2:03:41

It was a more-than-slightly-ludicrous thing to do: Run a half marathon without ever running more than five or six miles in a go.

But I was getting a bit tired of signing up for races and not actually doing them, either because work (from the days when I’d get sent abroad on short notice) or life interfered. For one thing, it’s a waste of money. For another, well… just not turning up isn’t my style.

In this case, I meant to train, I really did. I did short runs pretty religiously, at least 4 times a week for about 40-45 minutes. But – and I say this as someone who very rarely lets myself get away with excuses for not exercising – things kept getting in the way of a long run.

I decided to try the half marathon anyway. (If I’m honest, it helped that it started at 1 pm, which meant I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and try to make my way across England via public transport on a Sunday morning.) My goal was to run for 80 minutes (approximately a double workout) and I figured I could walk the rest if need be. (I’d promised a friend I’d quit if it seemed like a couple of hours’ exercise was going to jeopardize my ability to do so for the next few months – in other words, if I was in too much pain.)

Reader, I ran the whole thing. In 2:03:41 – which is a 9:26 mile pace. I sped up like mad on the last mile, with what felt like buckets of extra energy. I’m not sore. I have no chafing and no blisters. I keep prodding various parts of my body, waiting for them to hurt, but they don’t.

How did this happen? I’m not really sure – especially because it was seriously hot for England yesterday, and I’m not used to running in those conditions. (Judging by the number of dropouts – and need for medical aid – neither were most people.) And also because the race was at 1 pm – an odd time in terms of figuring out what to eat and when. (I spent way too much time obsessing about this last issue before, for the record, finally deciding on porridge for breakfast, no morning snack, and then a noon-on-the-dot lunch of a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a banana.)

Talking it over with a friend (who actually got blisters just from dashing about offering support for me on half-marathon day), our best guess is that I’m in reasonably good shape (me!) from exercising 5-6x per week: running, Pilates and cross-training (the cross-trainer itself, plus some boxing, skipping rope, weight lifting etc), plus walking everywhere I possibly can. And every Saturday since early July I’ve run nearly an hour to Pilates class, taken the class, then walked a couple of miles to meet a friend for lunch. So… my body is used to moving – and for long periods.

Then again, maybe I was just lucky. Or maybe it was the pizza and (a serving of) chocolate-covered biscuits I had the day before.

I am amazed and grateful. And already I’m itching to enter another half and get my time beneath 2 hours – with training, of course!

* * *

In case anyone’s curious, I spent a lot of time – too much time – obsessing about how much (but not necessarily what, specifically) extra I could eat if and when I finished.

The answer was: nada – unless I desperately needed it.

My thinking was that one day a week (usually Saturday), I get a good 2 to 3 hours of exercise (running/Pilates/walking) and I don’t (usually) eat (much) extra on that day. Yes, running might be slightly more intense, but not enough to justify the sort of extra food everyone thinks it does. (There are loads of studies about how lots of people actually gain weight running marathons because they fall into the trap of thinking they can eat whatever they want.)

I didn’t need food during the race. Although I’d packed jelly beans (good for a quick hit of sugar), I wasn’t at all hungry, and since I hadn’t trained with anything, in the heat on race day didn’t seem the time to try it.

After the race I wasn’t particularly hungry either. When I got my medal I also got a medium-sized Mars bar (166 calories) – not a chocolate bar I would ever choose, mostly because the whipped inside makes it about as satisfying, to me, as eating chocolate air. (Or Pret’s chocolate skinny topcorn, which is so not worth the 200 calories – you could eat a 35g bar of Green & Blacks for that calorie cost, but I digress…) I only ate the Mars bar because my friend had my backpack of snacks, and we spent more than an hour hunting for each other, so I had to give in and eat something. Later – stuck in traffic for hours -- I had my prepacked bag of nuts and dried cherries and raisins, aka my new favorite Sainsbury’s discovery. Dinner, for the record, was a not-exactly-celebratory M&S Cumberland pie (it was part of a deal, and I don’t think I’ll be eating it again). Oh yeah – and a Granny Smith apple, which for some reason I was craving, and chose to eat over a tiny (15g) Green & Blacks.

Yes, I was craving an apple. The world really has gone topsy-turvy, hasn’t it?