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26.2 and beyond
Explore the world of today's Marathon runner through the stories of Kingstonians who are challenging themselves to their next marathon experience: Runners taking on their first marathon, individuals running to better their health and athletes trying to beat their best time.
26.2 & Beyond: a marathon journey was nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award in at the 2012 Yorkton Film festival in Saskatchewan.
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OUR PARTICIPANTS
JIM & DAVE
For his 3rd marathon effort, Jim Estes hopes to beat his personal best time. Due to injuries and surgeries, Jim’s previous attempts have not been without their challenges.
Dave Cannons, an accomplished marathon runner, has been unable to train since he began his cancer treatment.
JAN & CATHIE
After having completed several half marathons, running partners Cathie Amodeo and Jan Gilroy are tackling the full marathon distance for the first time.
LORI & MALCOLM
Since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, Lori Brake, a member of the Team Diabetes fundraising program, has challenged herself and others to get fit and active.
26.2 & Beyond is co-produced by Malcolm Anderson, who has run in over 40 marathons and has written 4 books on marathon running.
DERRICK & SARA
Ultra-marathon trail runners Derrick Spafford and Sara Montgomery are both recovering from injuries, making it difficult to train enough to run their target distances of 100 miles and 50 miles respectively.
26.2 & Beyond: A Marathon Journey by Malcolm Anderson
The
A long distance race that goes for 26.2 miles. That’s 42.2 kilometres.
That’s a long way, especially at the end.
You don’t typically get up in the morning and run a marathon without training.
Lots of training.
But its quite doable. In fact, last year there were more than 400,000 finishers in marathons in
Some marathons, like
Unless of course, the race is even longer – what we call ultra-marathons. These are races that are more than 26.2 miles. Usually they’re 50 Kms, 50 miles, 100 kms, 100 miles, and then there’s the 12 hour races, 24 hour races and even 48 hour races. More on these later too.
And there’s some amazing people and amazing stories out there. More and more people, for example, are running to raise money for charities. Sign up with a charity – like the Diabetes Association, for example, raise money to support them, and by raising enough, they will support you – pay for you – to go and complete some of the marathons around the world. More on that later.
But like I say, it takes lots of training to successfully complete a marathon. But it all starts somewhere.
And that ‘somewhere’ often begins with the most simplest of things – getting up off the couch and moving for starters – walking at first, not just to the fridge, but outside or on a treadmill and building up your body’s ability to keep moving. When it feels right you may start mixing the walking with running, then there’s more running than walking. And then maybe just running.
But you know, a lot of people today are completing marathons by running and walking. Some running experts say that’s the best way to complete a marathon; and there’s less chance of an injury. In fact, in the very first Olympic marathon in 1896 all the runners walked at some point. One of the runners even drank some wine on the course. The eventual winner got a kiss from his girlfriend part the way through. More on that later too.
But do too much training too soon and chances are you’ll hurt yourself.
Try and do too much too soon and you’ll also find its not much fun.
But as anyone will tell you, if you complete a marathon you have an incredible sense of accomplishment. You’ve achieved your goal. Just like running regularly, you’ve become fit and healthy in the process. You have more energy to do all the other things in your life. You think better. You look better. You have renewed confidence in yourself. You meet new friends or build stronger friendships with those you run with. You become a role model for others, especially your children. Powerful stuff. You like the way you feel.
And despite what you may think, just about anyone can complete a marathon.
Some people have run hundreds of marathons. Some don’t take up marathon running until they’re in their 40s or 50s. The thing is, more and more people are taking up marathon running every year. Something very cool is happening. Why are more people taking up the challenge?
The world record holder for the most marathons ever run – about 1,700 right now – that’s right, 1,700 – and he’ still running them at 76 years of age, started running when he was 38 years old when his wife told him he was putting on a bit of weight around his belly.
The world record for the fastest marathon is just over 2 hours. Typically most of these times are in your dreams, certainly in my dreams. In the time it takes you to watch two back-to-back CSIs, the elite runners in the world can run 26.2 miles. In other words, they’d run from
But very few marathon runners are elite runners. In fact, most runners will complete a marathon in a time of between 4 and 6 hours. But really, the times aren’t that important. It’s all the other things about running long distances that is making people want to run marathons and to run more and more marathons.
We want to show you what it’s all about in this program. We want to show you what it’s like to train and prepare for a marathon. And then actually complete a marathon.
But we don’t want to bore you watching me prattle on about marathons. Over the course of the next few shows we’re going to follow the training and planning for running a marathon by six local runners.
We’ll see what training they’re doing, and why, what they’re thinking as they train, the challenges they face, and, on the day, what happens when they actually run their chosen race.
The exciting thing about this is that no-one knows what’s going to happen. Not us, and not the runners. Obviously we hope that all the runners successfully achieve their goals. But we don’t know if they will or not.
And we’ll also talk about some of the great marathon races, and the great runners and personalities, and how it all got started – the legend of the marathon. It has an amazing history.
So I hope you stay with us during this episode as we meet the runners and tell you more about marathon running, and as we begin to watch and learn from the runners as they do their training and tell us about their experiences.
And I hope you follow us over the next episodes as we follow the progress of the runners.
My name is Malcolm Anderson – I run marathons and I write about them. I’ve been fortunate to have met some incredible people from around the world and I’ve seen some amazing places since I started getting into marathons a few years ago. In fact I can’t imagine not running them now.
And for me it all started really when I decided I needed to get back in shape. I went for a 10-minute run one day and every part of my body hurt. But I went again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that … and got a training program a couple of weeks later and have not looked back.
26.2 miles. It’s a long way but starts somewhere. So lets get going …
