How I Ran My First Marathon

Evan signed up 92nd, and finished the race about 680 out of 900 runners.
But it would have been much easier to not have ran at all.

How I Ran My First Marathon, By Evan Burgess, 31 1/2.

Evan Burgess qualified as a hypnotherapist in February 2015 and applies what he learned to himself. He used techniques before, during and after the marathon to improve the experience. These are not all shared here, but the story of the marathon completion should be tempered by the fact at 17 Evan was 18 stone and couldn't run 10 metres. What distances can you traverse in years to come by changing your mind? 

There is no clever answer to this question, and the solution is simple, I ran my first marathon badly. I will explain why this wasn’t disappointing: I still achieved my goal.

I decided to do a marathon because I wanted to experience life more fully, and enjoy my journey. I wanted to cross the finishing line and discover what it was like.

The marathon is seen by many as a sign of fitness and health, but the reality of it is, it is mostly about coping with monotony and energy management. 26.3 miles is a long way to go on foot, but the greats can get it down to near 2 hours. My time was 6 hours and 25 minutes, and my preparation had been hindered by a broken toe four weeks before. However, people who clearly weren’t as fit as me in some areas got better times. They managed their energy better, and I must give credit to them.

In an accident whilst training Brazillian Jiu Jitsu I had caught my little toe in a mat and seen it point the other way, hanging broken. I couldn’t feel a thing but it looked wrong and I was just confused. What did this mean for my marathon? Was it bad as it looked, or was it not such a big deal? It was the first broken thing I had ever immediately noticed. I had broken my big toe before but you couldn’t tell by looking at it, there was a bruise and pain.

Right then I was incredibly annoyed at my little toe. I thought maybe things would be better if it was just amputated. I had never paid attention to it before, assuming it was just a passenger. As the days passed it became clear just what the little toe does. With every swerving turn on my feet to change direction there comes a point where the little toe becomes activated, and then a sharp pain would take over. Lifting weights was hard because I didn’t have the base, doing certain bodyweight movements like yoga was hard depending on how my feet were aligned. Was it time to cancel?

I went to the hospital to make sure the toe didn’t need a pin, and to find out exactly what had happened. There was some good news. It was broken in the best possible way it could have been, along the line of the bone, and not on a knuckle. The nurse looked casually at me, “You won’t be doing any Brazillian Jiu Jitsu for a while. And I wouldn’t hold much hope for the marathon.”

I looked into broken toes and discovered Gary Lineker had much worse luck than me, with his broken toe ending his football career. Not only that, but years later his wife drove over the same toe. I have learned before that when something bad happens, it is always better to see how much worse it could be. The nurse said toes take about four to six weeks to heal, so I decided I would start the marathon. Whatever happened, I could always quit after I began.

This left me in a quandary. I would be taking on a marathon without any running in advance. What could I do for conditioning? In Brazillian Jiu Jitsu, people tend to keep training even with injuries. It is designed into the art that you can work around weaknesses and still overcome an opponent in grappling skill. It was also very good conditioning, so I realised my best cardio before the marathon was actually the thing that broke me. It was almost the only exercise I could do where I didn’t have to use my little toe if I didn’t want to.

The weeks passed, and every Sunday I managed to run about 800m for the three weeks before the marathon. This helped me gauge how much better my toe was getting. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t so bad anymore, so long as I avoided lateral movement. I thought about it. A marathon is basically going forward until you finish or quit. “I can do that!” I decided.

By the fourth week, I managed to run a few miles and was content I would do my best in the marathon. I was thinking about times, what might I achieve? Four hours, five hours? I thought four and a half to five and a half hours should be my goal as that is what many said they got for their first marathon. Then I started feeling pressure. It was time to rewind mentally. My goal at signing up was to do the marathon, not to complete it in a certain time. I reminded myself of this. Why would I put myself up for an average time of people who didn’t have broken toes, who had been running 30-60 miles a week before the big day? I remembered something I had heard from Jim Rohn, “How long do you wait for a baby to walk? Until. You just don’t stop after a year!” I was not aiming for a good, average or great time. I wanted to finish.

Then the day before I did the marathon, I had a request on a website called Couchsurfing to host some Spanish people. I obliged them and then stayed up chatting until midnight, had four beers to relax myself before the marathon (not sure why, all I had to do was quit if I didn’t like it) and then took my six hours sleep. I don’t drink very often, but I’d listened to an interview with Bas Rutten, the MMA fighter, about how he coped with jet lag when he went for fights in Japan. “I just went to an all night bar and had some beers. It calmed me down and helped me sleep for the local times.” The host seemed surprised, but Bas explained being relaxed was better than having a perfect diet and feeling terrible. Bas hardly ever lost, so I decided it was worth taking a leaf out of his book.

After all, I had decided to do a marathon to improve my life and enjoy myself more, not less.

I got to the start of the marathon and I wasn’t feeling great. As the run started, I took off very slowly.  I counted to four for every step and relaxed my breathing. I had a mantra, “Every step is like a massage.” It was a mantra inspired by Milton Erickson, a wonderful psychiatrist who used hypnosis to inspire people. His version was "You will go for a walk, and with every step you will feel better and better, but you won't know why."  I didn’t know how my energy would last, so I wasn’t going to push myself. I knew the most important aspect was getting as far as possible, and then working on my weaknesses for the next time.

As with many people, I have a tendency of moving the goalposts and most of the run was spent trying to contain my speed. Every time I started to push myself too hard, I reminded myself, “Finish wanting to do this again!” and then I concentrated on my breathing. Slow and all the way down to the belly, hold, breathe out slowly. It felt great, and that was what I wanted.

At mile 12 I felt quite good, then I took a gel that was given out at a way point. It was a big mistake, the sugar in it almost immediately turned my calves to stone. Sugar, as I was aware of, is not good for the tendons and muscles in endurance sports. It made me think of something, why did I take it? It was because everyone else did, and I felt it was the done thing. But then, the done thing is often the worse thing to be done. Maybe in your life, you can think of times when you have done what’s acceptable, and got absolutely nothing from it.

I carried on at a snail’s pace until mile 17, where I came up to a large hill. There was a photographer on the hill, “Do you want to sprint so you look good in the picture?” This was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I could have complied and done what was suggested, but I listened to my body. Why instantly gratify, when at that point it would have meant I would not finish the marathon? I refused. I didn’t come to the marathon to take a picture, I came to finish it.

The hill was a massive incline, and went on for about 500m. Still, I felt disappointed. People who seemed more unfit than me were leaving me in their wake. I let my ego take the wheel. I had to change my mind. Remembering my beginning, 17 miles in, I realised my feelings of disappointment were silly. I rationalised things, a marathon is a bit like a game. Until you know the rules, you expend energy in silly ways and don’t regulate yourself. It is like me being annoyed I was losing at chess to a more experienced player.

I took myself back to a time of similar adversity.  At 17 years old, I was 18 stone and I couldn’t run. I went to a field and ran 10m, walked, and ran again. It was so hard. I have the frame of someone who should be about 12-13 stone, so it was like running with 5-6 stone on my back. If someone told me I would run 17 miles after I tried running my first 10m, I would not have felt very confident. Back then, I felt as bad with my first 10m as I did after 17 miles. But I knew something back then that I had forgotten. I had to break things down and get as humble as I had been when I was 18 stone. And it was that humbleness that led to me losing seven stone in about eight months. I had done something really hard before, and again it was really hard. I had to give up the desire for comfort. Make no mistake, if I felt I was going to be injured or feint, I would have stopped. But I mean a comfort level in the neighbourhood of easy I had grown to expect.

I ran, then I walked, I ran then I walked. It reminded me of where I had come from. If I didn’t stop before I was empty, I wouldn’t start again. You have to know your pace, and yet appreciate others perspective at the same time. But your action must be yours. No one can get inside you like a puppet and do things for you, so telling someone the right thing one hundred times doesn’t mean they can actually do it. But one day, you might end up doing the thing people have been telling you for years, and it clicks. “That’s what they meant!” But until you can do it, it is like someone trying to explain to you a colour you have never seen before. It has no mental traction or resonance.

At mile 18, I stopped and stretched my legs. Someone came to ask if I was alright. “I will be after I stretch.” And that is the point sometimes. I didn’t 100% have to stretch, but if I didn’t then, I would not complete the marathon. There are some times when you have to stop what you’re doing and adjust your equipment before carrying on work.

I read an article that explained dancers who watched other dancers do moves they knew, experienced a reaction in their brain. It was as if they were doing these moves. However, when they watched a dancer in a different style, they didn’t have the same brain reaction. It isn’t that someone can’t do something. It is that a body movement is like a word in a foreign language you don’t know.

The reason I say this is because when you are given advice in a hard time, it could well be right. But until you understand it, you can’t understand it. Surely this means truly understanding is impossible? Reality is a bit stranger and yet more simple than that. Before you learned to walk, you saw people walk, you tried it, and fell over, yet you did one day walk. Because you knew it was possible, when you finally did it yourself, you recognised it. But what happens when adults try to crawl like a baby? They sometimes have as much trouble doing what a baby finds easy. We have a lot to learn from each other, pros and amateurs.

When I got to mile 25, I started running fast. I knew I was nearly there. As I crossed the finishing line I felt fresh. I wanted to do it again. The last 500m were easy, and I made it look easy.

The moral of this story is that making something seem easy often takes a lot of private discomfort. There was a lot of work before the finish line that made me feel terrible. As long as I worked on a realistic goal, and stopped trying to switch my targets, I would get what was possible and be satisfied.

Are you switching your targets and putting pressure on yourself at the wrong points? Are you sometimes forgetting why you started?  Take the time to realign yourself with what you originally wanted, and look back at where you came from.

Evan Burgess is a qualified hypnotherapist, and can help with issues including weight loss and achieving targets in all areas of life. With a degree in music recording and qualifications in English teaching, Evan has lived abroad and enjoyed learning languages and exploring alternative ways of living. This means he can see things from many points of view, and realises that differences make us richer. Having written a travel writing book about being a street musician, Evan has performed on street and stage in nine countries. So if you have any problems with fear or confidence, you can be sure to get some tried and tested advice. One thing you can be sure of is that no advice will be given on subjects that Evan doesn’t understand first hand. Constantly testing himself despite being a slow learner, Evan is comfortable being uncomfortable. Not a gifted student at school, Evan had an epiphany when learning Swedish and getting the best mark in his class on a test after six months of study. He had learned what worked for him, and can help you learn yourself. To book an appointment contact: Evan@cirencester-scene.co.uk