This series is written by Mike.

I realize I probably should have written this post as Part 1, but too late. Not long ago, I completed my first marathon, heck, my first race, ever. And I only started running 5 months earlier.

Beginner runners, if your motivation to run a marathon is to lose weight, then you need some new motivation. I thought I would drop a good 20 lbs, but I haven’t budged an inch on the scale since starting. My clothes fit better, and my friends, family and pastor have all complimented me, but I haven’t dropped any pounds, just fat. The weight “gain” came from two sources:

1. Muscle
2. All the extra calories I knew I could take in, I did

So why did I run it? I knew my wife needed me during her training, and if I was going to run with her to train, then why not do the whole thing. And I did. So, what’s your motivation?

You’ll need to figure out why you want to run a marathon to determine if that will get you through the toughest physical challenge you may face in your life, even if you’re pretty fit already.

My motivation was to just finish the marathon. My wife and I figured we could do it in 6 hours. We trained for that goal, not to finish faster, and we finished in 6 hours. Here’s our stats:

• We finished ahead of about 1500 other finishers
• We finished around 19500 out of 34000 total registered runners. Those other runners either couldn’t finish or didn’t show up.
• We “Beat the Bridge”. In the Marine Corp Marathon, if you don’t pass the 20 mile mark by a certain time, you’ll be bused across the bridge with the “Stragglers”.
• We finished together (well, close enough together).

I’ll put out there that the marathon was my worst run ever, starting with the first mile, while it was my wife’s best run ever. It took everything I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, but my goals to Beat the Bridge and finish the race got me through the 26.2 miles.

What’s your motivation?

Update: Visit the Marathons for Beginners Collection page to see the rest of the series!