My first marathon

I have been planning this post for three years. Three years ago I started running, and I do not know how I got here. I did not start running because I wanted to run a marathon; it had never crossed my mind, and I would not have believed myself capable of it.

It all began when I decided to start taking spinning classes with my girlfriend. At the time, I was a little overweight, approximately 10 kg above my ideal weight, and I wanted to lose that extra weight. Soon after starting spinning, I discovered that I truly enjoyed physical activity. I had never exercised before.

A few months after starting spinning, I began running because Nydia decided to sign up for a women-only 5K race, and I would train alongside her to support her. The first few times we ran, we did not measure the distance. We simply devised a route along some landscaped medians near our apartment, a distance that felt very difficult to us. After several training sessions, I downloaded an app to check the distance, and to our surprise we discovered that the route we found so challenging was only 2 kilometers, not even half the race distance. With the app's help, we mapped out a 5K route and ran a little farther each day until we managed to finish it. It is worth mentioning that I had already lost weight through spinning and attended two 45-minute classes five days a week, so I felt that I was in excellent shape. Running proved to be a more difficult, more demanding discipline.

Nydia finally took part in her first 5K. I went to support her and cheer her on. Because we had trained together, I had an estimate of how long she would take to cover the distance, and to my surprise, her time was faster. When I managed to find her in the recovery area, she was visibly excited. I had never seen her so enthusiastic. “You have to experience it,” she told me. One month later, I was running my first 5K alongside Nydia. Honestly, she was the one setting the pace. I tried not to slow down out of pride. It was very hard for me and felt like an enormous effort, but when I crossed the finish line, I felt like a superhero. When I looked at the clock and confirmed that my time had been better than in training, I felt proud.

During that first year, we continued training and attending 5-kilometer races. I learned that being a runner means accepting pain: both the normal pain caused by training and the first signs of an injury telling me that I needed to stop for a few days. With every race, we managed to improve our times, and trying to beat the clock was exciting. That was when the idea of running a 10K began to take hold and, who knows, perhaps a marathon one day.

Races have an incredible atmosphere. It is deeply rewarding to see people of every age and kind making that kind of effort for fun. It is more profound to realize that all those people have trained, sometimes before going to work, sometimes afterward, alone or in a group. Every day, or at least almost every day, they repeat the same activity, training body and mind. Running changes the body. The muscles in the legs change, you can lose weight, and you also exercise your abdomen, back, and arms. In fact, the entire body participates in the activity. Running is more than propelling the body forward; it requires balance and rhythm, coordinating the body and concentrating. At the slightest lapse, you can trip, twist an ankle, or step on something that can hurt you or make you slip. Running in the city also requires a different kind of skill. It is like an obstacle course full of traps, with streets and sidewalks in poor condition, puddles, and garbage—not to mention drivers, motorcyclists, and cyclists trying to run you over all the time. I found tremendous motivation in running, in measuring my progress by improving my times and covering ever greater distances. I am a runner. That defines me.

The 10K came about without planning. Nydia won a free entry to a race of that distance, and we decided to go together. Since we had never run that far, we decided to run it at least once before the race, about a week beforehand. It felt difficult, but not impossible. We felt confident. We ran the race and enjoyed it; we had officially entered a new level.

The challenge for the second year was clear: run a half marathon. We were already running 10K races, and completing a half marathon—21.097 kilometers—did not seem impossible. Honestly, I had my doubts that we would ever manage to run a full marathon—42.195 kilometers. A full marathon seemed like a test only for athletes, not ordinary mortals like us, or at least not for me. I did not know that athletes are not only the elite. Athletes are us—all of us who train and compete, each at our own level. We should say it with pride: we are athletes.

The first half marathon arrived after months of anticipation and training. By then, I was genuinely fit and felt experienced. Training for a half marathon reveals your strengths. The race took place in Ciudad de México, my favorite city in the country and one that we have visited many times and know well. I enjoyed that first half marathon to the fullest. It was a fun and exciting experience, and I finished feeling whole and ready for a greater challenge. For the rest of that year, we would continue taking part in half marathons and improving our times.

Running became an essential part of my life. It is an activity that makes me feel good, has taught me discipline, and has become a passion. Many runners say that running is not exercise but a lifestyle, and I can testify that this is true. Running—truly doing it—requires a great deal of effort. It requires commitment, sacrifice, and pain. It means changing your way of life, your activities, and your tastes. Often, it means giving up your nightlife, your habits, and your most cherished vices for long periods. It means investing time, money, and a great deal of effort. It is not true that running is a cheap or free sport, at least not when you truly do it.

This year, the third, the challenge would be to run a full marathon, and we chose the Maratón de la Ciudad de México. This year we trained intensely. If training for a half marathon reveals your strengths, training for a full marathon reveals your weaknesses. Distances first exceeding 20 and then exceeding 30 kilometers showed us our weak points. I now felt that I knew my body and my limits better than ever. Knowing your limits does not mean knowing when to stop; it means knowing how to manage yourself. I learned that such a long test requires a great deal of strategy. You need to manage your energy, hydration, speed, and strength. The routes on which we trained included many hills, and our training hours were between 9 AM and 2 PM, under the intense sun. The extreme nature of our training gave us confidence, but it also left us with pains that had never appeared before. Exactly one week before the race, we ran 10K, a short distance to finish our training, and during that 10K something very bad happened to my knee. Pain appeared on the outside of my right knee about an hour after running, an intense pain that would not even let me put weight on the leg. The terror, the nightmare: injured just before running my first marathon.

During the week before the marathon, I rested. I did not run or use the elliptical or bicycle. During the final days, I applied ice to my knee and took anti-inflammatory medication. The pain had diminished considerably, but it remained. Despite everything, I felt confident. I had been running for 3 years and training intensely for this distance for 6 months. I was going to make it; there would be no problems. I was certain I would enjoy it just as I had enjoyed my first half marathon. I was not nervous; I was excited. I could not wait to face the test. The night before, Nydia and I went to bed. As I was falling asleep, a thought suddenly woke me: What if I do not finish? It was the first time I had considered it. I had not done so before because I have always felt that I possess great willpower and have always achieved what I set out to do. On this occasion, for the first time, I realized that the challenge before me might be physically impossible. It would not be about willpower; it would be about whether my knee held up. I knew I could overcome the pain, but what would happen if something broke or fractured, or if I injured my knee in a way that made finishing impossible? The thought of not finishing terrified me. A failure of that magnitude would devastate me.

I woke up an hour before the alarm was set, more excited than afraid and, above all, confident. The previous night's fear had vanished. I felt ready. I had trained and prepared myself physically and mentally. There was nothing else to do, only face the challenge. Standing there behind the starting line, it seemed impossible that only 3 years earlier I had struggled to run 5K. Now my daily training runs were between 8 and 10K, plus long distances of more than 20 or more than 30K once a week. It is incredible how training changes your perspective. Truly, nothing is impossible; it only takes time and dedication.

When the race began, my mind and body went into autopilot, doing what I had trained them to do for so long. It was real: I was running my first marathon. I was calm and enjoying myself. The first 10 kilometers were a true delight—no fatigue, no pain. I felt excellent. It was after kilometer 10 that I began to notice pain in my knee. It did not matter. I knew I would face this; I was not going to hesitate now. Kilometer 15 arrived and the pain intensified, but it was bearable. Then came kilometer 21, the half marathon, and my time was among my best at that distance. Nydia seemed invincible, passing runners and maintaining the pace. She made me feel secure. I felt good, strong, and full of energy. It was around kilometer 25—a distance I had already run many times—that I began to feel more pain. Now it was intense, and it was not only my knee; other muscles in my legs felt as though they wanted to cramp. When we reached kilometer 30, the race began to become difficult. Now the fatigue was also evident in Nydia. The real hell began at kilometer 35—the greatest distance we had run in training. There was pain, there was fatigue, and, to my surprise, there was a great deal of irritation. After doing an activity for several hours, the mind grows tired and bored. It is impossible to maintain concentration for so long; even my music had begun to annoy me. I removed my headphones, and the noise from the other runners and the cheering irritated me even more. That cheering, which so often gives you energy, now annoyed me. I was in a bad mood, and I knew it was normal. It was fatigue; it was the lack of motivation that true fatigue causes. I had customized my shirt with the word “Tapatío”—what people from Guadalajara are called—and when I heard someone shout, “Come on, Tapatío!” it excited me. But at this point I no longer enjoyed even those cheers directed at me. I was in a bad mood; I began to feel angry. I was angry with myself. Why was I tired? Why could I endure so little? I had trained so much; what was happening to me? From kilometer 37 onward, everything became harder. The sun was stronger, we were running more slowly, many competitors were walking and getting in our way, others were going faster than us and shoving us, the street narrowed because of the spectators, and the traffic became more difficult. Those final 5 kilometers were an even greater hell. My body asked me to stop. My mind asked me to stop. Around us, more and more competitors were dropping out of the race. I watched them take out their phones and call someone: “I am on Insurgentes around such-and-such a point. I am not going to finish. Come get me.” More and more pain. My legs buckled with fatigue. More heat. No matter how much I hydrated, my thirst would not disappear. The heat would not leave me even when I soaked myself with the water provided for hydration. I simply kept going for the sake of going on, perhaps because I was with Nydia. Maybe if I had been alone, I would have stopped to rest for a while.

Many marathon runners talk about “the wall,” a phenomenon that most agree occurs between kilometers 30 and 35, when the body cannot take any more and the mind wants to give up. I had not encountered the wall during training, but I met it in the marathon. More than a wall, though, it was a fortress wall that lasted through the final two kilometers. It was around kilometer 40 that, for the first time, I wanted to stop for a few seconds to “catch my breath.” I told Nydia, “I need to stop for a few seconds,” and I stopped. I entered a state of confusion. I remember beginning to look backward as though I wanted to go back, as though I wanted to flee from the finish line. I do not know why I did it. I only know that I was looking behind me, watching those who walked, those who ran, those who dropped out, the people shouting encouragement to the runners, and the people offering them water, candy, juice, and tremendous support. I felt terribly alone at that moment. Only the challenge and I existed. I felt defeated, unable to continue, angry, frustrated, disappointed, desperate. I turned to face forward again. I saw Nydia looking at me, saw the sea of runners continuing, and without reasoning or thinking, I began running again. I had always thought I was a person with willpower. I had not known willpower until that moment. Everything happened in a few seconds, I estimate about 6 or 7 seconds—a breath. I would not stop again; nothing would stop me now. But at kilometer 41, I stopped again, this time to walk for approximately 50 meters. I needed to walk because my body could no longer run. They were 50 humiliating meters. I did not want to walk the marathon; I had gone there to run it, to conquer it. Only one kilometer remained. It was nothing. I would continue. I began running again. Little did I know that it would be the longest kilometer of my life. I could already see the entrance to the Estadio Olímpico, where the finish line was located, but the closer I got, the farther away the entrance seemed. I could not, I could not—but I did. The entrance is through a tunnel about 100 meters long. As we entered, many runners were shouting, their cries amplified by the tunnel. I remember one shout clearly: “We did it, we did it!” I became emotional and faced the short climb out of the tunnel as though it were the highest hill. When I emerged into the light, the finish line was in sight. I became emotional, not because of victory but because the ordeal was ending. Nydia and I took each other's hand with the little strength we had left, and together, running with tremendous emotion, we crossed the finish line and became different people. We became people capable of completing a marathon.

Afterward came a great deal of pain, the inability to walk, feeling ill, and everything else one would expect, but it no longer mattered. We had done it. I no longer needed to prove anything to myself. I had conquered the distance, passed the test, run a marathon. I did not finish walking; I finished running. I have referred to the marathon several times as “the test” because it is a true test: of strength, fitness, willpower, spirit, and, above all, determination.

I began by saying that I had been planning this post for three years. I rehearsed it in my mind every time I trained. Every time I attended a race, I imagined the post I would write when I completed my first marathon. I imagined it very differently from how it turned out. I imagined it as a success story in which I would describe how I stoically endured the pain, how I boldly overcame fatigue, and how I crossed the finish line victorious like a Greek demigod. But no, it was not like that. The marathon destroyed me, broke me, tore me to pieces, made me humble and small. But I finished. I went to hell and came back. I did it, and no one can ever take that away from me. I discovered that a marathon is not a success story; it is a story of determination. A word that will forever hold a profound meaning for me. DETERMINATION.

The pain passed. Pain is temporary, but victory is eternal. Today I am ready for the next challenge. I cannot wait; I already want to face another test.