How to Run a Marathon without any Training

“You have no idea what your body is capable of.”

“You have no idea what your body is capable of.”

It was lap 60 out of 105, and I’d already run twice as far as I ever had in my entire life. 

If I moved my legs in any direction other than forward, a pain shot through my hips down into my knee that felt like the tendon was cramping. 

It was only my right knee, however, and since I had started running in the opposite direction around the track after lap 52–my left leg was now on the outside of the curves–I told myself that I wouldn’t have problems with it anymore. 

I was “running” now at about an 11 minute mile pace, but I say “running” in air quotes because I looked more like a 70 year old man speed walking than someone running a marathon. 

Why did I put myself in this situation? Why didn’t I just stop? 

I definitely wanted the pain to stop. 

But I convinced myself that “the only way out is through.” 

And I still hadn’t discovered what I was really capable of. 

So I kept going. 

The Idea

A Marathon, 26.2 miles, is one of those arbitrary numbers that our crazy little brains love to latch on to. It is meaningless, of course, but so is everything that we care about if you zoom out far enough. 

I had the idea only a couple of days before, and it didn’t sound like that awful of an idea; by that I mean I couldn’t think of any particularly convincing reason not to at least try it. 

The night before I bought a new pair of running shoes at Marshalls for $25, a pack of watermelon gummies to eat during the race, and filled one of my 48 oz water bottles with an herbal tea, salt, sugar, and honey, my other 48 oz bottle with plain water, and ate a huge bowl of pasta–maybe ¾ of a whole pack.

The more prep I did the more locked in I became.

As I went to bed that night I decided that I’d finish my Marathon tomorrow even if I injured myself to the point of never running again. 

But why? 

I mean really, why???

Why the fuck did I subject myself to something so grueling? 

Is there something wrong with me?

Why???

The simple answer is that I wanted to see if I could do it. 

I don’t run at all, but I am fit. I do hot yoga 1-4 times per week, go to the gym 2-3 times per week, and have been active and fit since Middle School. 

But it had been awhile since I’ve really pushed my body to the brink; to that place of pain; to the unknown. 

Entrepreneur and Social Media Influencer, Zach Pogrob, calls it “The Dark Place:” a metaphor for the animal inside of all of us that comes out in moments of extreme pain.

In the Rock Warrior's Way, Arno Ilgner calls a Warrior somebody who ventures into the chaos of the unknown. 

In The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter describes what he calls a “Modern Misogi,” an adaptation of a Japanese word used to describe cleansing oneself under a freezing waterfall, where you complete a challenge with a 50/50 chance of success (and ideally a much lower chance of death).

It is this uncertainty, that 50%, that is made clear by exceptionally difficult challenges but is always there in front of us.

The unknown is different for all of us: we all have different fears, preferences, experiences, and we each have something unique to learn about ourselves from exploring this unknown.

All of these different philosophies were important in inspiring me to try this. 

But really I just wanted to see if I could do it, and I wanted to know what it would feel like.

Here’s What Happened

I had a rice and bean patty, two eggs, two slices of bacon, and a small cup of half-caff coffee (10g of caffeinated beans) for breakfast–along with plenty of water. 

I chatted with my roommates a bit in the morning–I didn’t tell anyone about my intentions before I started running, somehow, I didn’t think I’d do it if I told anyone; I can’t really explain why–and made sure to take a dump before I left. 

I arrived at the local High School track 11 in the morning to a light drizzle. The track is down a small 15 yard hill behind the High School, and on the field next to the track I could see a small group of 12 lacrosse players practicing. The only people at the track itself were a couple of middle-aged women walking loops and chatting. 

Thanks to the rain and the cloud cover it was cool, and throughout the next six hours the sun was only out for about an hour (though I still got a gnarly sunburn). 

I put my phone in a little plastic baggie so it wouldn’t get wet, started Strava up, and got after it. 

I started as slowly as I thought I could–a 9:30 mile pace, and felt my legs slowly warm up through the first few miles. My nose breathing was steady and not too strained. 

After each lap I congratulated myself, told myself how proud I was of myself, and how excited I was to keep going. 

I felt confident: maybe I could actually do this. 

I first started feeling pain that drew worry around lap 18 (mile 4). The side of my right foot felt incredibly tight and it pulled on my achilles tendon. 

I told myself that it would fade away shortly–I was still just warming up–and it did.

At lap 21 and 22 I counted 376 and 382 total steps, and from miles one to five I kept my pace slightly under a 10 minute mile. 

What surprised me most about the whole experience was how easily I cruised through laps 22-40 (mile 5-10). 

An idea struck me as I approached the end of lap 23: each lap now was a year of my life, and in the grand scheme of things my life was really just beginning at lap 24. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through yet and there so much that could happen!

The next five miles were a daydream: I completed college, hiked the Appalachian trail, then moved back to Ohio, fell in love, got married, and had kids. I began working as a newspaper man/journalist and published my first book at 31; my family members died and I mourned and mourned and cleaned up my grandparents condo in Cleveland to help sell it and visited home in Boston; but I stayed in Columbus, always struggling to get by writing freelance and working in kitchens, and only doing well enough thanks to the support of my wife who had a real job; then wars started to break out and my political views were being squashed by the US government, and by 38 I had been imprisoned and Canada had annexed Ohio in the recent wars. I was released after two years and my family and I–a daughter of 11 and son 8–escaped to Spain: I had convinced my wife to get our kids a Peruvian babysitter so they were fluent in Spanish. 

At lap 40 (mile 10), I woke up a little bit as the pain in my hip flexors and quads started to become more acute and I felt the first pingings in my right knee. 

Lap 42 and 43 took me 478 and 482 steps. 

From miles 7-13 I kept an 11 minute mile pace. 

I began to take more frequent water breaks now, glugging water and electrolytes and snacking on two or three watermelon gummies every three or four laps.

I hit the halfway point, tired, sore, but not quite having ventured into hell, and decided to walk lap 53 for a little rest and time to think.

This is where the limping began:

trying to limber up I kicked my heel to my butt and a pain shot through my knee so vigorously I couldn’t put any weight on it; my right hip felt like it wanted to be torn out from my leg. 

My body was telling me to stop.

But I still hadn’t discovered what it was fully capable of.

And this was the closest I’d ever come to running a marathon.

If I stopped now I’d have to run the entire 26.2 miles, and as it was I only had 13 miles to go. 

So I ran 2 miles, then walked a lap. 

Then I ran 1 mile, then walked a lap.

Then half a mile. 

This was a marathon, not a sprint, and the important thing was doing whatever it took to finish the damn thing.

But I was stopping frequently now and my pace slowed heavily; everytime I stopped it became harder and harder to start running again. 

When I started up the pain in my hips and feet and quads flared and I’d have to tell myself “you’re warming up, you’ll warm up into it, keep going,” and so I did. 

At lap 64 I stretched my hip a little in a standing pigeon and felt some relief, and was able to push through without rest until lap 72. 

Lap 66 took my 560 steps to complete. 

It was here I first entered “the pocket,” or “the dark place,” “the stillness,” “hell,” “heaven,” whatever you want to call it. 

I saw in the sky massive neon orange numbers always in front of me telling me what lap I was on.

66/105

67/105

68/105

‘Dinging’ up one when I crossed the start line. 

My attention was no longer on my feet or my legs–it was too painful to focus on–but only on a single point in front me, the sound of my breath, and the mantras running through my head:

“The only way out is through, 68/105, 68, lap 68, 68, the only way out is through, the only way out is through, the only way out is through.”

At this point I didn’t care anymore what my body was capable of.

I wanted the pain to end, and the only way for the pain to end was to finish the race. 

I took huge greedy gulps of water and gnashed on watermelon gummies. 

At lap 76 I ran out of water. 

I had seen a water fountain, a now-grueling 20 yard walk away from the track, but I waited until I was out to go use it and refill.

It didn’t work.

I was totally out of water and still had over 7 miles to run. 

So it goes. 

I just had to keep my mouth shut and continue breathing through my nose so I wouldn’t lose any moisture, and I couldn’t eat any more gummies because they would dehydrate me. 

In a way this is a good thing: I didn’t have any reason to stop now. 

I could keep running. 

The Deepest Pain

I ran the next 3 miles to lap 88 back in the pocket. These were the most painful laps of the entire race. 

I spent each lap staring at a single point and breathing forcefully through my nose. 

I looked at the little black ^ painted on the top bar of the hurdles littered around the track. 

On the first straightaway I stared at the middle of the T on the hip-height metal fence next to the road. 

Also around the track were bright spotlights–off now–metal poles 50 yards tall, and I stared at the small white squares a few yards above the ground on them.

Always in my peripheral vision were those huge orange neon numbers in the sky slowly ticking upwards:

“79/105” 

“80/105”

“81/105”

And in my head too, if there was anything at all, repeated those numbers, and my two mantras:

“You have no idea what your body is capable of.”

“The only way out is through.”

Near the end of lap 88 on the final 100 meter curve I felt my hip flexor and my quad tighten with a soreness that told me they wouldn’t be able to move anymore. 

It felt like the soreness that appeared on a normal day, but it was on top of the fiery burning soreness that had enveloped my legs for the last four and a half hours and hurt and terrified me to the point of stopping before completing that lap. 

I walked the next lap, then ran one more. 

Lap 90 was the last lap I ran, and I couldn’t complete this one either. My legs were feeling pain and soreness down to the bone that I had never felt in them before.

Maybe if I never stopped I could have kept running–I really don’t know. 

Either way, I walked the last 15 laps and it was awful because that extended to the time it took me to complete the damn thing. 

My legs still burned, and I still wanted to stop walking every step of the way.

It took me a few laps to calm my nervous system down enough from ragged breathing to calmer, slower, deeper breaths. 

And slowly but surely the counter ticked to 105/105 and I crossed the finish line. 

Did I learn anything?

Well I learned that I could run a marathon.

I also learned that I didn’t feel particularly different after finishing. 

It ended and all I had to show for it was a limp. 

The only “good” feelings I got from the accomplishment was telling people about it after the fact.

I also learned the amount of pain that my body was capable of pushing through, and the immediate consequences of doing so. 

I was sore–more sore than I had ever felt in my entire life–amped up on stress hormones, didn’t have an appetite, and slept awful that night, but nothing was seriously wrong with me. 

My knees, achilles, hip flexors, hips, all felt okay after hours of stretching.

I’ve always known that I have a massive amount of room to grow, but this time I stared at that space dead-on and saw how deep it really goes. 

What’s your misogi: is there a challenge you’re about 50% confident you could complete?

Do you think I’m a lunatic who needs to be psychoanalyzed, or do you kinda get it?

Let me know what ya’ll think, I’d love to see your thoughts!

-Andy