How I Failed To Run The Melbourne Marathon 2.5 Times

Growing up, I wasn’t an athletic person at all.

I was that kid who got picked last when we split into soccer teams.

In gym class, when we went for runs, I was always one of the last to finish, puffing and wheezing, face red from effort, and always with a pain in my side.

Until I moved to Melbourne, I didn’t do running in any regular way at all. It seemed kind of boring.

I was a pretty unlikely person to get infected with Marathon fever. But it happened.

Melbourne

I moved to Melbourne back in March 2008, into a house shared by two of my friends. One of them, Paul, was the kind of guy who liked pushing his limits, and he decided to sign up for a 10km (6 mile) race.

And he suggested that I join.

I thought about it for a second. I had never run 10km before in my life. I tried to figure how much time running 10km would actually take. It turned out that for a somewhat slow novice runner, about an hour (give or take) would make sense.

An hour of running? That’s crazy.

But I do like experiences that push my limits. And, Paul made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. “Just try mate. Worst case, you walk to the finish line.”

So, I signed up.

And then realized it was 2 weeks away.

Immediately, the motivation of being committed started to flow – I had to be prepared for the race.

I asked a friend who ran the Marathon for some tips. He said that if I can get myself to run 6km a few days before the race, and then rest for 3-4 days, I should be able to run 10km on race day.

So that was exactly what I did. I had 5 training runs, one every 2 days or so, and I added one kilometer on each. So I went from running 2km on the first run to 6km on the last one. I wasn’t amazing, I wasn’t quick – but I didn’t stop to walk, and ran it all the way through. I rested for 4 days. Then, it was race time.

My First 10km Race

On race day, I was pumped. I felt incredibly motivated but scared. I hadn’t run at all for years up until 2 before… And now I was about to run for an hour straight? That seemed like a lot.

The race was held in Williamstown, a leafy seaside suburb of Melbourne. The course was 5km one way, then a switchback and 5km back to the finish line.

The first 5km were a breeze. Well, relatively.

However, on the way back, a glorious struggle started.

The pain in my legs and my lungs found a voice in my thoughts. A self-defeating inner monologue disguised as the voice of reason was playing itself out in my mind.

“You’re not going to make it.”
“Slow down to a walk. Don’t kill yourself”
“It’s only your first race. You don’t have to run all the way through.”

And so on.

This internal tug of war was fascinating to me. I replied to my doubting thoughts with a smile. I could finish this race, running all the way through.

But my doubts kept coming back and didn’t stop even as I saw the finish line a short way away:

“You’ve already made it without stopping. Now just walk!”

“No way”, I thought. I somehow managed to find some more fuel in the tank and sprinted the last bit to the finish line.

The feeling I had after the finish line was one of wonder. I was asking myself what more was I capable of athletically.

My brazen conclusion was that if I could train to run 10km in 2 weeks, it couldn’t be that hard to run a Marathon. It’s only 42km.

Training for The 2008 Melbourne Marathon

I pretty much decided at that point that I would run the Melbourne Marathon that year in October – 5 months away.

It still astonishes me how little planning I did and how much I underestimated the task. I just made the decision and signed up for the race. I figured the route would figure itself out.

Well, I was a bit too self-assured. My training was haphazard and inconsistent.

I didn’t have a training schedule. I randomly went for a run when I felt like it, while slowly increasing the distances I was running. I would run 3 times on a good week, and less on most other weeks.

I think I made it to 14km on a treadmill one day at the gym – which was a distance record for me – when my shin started hurting badly.

Thinking it happened due to a muscle strain, I got off the machine and stretched my legs.

I kept on stretching for 10 minutes, but the pain wouldn’t go away. So, I decided to give it a rest for that day and go home.

When I went out dancing to electronic music that weekend, I felt the pain in my shin every time I stomped my foot on the floor.

It turned out that I had shin splints – one of the most common running induced injuries. They happen when someone overloads their legs with too much intense activity too soon, exactly what I had done.

Treatments consists of, basically, a lot of rest. Weeks went by while the pain continued. At a month before the Marathon, I realized I wouldn’t be able to run the Melbourne Marathon that year.

That was the first year I gave up on running the Marathon.

Training for The 2009 Melbourne Marathon

I wasn’t willing to let go of the previous year’s Marathon goal.

Months and months had gone by and my shin splint pains were a distant memory. I started training to run the Melbourne Marathon again. I told everyone about it. It filled me up with excitement and purpose.

In retrospect, it seems clear I hadn’t learnt my lessons.

I still didn’t work according to a training plan.

Even worse. In a perverse way, I wanted to accelerate my training and get back to where I was a year before – as soon as possible.

Two weeks into training, I felt a familiar shooting pain in my right shin. “Hell no!” I thought to myself. “I’m not putting myself through months of pointless shin splints again.”

Naturally, I was pretty upset. I figured that I wasn’t cut out for “this running stuff”. My body clearly didn’t want me to run, so I stopped. It seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

At the same time, running was one of the only physical activities I really enjoyed. Every time I saw someone jogging down the street it made me a little sad.

That year, I didn’t even sign up for the Marathon.

Later that year, I was travelling with two friends in South America. They were both into fitness and went for runs every day on beautiful coastlines and in little villages in the middle of nowhere.

I never joined them, not even once. I was completely convinced that I wasn’t meant to run. Why else would shin splints plague me?

That year was the second time I gave up on running The Melbourne Marathon.

When the Teacher is ready, the Student appears

The following year, on February 2010, while working as dating coach, I was teaching a conversation course.

The focus was on making a connection during conversations. Students practiced with one another. One student would practice a conversational technique, either focused on speaking or talking, while the other provided the counter-balance.

The students were encouraged to be very genuine and honest about their lives. And so, they honestly conveyed their values, passions and so on through stories and banter.

One of the participants was a highly successful professional in the health field.

As he talked about his life, the topic of running previous Melbourne Marathons kept coming up. His stories reminded me of my long lost goal.

After the workshop ended, he sent me a personal message on Facebook thanking me for everything that he had learnt. He mentioned that if there was ever anything he could do for me, I should contact him.

A month later, in March 2010, I did just that.

I contacted him and told him how I had tried to run the Marathon a few times before but had failed due to shin pains. I asked if I had a chance to run the Marathon again.

His response surprised me.

“I used to get shin splints too. It’s a beginner’s injury and you grow out of it. It’s definitely not too late for you. The Marathon is 7 months away. You have plenty of time. Get good shoes and train with a good training program – you should be good to go.”

I guess the fact that he was in the general health field gave his response some authority in my mind. I was willing to accept it, mainly because I haven’t really given up on my goal.

So off I went to get good running shoes at a store he recommended. They videotaped my feet while running with different shoes to see which pair created the best gait for me.

I started training to run 10km again. This time, I wasn’t going to do it in 2 weeks. I signed for a 10km race 3 months away.

I started getting back to a running routine. The short distances frustrated me, but I didn’t push. 3 months later, I finished my first 10km race since 2008, and was back on a running routine. It was time to start training for the Marathon.

Training for the 2010 Melbourne Marathon

I signed up to the 2010 Marathon excited. It was going to be held on the 10/10/10 – the 10th of October 2010. It was an epic date befitting such an epic event.

This time, everything was different. I committed to a specific, 18-week training plan.

My motivation was sky high. Videos of previous Marathons or endurance athletes really pushing themselves brought me to tears.

That year, training for the Marathon was my highest priority. I fit work around my running schedule so that I don’t miss a training run.

Social life took a backseat, or at the very least changed.

The weekend was when the longest training run was scheduled. That meant no huge nights out on Saturday and often, a brutal early wake up on Sundays.

Instead of socialising in bars and clubs, I had awesome long runs with other Marathon fanatics, people like my friend Matt Callaghan. I still owe Matt big time for pushing me through training, being a friend and believing in me when I was but a running newbie. Thanks buddy!

Those weekend runs were the epic climax of every week. By noontime on Sunday, I felt like I’ve done something really big.

Furthermore, on a weekly basis, I would break my personal distance record. I whooshed past my old records. 14.5 kms one week were followed by 16km the next, and then a few weeks later, 19km.

Then, on week 8 of my program, I ran my first Half Marathon distance 21.1km. And I got to do it in an official race!

This is a picture of me 30 seconds away from the finish line. I was elated. This is how every weekend run felt.

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Most of the shorter runs I did around the picturesque Albert Park Lake in Melbourne, which has a 5km (3 mile) loop around it.

At the end of a run, I would sit at the edge of the lake and dip my legs in the cold water for a few minutes to avoid my calf muscles from cramping.

As I did, I listened to a victory song on my iPhone and visualised crossing the Marathon finish line as it played in my ears. It was my little ceremony.

Uh oh

On the Sunday of the 11th week of my training plan, I had a 25km run scheduled. I had some pain in my foot, but not more pain than I was used to.

One of the things I got comfortable with was running with pain. Most of the times, it just went away by itself during the run, slowly melting into nothingness.

This time though, the pain persisted. I didn’t make too much of it and kept running.

And at about 22km, something popped in my foot. Looking at my running app’s speed graph afterwards, sharp drop could be noticed.

I finished the run high on adrenaline, and after sitting and stretching realized I was hobbling.

The pain persisted into the following week. I gave myself some days off from training, but nothing helped.

I scheduled an appointment with a physiotherapist. He said it should go away within a week. It didn’t.

I started reaching out to people and asking for a recommendation for the best sports physiotherapist they knew. I was referred to Bernie, a very well experienced physio who was an absolute expert.

15 minutes after I got to his clinic, I had the correct diagnosis. I had “Os Trigonum Syndrome”.

The Os Trigonum is a little bone less than %10 of the population has. And, in my case, it was being crushed – like an almond in a nutcracker – between my ankle and heel bones.

The friction causes a lot of inflammation to happen around that tiny bone, which made running all but impossible.

“Would I be able to run the Melbourne Marathon, Bernie?” I asked.

“When is it?”

“In 6 weeks.”

“Well… This injury takes about 6 weeks to heal, if you stay in bed and do nothing. You can’t keep running which means you’ll lose all your fitness.

“It’s not going to happen. You should forget about running the Melbourne Marathon.”

His words came raining down on me like anvils.

I left his clinic with my head bowed. I got into the car and drove directly to Albert Park Lake.

I sat in my usual spot at the edge of the lake, like I did at the end of so many runs, took my shoes off, dipped my legs in the water and listened to my victory song. The one I planned to hear it as I crossed the finishing line…

But that wasn’t going to happen. Not this year.

Tears were streaming down my face as I came to terms with the huge sacrifices I made that year and how far I’ve come.

This was the third time I gave up on running the Melbourne Marathon.

However, 6 weeks later, on the 10th of October 2010, I stood on the starting line of the Melbourne Marathon, about to run the whole distance…

To be continued.

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