Here’s (a much edited) version of a work college who celebrated her 40th birthday by running 4 marathons. I’m not sure how I felt when I read this: stunned, impressed… mostly I just thought WTF?! Ain’t madness wonderful?
It was a memorable 40th birthday. I celebrated by running four marathons in a month. Together, with more than 8,500 marathoners and millions of volunteers, I ran a distance of 168.8 kilometres or 104.8 miles including crossing the Canadian-American border three times via two international bridges and one underwater tunnel.
Some of my heroes are those who have survived great feats of endurance - Magellan, Shackleton and Dean Karnazes (who ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days). There is something very captivating about the struggle between man and the human body. Running four marathons in one month seemed to me like a worthy challenge: Four for Forty! The marathons would be: the Toronto Waterfront Marathon on September 30th, the Toronto Marathon on October 14th, the Detroit Marathon on October 21st and the Niagara Marathon on October 28th.
I developed three key elements in my training plan. The first element was to stick my physical training plan regiment - long runs (32km), grueling workouts and diligent observations on nutritional and muscular recovery.
Second, I worked out various combinations for my weekend training schedule. This was not only to train my body for the physical endurance necessary to run a marathon week after week, but also to train my body to recover fast enough to run another marathon just seven days later.
The third element was to develop a plan of attack. I would run each marathon as a training run for the next one; the Toronto Waterfront marathon would be a training run for the Toronto marathon, which would be the training run for Detroit and so on.
Once I had settled on this strategy, I started to relax, gain confidence and learned to simply enjoy and savour this challenging endeavor.
Both marathons in Toronto were excellent training runs. But the Detroit Marathon was the closest to the spirit of a 40th birthday celebration. The start was glorious. The setting was pre-dawn, the moon was faintly shining and in the air in the financial heart of the city was still. This serene sky was a contrast to the intense frenzy of activity at ground level as more than 15,000 runners jockeyed for position. The race provided me with a very unique tour of Detroit - I ran past Tiger Stadium, Ford’s Field, the Mexican neighbourhood, across the Ambassador Bridge, through the Detroit/Windsor tunnel, and along the Windsor Lakefront trail, the Detroit Riverfront and the Belle Isle Park.
My previous best time for the marathon was 4 hours and 41 minutes. I had not thought of running a personal best during my Four for Forty challenge because I simply wanted to cross all four Finish lines and live, but the support from the people in Detroit was remarkable, and I crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 40 minutes - a new personal best! It was only one minute, but I’ll take that with pride!
