I've been getting a lot of people talking to me about this crazy event and most of them say various versions of the same phrase:
'I could never run a marathon.'
Excuse me? Why not? You think I can run a marathon? Do you think I came out of the womb and ran a victory lap of the hospital? No, of course not. What makes us so different? Nothing. I started at the same place as everyone else - absolute zero. I couldn't run a full minute without wheezing like a busted radiator. I couldn't make it through ten minutes of my training cycle without sitting down on a bench and praying for death to take my sweat-drenched soul to a higher plane.
So when people say that they could never run a marathon, it bothers me. Because you can. Anyone can. All you need is time to practice and figure out how to train your body. Everybody starts from the same place, even machines like Usain Bolt, or human-dolphin hybrids like Michael Phelps. You start at zero and build up.
It's the same with everything - running, working out, painting, reading, tying shoelaces, cooking, sewing, writing, acting, everything - you start from zero and work up. The first time you do it, you'll wonder what the hell you're doing wrong. Your first attempt will never turn out the way you think it will. But that's okay! It doesn't need to be great. You won't paint the Mona Lisa or write War and Peace or run twenty six miles on your first time. Not your second or third, either.
But with time and practice and hard work and dedication, you can run a marathon. You can paint the Mona Lisa. You can do anything you want. A quick bit of maths tells me that I've only been running for a total of seventy-two sessions. Probably less because I haven't always managed to hit three times a week. Just think about that. I started running in painful, shuffling, embarrassing thirty minute sessions after work. Now I'm running for ninety minutes. Still don't have a clue what I'm doing, but I'm doing it.
For me, running was just a hobby, a way to get extra steps on my tracker for the workplace fitness challenge. I never took it seriously, even when I finally ran for thirty minutes without sitting on a bench to quietly die in a sweaty heap. In fact, I'm still not taking it seriously. If I do that, it won't be fun anymore.
That's all I did to train. Thirty minutes, three times a week. That's the length of one film, split across seven days. Not a huge time investment. Not a big ask. Not a massive burden. Thirty minutes is nothing. It's the length of a commute to work. One TV show. Half a lunch break.
So when people say to me, 'I could never run a marathon', it gets under my skin. Why couldn't you? What's holding you back? You have two working legs and the ability to stand upright - you could run a marathon if you wanted. What do you do instead of running? Do you sit down in front of the TV and spend your free time slowly wasting away? Do you paint the Mona Lisa or write the next War and Peace? (If you do either of those, fair play...) I'm the same - I spend hours every week sat in front of my computer, or playing videogames on the sofa. But I know that these things aren't enhancing my life, so they have to take a back seat to training.
My point is this: nobody is telling you not to run a marathon. Nobody except you. Don't go through life beating yourself up or telling yourself what you can't do. Anybody can run a marathon, all it takes is practice, like everything else in life. By the time April 28th comes around, I'll have been running (or jogging, or painfully shuffling, whatever you want to call it) for a fraction over eleven months. I have no formal training and no long-term goals. I'm going to keep running and try to stay in shape for as long as possible. That's all I'm going to do. Hell, I have no idea if I'll even continue this fitness regime after my wedding next year. Once the ring is on, I'll shove doughnuts down my gaping maw until my wife is forced to shop for wheelbarrows to help me move.
But even when I'm running and gasping and wheezing through the streets of London, I will still remember how it all started and how bad and painful and difficult those first few sessions were. I started at zero and worked my way toward this incredible goal. Eleven months, three times a week.
If I can do it, anyone can.
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