I was reading the newspaper on Saturday, and came across this article written just one day before the marathon.
Yes, I am up against another marathon. Another half marathon.
I like the way this article describes what marathoners feel and the distinct difference between marathoners and non-marathoners. =)
I've cut short the article to the more interesting commentaries.

The marathoner: Pain crazy or plain crazy?

by Rohit Brijnath
Running in the city

Non-marathoners and marathoners arrive from separate solar systems. Non marathoners crave calories; marathoners count them suspiciously. Non marathoners gel their hair; marathoners eat gel. Marathoners think 12k is a dozen kilometres; non-marathoners think it means two six-packs of lager.

...

If you as a non-marathoner have ever limped your way to 2km on the treadmill, remember this: To complete the marathon, you need to run more than 20 times that distance. With no air-conditioning. It's a thought so depressing that non-marathoners need a steak just to calm down.

It's not that non-marathoners don't exercise, for we are known to bend to pick up our golf ball from the rough. It's just that we would not run 42.195km even to receive the last cold beer on earth on a sweltering day from the aforementioned Ms Lane dressed in nothing but... okay, okay, you get the picture.

Marathoners are scary. Haile Gebrselassie recently ran the distance in a world record 2hr 4min 26sec, and one might ask, how fast is that? Let us say this: Could you run the 100 metres in 17.69 seconds? Probably. Could you run 42 consecutive 100m at 17.69sec? Probably not. So imagine this: Gebrselassie ran the equivalent of 422 100m races at 17.69sec.

...

You have to wonder, what is it about this race that beckons people? So I call Rob de Castella, who set a world record in the marathon in 1981 and won the marathon at the 1983 World Athletics Championships. He is the perfect man to ask: Are marathoners crazy? 'Maybe we are a bit,' he chuckled. 'But then you have to be crazy to do anything brilliantly, to push yourself to the edge.'
Impossible is Nothing

He explains there are blisters, born both of friction and constant pounding, and that these bleed too. Furthermore, feet go numb with the pounding and, just to illustrate the point, he says it's a bit like 'hitting your finger repeatedly with a hammer'.

But de Castella says this is, gulp, only 'superficial pain', that you can run through the blisters and chafing, but what tests the runner some days is an 'overwhelming feeling of weariness, an exhaustion deep within your bones'.

Not every marathon is a trial. For there are some days, he says, when 'you're running fast and feeling as if you can run forever, and it is an incredibly exhilarating experience, like finding the sweet spot and hitting a perfect shot in golf'.

But, on bad days, it's hard to stay positive, to keep going, as part of the mind pleads stop, and the lungs scream, and the glycogen in a weeping body is depleted, till the last 5km can resemble 'hell on earth'.

But right here, perhaps, is where we excavate the heroism of the marathoner, we unearth the essence of this grand, relentless race. Because what the marathoner does is he endures. He breaks through invisible walls of exhaustion. He goes forward, somehow, even though his right leg cramps while running and left leg cramps while walking.

He finds a way to finish what he started.

One of the few days in the year that there are no cars on the roads

There will be one champion tomorrow, yet many winners. For the runner competes with himself, answers his own challenge, pushes the envelope of his own possibility. Sohn Kee Chung, winner of the 1936 Olympic marathon, once said: 'The human body can do so much, then the heart and spirit must take over.'


The marathon will never be a spectator sport because its battles, and its pleasures, lie within, beyond our gaze. ... 'Pain', he says, 'is outweighed by a deep sense of pride and satisfaction and achievement. The only reason we do it is that the enjoyment significantly outweighs the pain.'

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That is how marathoners feel. It is not a physical test, but a mental test. A mental test, to complete the marathon. It is only this much that our body can do. The rest, is up to our will, up to our endurance level. There will come a point in the marathon when it is only you and God. No one else matters. Not those at the side, not those in front or at the back. Only you and God.

I can't say that I'm satisfied with my performance in the marathon 3 days ago. I would certainly push myself to do better the next time I take part in a marathon. But I'm proud to say that I beat all others by challenging myself to take up the challenge again, to take part in a marathon, and to see how far I could go. =)