Why every anxious 20-something is running a marathon right now

That said, engaging at 26.2 miles is not only About the notation of boastful rights or organized finish line photos. As shot as it may seem, it is really the trip. When I started to train, I could barely cross half a million. Now, I travel more than 35 miles per week, with two half-marathons to my credit. My average rhythm went from 12 minutes to eight. And maybe more importantly, I can’t wait to lace my sneakers just after an exhausting day at work.

Whatever your experience, the impulsive training of the marathon, I would say, is one of the most gratifying and changing ways of life to stop launched doubts – let me convince you why.

An expensive and high marathon is the ultimate hacking of responsibility

No soul journey to answer “who am I?” is without a series of abandoned passionate projects. I had my own part – by starting a beauty blog (which lasted a month), deciding to become a reforming girl of Pilates (who did not contact either), the list continues.

Running at first was also part of this cycle. The promise of its very legitimate health benefits was quickly overshadowed by classic apology and my “eh, I will do it tomorrow!” attitude. But nothing allows you to stick to an objective as well as to register for a coveted marathon and once a year that, for its part, is notoriously difficult to register. (To enter the NYC, for example, you need a super fast finishing time – which, shocking, I did not – to raise thousands of dollars for a charity, run nine qualification races the previous year or take your chance with a highly selective lottery which has a less than 3%acceptance rate.)

That’s not all. Once you are, you must always pay registration fees of $ 300 per month before. Thus, the cost, the effort and the difficulty of winning even a spot makes the idea of ​​falling unthinkable, providing the type of responsibility that I must follow much more effectively than an elusive objective as “get in shape”.

Marathon training offers an integrated structure when life collapses

For so long, my life seemed to follow a linear path: graduate. Get a job. Maybe settle. So… what? Without simple references of “progress”, I was left to understand the trajectory of my future by myself – which is equal liberating and disorienting.