"Oh I'll Never Be Able to Run a Marathon"

I can not tell you how many times I have heard this when talking about running:  "Oh I'll Never Be Able to run the marathon."  What I always say to someone who says this is:  "You're right!"  Know why?  Most of the work to running the marathon is mental.  It takes a decision on you part to do it.  It is that mental process of deciding that most people can not get by.  26.3 miles seems absurdly long to them.  Yes you have to do the work:  put in the miles, run when you don't feel like it, don't run when you do feel like it (you really must take rest days), etc.  But on the whole, in my opinion, most of the work is mental.

As the Buddhists say ... as goes the thought ... so goes the intention.  As goes the intention, so goes the word.  As goes the word, so goes the action.  Or something like that.  If you want to run the marathon, decide, tell someone, write it down, and then take action.

So the marathon, once you do decide, is like eating an elephant:  one bite at a time.   The traditional approach is a 16 week training schedule, where your long runs occur on the weekend every two weeks.  These begin at about half marathon distance and get progressively longer up through 20 miles.  "20 miles!" you say.  Yep.  And it's not that hard.  The key to running long is learning to run aerobically, which means running slowly.  The aerobic running process is 10 times more efficient than the anaerobic running process.  One of the key skills is having the discipline to run slowly for your long run.  You can run fast for the last 10-20% of the distance, but the key is to run slow to make sure you finish the run.

So you want to run the marathon?  Decide.  And then run progressively longer distances, slowly.