The Run I Hadn't Trained For

Most runners hit what's known as the wall somewhere between the thirty and thirty five kilometre mark of a marathon, a sudden, specific kind of exhaustion. It isn't really a failure of willpower.

It's the body running out of stored glycogen, the fuel it had been quietly spending since the start. It has to switch, clumsily, to burning fat instead.

I used to think showing up was most of the job. If I turned up willing, I assumed the rest would sort itself out, that effort alone would carry me the distance regardless of what I'd actually prepared.

The wall doesn't care how willing you were at the start line. It arrives on schedule, roughly, for anyone who hasn't built the reserves for the distance.

No amount of gritted determination refuels a body that's genuinely out of fuel. I hit mine early, well before I expected to.

I finished anyway, badly, on legs that had stopped cooperating somewhere around the point everyone warns you about. I've stopped treating that finish as proof I could skip preparation next time.

It proved the opposite, that willingness and readiness are two separate things. Only one of them gets you past the wall intact.

I've stopped needing the next attempt to erase that one. It's simply the run that taught me the difference, which turned out to be worth more than a clean finish would have been.

I've stopped confusing showing up with being ready. They're different jobs.

I only did one of them properly that day, the harder one, as it turned out, of finishing something I hadn't actually trained for.