The 4 months of training passed quickly. It was fun at times, but not usually. You go out at first, excited by the novelty of the activity and of your goal. Excitement gets you through the first couple of weeks. As the weekly distance gets longer and longer, you start to grasp what a marathon means. By that time, habit and giving yourself the benefit of the doubt is what keeps you going.

People around me had the most peculiar of attitudes. Running a marathon does not shock them, nor does it seem like a very big deal. “You’re running a marathon in two months. That’s nice”. An understandable lack of interest and cynicism about actually meaning what you say have never been so apparent. Stating your intentions and giving your word never means much these days. Running a marathon is a one person sport, but it does not have to be a one person experience. I got the sense that solitude is what I should expect when trying anything out of the ordinary.

Two weeks before the marathon, I ran 20 miles. The run was way less rewarding but it taught me something interesting. Doing it when no one is watching, when you’re only accountable to yourself is a must if you want to get through the training and have fun.

Soon enough, marathon day morning greeted us with cloudy skies. Thousands of people were at the starting line and the crowd spread as far as I could see. I could not even make out the starting gunshot, by the time we crossed the starting line, the first runners had already started for more than 5 minutes.

Mile after mile passed as the crowds got more sparse. The sun turned into a cold drizzle which, by mid race had numbed my hands. People turned out even in the rain to cheer us through our efforts.

The race actually started during the last 10km. After all that pounding, my feet felt rubbery and moved at their own will. It was harder to stop than to keep going. Every step was painful, yet there was something so familiar in that pain. Every movement was robotic yet very fluid.

As a race, the marathon is very peculiar. There are people all around you, and it’s considered to be a singles sport. However I got mixed feelings about this throughout the race. You pick your pace and you end up around people going it the same. Sometimes, you lose sight of them by going too fast or too slow, or stopping for longer at an aid station.

Finding them again later on is very refreshing. You’re all like comrades doing something painful just for the hell of it. You are brothers in a fight against yourselves.

By the end of the race, things change. During the last 10km, a lot of people are walking. Passing them is a great morale boost. They’re not enemies or anything. You’re not happy that they’re suffering. The fact that you can still keep your stride and pace just makes you feel more motivated to keep going.

The last few km are the longest. During mid-race, I was unaware when 5km had passed. By the end of the race, I was hoping that the km signs popped up every time I turned a corner.

Finishing did not give me a high orders of magnitude greater than what I felt during the race. Running, it seems, is its own reward.

What you get, however, is the feeling that you just “know” you can now do anything. It’s not something intellectual, which anyone can rationalize. It’s something very visceral and superb. Self-confidence without any hint of arrogance.

Thinking about what I had just done made me burst into laughter. I could not help it. It was happiness.

I was in Bucharest during the second week of training.
My schedule was different than the routine I had in London. I barely realized
that because of this, I skipped a run.

S: 3mi
M: 4mi
S: -
L: 6mi

The 6mi run seemed incredibly easy. On the last mile, I felt as if I could continue running for at least a few more miles.

Deceptively simple, yet the short 3mi run on the third week seemed incredibly hard. I have no idea what’s going on and why that happened, but it seems I should not underestimate the long runs anymore.

Food

I have not paid attention to the fool I ate and when I ate it and this seemed to take its toll.
Sometimes I ate something right before running, such as an orange. This made me feel so bad during the run that I felt I was going to vomit. At other times, I just ate 4-5 hours before running and this left me little energy for the run.

It seems that the best thing – for me at least – is to eat a carb-rich meal 2-3 hours before the run.

Warm up

Stretching seems to help before the run. After the run, it’s a no-brainer, but before the run, it’s my favorite way of warming up.

One of the best things worth doing before the run is joint warm up. I use the Pavel Tsatsouline program called “Super Joints”. Done right, the techniques “warm up” your joints and act as a stretching and gentle cardio work-out.

Everything started Friday, the 23rd of January. Vladimir and I went for a run. One lap of the Greenland Docks seemed like such a long distance. We started at a pretty fast pace that, by the end of the run, had got even faster. I never paid any attention to the distance or the time it took us to complete a lap.

The book said that before starting the official training, one must be able to run non-stop for 30 minutes. Let’s try that, I thought. 30 minutes of running ended-up being 2 laps of the Greenland docks, about 3 miles. It felt pretty hardcore. I had not run in over a year.

Yet having got that out of the way, I felt a lot more confident in my capabilities. Sure enough, I did the runs of the week feeling better and better, both physically and psychologically. The first run was 3 miles, the second 4 miles, the third 3 miles and the fourth 5 miles. I had never run 5 miles in my life. And the truth is, it’s easier than I thought.

You seem to learn a lot about yourself and about your body in just a few runs.

You feel like competing, especially if you run alongside somebody. You tend to run faster and faster and miss the point of all this. Running alongside somebody is great for motivation, but you should forget about competing and your ego. The purpose is to do your runs as planned, to finish them feeling good consistently. You’re not supposed to burn not so that your ego feels good.

After a mile or so, you enter a state of flow, where everything just happens. You’re on autopilot, nothings hurts and nothing requires conscious effort. You just run and not think about it at all. And somehow you get tired a lot less than during the first lap.

The right equipment is important: shoes, t-shirt, socks. Maybe a wind-proof jacket. Not carrying a watch also makes sense. In a training like this it’s the consistency that matters. Finishing your runs every time you’re supposed to and doing as many of them as possible is what it’s about.

After a huge breakfast we made our way to the Hilton Hotel, where the SIXT office was. Again, we were met with a great smile and “There’s a small problem”.

We had asked for a Citroen C4. The people who had previously rented it were kind enough to hit it, so it was not rentable at this time. They offered another C4 with an automatic gearbox. We looked puzzled at each other: none of us had ever driven an automatic before.

“It’s easier actually”, she said. I don’t know whether it was the fact that she did not sound convinced or the fact that we were going to drive on some steep gravel roads that kept us skeptical.

In the end, we settled for a Ford Focus with a manual gearbox. Give us a manual anyday!

It was at this time that I realized I had discovered one of the traits of Icelanders, a trait I would come across over and over again. Problems don’t affect Icelanders. They just do their best to find a solution and move on. Problems are going to crop up from time to time anyway, so why take them to heart? Just solve it with a smile on your face and move on.

I did not know what to make of it at first: it was annoying, because nothing seemed to happen according to plan. It was also very refreshing to see people solving problems instead of complaining, which is what most Europeans do

We decided to visit the local Zoo. It looked more like a small farm that a full-featured zoo, with only local animals “on display”. This made me feel like having taken a trip to the countryside, it was a much more personal and quiet experience, rather than entertaining.

Photo by VisitIceland

We walked around the small streets, saw Hallgrims Kirkja, entered some shops, the usual cheesy tourist agenda that everybody abides to in order to get into the city spirit. All in all, interesting and relaxing immersion into the Icelandic experience.

Photo by Oli Haukur

Next day, we were going to escape the city limits and go for the Golden Circle, as they call it: Thingvellir (the rift), Geysir (the geyser), Gullfoss (the two-step waterfall).

A full day of walking around Berlin, feeling sleep deprived and a 3 and a half hour flight later, we touched down in Keflavik, Reykjavik’s international airport. It was 23:45 and I hadn’t slept for about 40 hours. We covered the 45 km to Reykjavik by bus, in what seemed a couple of minutes, as I slept most of the journey.

We reached our hotel in the end, and the receptionist greeted us with a friendly “You see, there’s this situation…”

“That sounds promising”, I thought to myself.

They had overbooked our room, as every respectable hotel does. Seriously. The only solution that they could come up with was to send us to another hotel in their network. A 4 star hotel right in the very center of Reykjavik, for the same amount that we had paid. Fine by us

Making our way to the Plaza Hotel on the cobble-stone streets of a cold Friday morning gave us the first opportunity to interact with some Icelandic people heading home after a night of hard drinking. We came across guys munching on their hotdogs (really popular snack in Iceland) and girls so drunk that they could barely stand. Interesting, but nonetheless helpful and friendly crowd. We followed their directions and we found our hotel in no time. A drunk girl even escorted us some of the way and acted as a guide, explaining us different things about the landmarks we were passing by.

Finally, some sleep.