Everyone knows that running a marathon can be painful. The worst part is the final 6.2 miles of the course, as your body runs out of glycogen stores, your legs turn to jelly, and your sweat-drenched head begins to thud. Every step can feel like a mile.
Another challenge comes during the week before the marathon. In those nervy days, everything starts to feel all too real and many runners get swamped with anxiety and self doubt. It’s a paranoid state familiar to professional and first-time marathon runners alike. We call it ‘maranoia’.
I’m running the London Marathon today, so I’m currently deep in maranoia. I keep worrying if I’ve prepared properly, any momentary muscle twinge makes me think it’s the onset of a crippling injury, and all I can think and talk about is the marathon.
Heaven help anyone who sneezes near me. When you’re suffering from maranoia, everything seems like it could injure or infect you and stop you from taking part. As I’ve gone about my business this week, I’ve started to watch every step I take in case I twist an ankle. When I was out shopping yesterday, I went in and out of stores as vigilantly as I did during the pandemic.
Maranoia can manifest itself in many ways: you go for a short run and your legs seem heavy and exhausted, so you start thinking that you haven’t done enough training. Then you start thinking that you trained too much. You eventually conclude that your training plan – the world-recognised training plan carefully put together by experts, which millions of marathon runners swear by – was hopelessly wrong.
You also worry you’re not taking in enough carbs, but then you remember that banana you had mid-morning, so you start to wonder if you’ve eaten too many carbs. Even the most industrial of stoners couldn’t smoke themselves into such a state of suspicion.
Your body feels weird because you taper your training volume in the three weeks before the marathon, to allow the body to recover and replenish energy stores. At the start of April, my weekly long run was 22 miles, but for the last two weeks it’s been only ten miles.
Taking it easy in the weeks before the marathon seems counter-intuitive and it’s hard to trust the process because the taper makes your energy levels so volatile. I feel drained because I’ve run so much over recent months but also energised because I’m currently running so much less.
I get into bed ready to sleep but then my mind starts racing. On Friday night, I woke up with a jolt after dreaming that I was running late for the starting line, then I couldn’t sleep because I was wondering whether I’ll be able to sleep on the eve of the marathon. I suppose it’s natural to be nervous about a gruelling challenge I’ve spent the last year preparing for, but maranoia seems so irrational.
But then running a marathon is also irrational: beautifully, brilliantly irrational. From the runners dressed up in superhero costumes, to the well-wishers telling you as early as mile four that you’re “nearly there”, and the athletes who become palpably incontinent in the final section, it’s a curious ensemble.
But as you reach that final 6.2 miles, with your legs aching and your nipples quite possibly bleeding, you only have to look up to see throngs of people cheering you on, including little kids holding out their hands to offer a high five, relatives weeping with pride and even lovely dogs barking at the excitement of it all.
It’s a life affirming experience and that’s even before the magical moment when you reach the finishing line, and all the pain and maranoia is forgotten, as someone thrusts a medal into your hand.
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