61 tips for your first marathon
Crowdsourced from people who have run them more successfully than me
I ran my first marathon in 2014.
I had taken up running the year before, off the back of my 2013 New Year’s Resolution to finish a half marathon. With that goal boxed off, a full marathon felt like the obvious next step. I was at university at the time and involved in the RAG (Raising and Giving) society - if nothing else, I thought a marathon would be a good fundraising activity.
I really liked the idea of being a runner. I was obsessed with reading running blogs and loved the thought of being one of these people who just went out and casually ran double digits. I wanted to be the sort of person to whom running came easily, who laced up every single day as a matter of course.
Unfortunately, as I now realise, becoming one of those people takes work and it was work I didn’t know how to do. My life was chaotic at the time, in a student-y sort of way. I was working a million hours a week at a Greek restaurant to try and keep up with the minimum repayments…