I ran the Toronto Marathon. Here's what I learned

For starters, here are some fun stats from the last roughly 6 months of training:

• I completed 69 total runs

• I ran 825km total

• My longest training run was 36km

• I burned 62,989 calories

• I went through 3 different pairs of running shoes

• The earliest I woke up to run was 2:15 am

Here's what the experience taught me.

1. Running a marathon is one of the most intense things you can do.

I can honestly say I've never pushed myself harder than I did both during the training and the race itself. 42.2km is a big distance, and there's a reason that fewer than 1% of the population will ever run a marathon in their lifetime.

2. Give yourself more time for training than you think you need.

If you give yourself a 16-week training block, you're likely going to need around 20 weeks to do it.

Here's what happened to me along the way that would have gotten me in trouble if I didn't give myself more than enough time for training.

• My daughter was dealing with constant sleep regressions, meaning I was never fully recovered as much as I would like

• I rolled my ankle on some uneven pavement that was under construction during a routine run.

• 2 weeks before race day, my daughter brought home a stomach bug from school, and the whole house was out of commission for a week.

I missed a good amount of scheduled long runs because of factors like these and had to wake up at ungodly hours just to fit the runs I could do.

You have to expect certain things to go wrong, so you need to leave yourself room for error and for life to happen, especially if you have greater responsibilities like a family, kids, and a business.

When you don't, and you feel pressure to rush your training block or skip a rest day that you actually need, that's when you run into injury. I can't tell you how many marathon training injury stories I've heard that are a result of not listening to what your body needs and not having the time to gradually build yourself up in a safe way.

3. A marathon is way more mental than it is physical.

Don't get me wrong, if you're not physically prepared, no amount of mental fortitude will carry you through. But when you're aiming to run for over four hours, you need mental strategies to keep you going when your body wants to do nothing but stop.

In the last 5km of the race, I was dealing with a headwind, some nasty uphills, and the fact that my quads were on the verge of cramping. That last 5km felt like the longest run I've ever done.

Not to mention that squeezing 3-4 hour runs into your weekly schedule just to prepare for a race is mentally taxing as much as it is physically. The reason I had to often get up at 2 or 3 am is the fact that there's no other time I had in the day to fit something like that.

Thanks to all of my family, friends, and clients who supported me along the way and gave me the cheers and encouragement I needed throughout the race. I was getting texts and voice notes throughout that really kept me going. Again, thank you.

What an experience.

To your good health,

Coach Stephen

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Thanks for reading.

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