There’s Hope for You Yet. How a Serial Non-Runner Turned Herself Into a Marathon Mum

Three years ago I couldn’t run a mile. And yet this time two years ago, I ran twenty-six.

How dear reader, did I do it?

First off, I started out really slow. Actually, slow is still the thing I do best. I am not a fast runner, and I will never get into these sub 3.30 times real lunatics do.

However, nine years of pushing a buggy around has given me fairly good base levels of fitness. So the first time out, when I tried to run a mile, I was pleasantly surprised to find I could do it fairly easily. Not fast, but easily.

Added to which nine years of motherhood had also given me a really high boredom threshold, so mentally I didn’t find it a problem.  As a wannabe author, I live a lot in my head (it’s a nice place, my head – I currently have several characters all competing to have their story told, but I am working on Amy and Ben’s, which one day I hope will be published as Allotted Time, a romance set around some allotments).

So mentally, I found it quite easy to get round my runs, and physically I pushed myself further and further till I was running four to five miles fairly comfortably.

My twin sister helpfully found us some training schedules from Hal Higdon’s website, and throughout the autumn we worked ourselves up to running ten miles.

I had just about managed that by Christmas, and the marathon training programme starts proper in January. You can follow: Basic (which gets you round), Real World (which I did) or Ideal. Ideal means going out five times a week and running really fast. On the time scale I had? No chance!

Real World required me to be out at least three times a week, but ideally four.

Well, most of the time I managed three, but there were frequent occasions when it was only two. The key thing is not to stint on the long runs, as they are what counts in the end. If you can’t go the distance, you won’t go the distance…

January and February were very bleak moments in my training. It was cold, I was knackered and permanently hungry. Without my amazingly inspirational twin sister, I think I might have given up. But I got through those times, and found myself increasing my mileage till I got to the vital twenty miles a month before the big day.

It was then, and only then that it dawned on me that I could actually do this crazy thing I had set out to do.

So I did.

And it was magic.