere helped a lot.
Over 20,000 runners participated and we were all doing it together, so the air hummed. Spectators crowded the sides of the roads, holding signs for their loved ones and cheering on everyone who passed by. Kids had signs that said, ‘Press here for a power-up!’ and held out their hands for high fives. People had bowls of gummy bears and sour worms that runners could dip into for a sugar hit and sure, they were likely Petri dishes of bacteria, but I went for it.
At the nineteen-kilometre mark, my legs decided they’d had enough. I felt like I was running through water. With perfect timing, my friend Kendyl appeared on the sidelines. She wasn’t an apparition brought on by exhaustion — she and my partner had come along to cheer me and some others on — so I waved and mouthed, ‘Fuck me’ and she laughed. Seeing a friend gave me the boost I needed to keep going, head held high, for another minute.
Then, my watch told me I’d completed my twenty-first kilometre. Which meant the race was finished! … But it clearly wasn’t. I approached a corner, dozens of people jumping up and down yelling, ‘You’re almost there!’, and thought it must be over now — I’ve finally made it. But as I rounded the bend, the road stretched out ahead of me into the distance. My watch had lied to me; the GPS was somehow wrong. The finish line was still far in the distance, around more corners, completely out of sight.
That’s where my real struggle began. I put my earbuds back in (I’d taken them out so I could soak up the atmosphere for what I thought was the final leg) and played a song that I knew would juice me up. I tried to imagine a scene, putting mental images to the music, but it didn’t work. Little fireworks started exploding in my vision. My gait flagged and my pace slowed way down.
Then I tried visualising finishing the race. How would it look in a book, to a reader’s mind’s eye? Or from a camera? How would I edit the footage, and to what song? That helped … a bit. And then my mind said, ‘I don’t care about your dumb music or imagination. I want you to stop running.’
All my tricks had failed me. Nothing seemed to take my mind off the fact that my body wanted, badly, for me to stop running.
The only thing that stopped me from giving up was that — simply — I wanted to finish.
🏁 The Finish Line
Five life-sapping minutes later, I rounded a corner to see a swarm of spectators packed together on both sides of the road. Up ahead, the finish line! I couldn’t even enjoy it. I plodded down the road at a snail’s pace, unable to summon any more gas in the tank for an explosive finish, and slithered over the finish line.
Nobody was there to cheer me on — my partner Jules who’d popped up at various places along the track had messaged earlier saying, ‘shit, I’m rushing to the finish line but I think you’ll beat me!’ — so I hobbled my way to a field and stretched, sipping on the canned water they give you as a special treat upon finishing. I took a photo for a fellow runner who somehow didn’t look anywhere near as exhausted as I felt. All around me, shaky-legged people stretched and creaked. Nobody cared about what I’d just done except for me.
This didn’t bother me at all. I was damn proud of myself. I’d given myself evidence that I could do it. More ammo for my already big ego. Always nice to have.
Later, when I found our group of friends, we all celebrated and told each other we were amazing, and the external validation felt nice. We walked to a pub and drank some beers in the sun and people who spotted the Hackney Half 2024 medal around my neck said, ‘Oh well done!’ and then went back to their conversations.
Jules and I walked the hour home (I know, after all that running I still chose to walk a further hour home?) and talked all about how it went. I was on a high, telling her what a wonderful feeling it was seeing her on the sidelines, how enlivening the crowds were, how scary it was seeing people passed out being tended to by paramedics, and how stoked I was that I’d finished it.
✍️ What About Writing?
Now watch with admiration, reader, as I seamlessly parallel my experience of running a half marathon with writing a book.
Just like running a half marathon, when writing a book, keep in mind:
- Preparation helps, but the level you do is up to you.
- There’s a lot of advice out there. Take what you find helpful and ignore the rest.
- Music lubes up the imagination. It can make you emotional or give you a kick of adrenalin.
- Getting to the end is hard and you might feel a strong urge to give up. But remember that you want to finish, so finish.
- It helps to have support. Ask some friends to cheer you on when you need it.
- Inner pride trumps external validation. Do it for you. Nobody cares about your work as much as you do, and an accolade (like a medal) will garner only a passing eyebrow raise and a friendly, ‘Well done!’
- It’s totally worth it.
With lust and thanks for reading,
Emerson.