And there I am, alone in Paris, preparing myself for a marathon. My father, as a many marathon's runner, gave me basic advice. According to him, you need 3 things to get ready for a marathon : running, eating healthy and will.
The firstthing , running, I was starting. I was really STARTING, meaning the first time I ran, it was for 3 minutes and I almost fell on the floor. But I slowly realised that your body actually remember and I was able to run after a while. Past 30 minutes easy, even 1 hour then and I even ran for 1h45, so that was ok. Following my father's advice, I used to do walk, jog than sprint, and again, increasing the time I was doing it. So that was ok, or at least I thought so...
The second thing, eating, I was more or less okay, and dealing pretty adult style with my issues, so I started losing some weight and that was good.
The third thing, will, oh well, come on, it's that big a deal, at worst I'll run/walk through in 10 hours, so what, I will do it anyway; that was what I thought. So much that every other morning, I would not go for a run, telling myself I would go the next day or the day before, and so on.
You see a problem coming here ? I did not...
A month before the actual marathon, my father signed me in a half-marathon, with some friends that were doing the NYC marathon with us. Ok, that should be okay, I should be able to do that, or should I ?
HELL NO ! I wasn't ! I fell on the floor at the 4th km, last of the last, with the car overtaking me and my desperate dad. That is when the real preparing started. I am talking waking up at 5 am, before going to work at 7am, to run for an hour or so, with a lot more sprints than walks...
So basically I was on a plane to NYC, a fat girl, having run for a month only. Great. No pressure at all. With a lot of family/friends/colleagues almost laughing at me, sure I wont be able to do that.
I could not describe the feeling before the run, nor during, well I could try :). I did NOT expect those kind of feelings. First, oh my god, Liza Minelli's New York New York so loud, then the gun shot, and 10 000 thousands people around you, and it starts... A feeling of wholeness, being part of something amazing...
Then Brooklyn, soooo many people supporting us, gee I was a rock star for a day, or more like for 10 km... 15 maybe... Because after that, oh dear lord, the pain started. I struggled through Queens, and the ****ing Queensboro bridge... I thought I could have died on this one. Finally I am on Manhattan Island, first avenue... and my leg, it hurts so much, i cant bend it, i cant run anymore... thank god my father was here, I would have gone to Central Park by tube immediately! But we walked, and walked, and walked, and oh here is Harlem with SO MUCH music ! and good one ! and here we are, in the Bronx, and I am laughing, I am laughing out loud, why is that ? I guess that were the chemicals in my brain, trying to ease the pain in, well, all the rest of my body... And I am on Fifth Avenue, I can SEE Central Park. Well let's go then, let's finish this now that we're here... Oh my god it is FAR... But here I was, with friends & family surrounding me, a medal put around my neck, some aluminium cover, some photo taken, I cant quite remember... But oh the feeling :) I did it, let me call my mom !
That was IT. A fabulous lesson of life, and I was pretty proud of myself :). But, as I said it sooooo many times before to everyone, that is the first and the only one, it is checked on my list and I am done running, and even more running marathons !
We drank wine at the hotel, ate pizzas (suddenly my last months best friend, Guilt, was weirdly gone :) ) and went to sleep very early ! At 7 am, I was up, going to the reception to get a New York Times, special marathon edition. I was reading it in the elevator, and I saw an ad. A man running with the skyline of New York behind him, and it simply said :
'Today you may feel like you'll never run a marathon again. See you next year.'
That was it. I was hooked. The biggest laugh of my father so far and the classic 'I told you so' I would not have believed even 5 minutes ago...
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