6 Tips and Reasons to Run a Marathon

This piece is a continuation of this post—focusing on 12 benefits of long-distance running—based on my having now completed 12 marathons.

Glenn Geher

Compete with only yourself

As is a good practice across all spheres of life, don't worry too much about what the Joneses are doing. When it comes to marathon running, you're best off competing with yourself. Set reasonable goals. This might be to simply finish or to finish in some particular time (e.g., faster than your last race), etc. Marathon running is best when you are competing with—and developing—yourself. The second you find yourself trying to beat Mr. Jones, you take away so many of the intrinsic rewards of the sport. So if you see Mr. Jones flying past you at mile 24, wish him luck and smile. And keep on running.

Check in with your loved ones

When you're marathon training, you're necessarily putting tons of time into the training process. This fact may have consequences for those whom you love in your world. Be sensitive to this fact. Try to schedule your training runs at times that impact your loved ones either none or very little. And check in with them regularly throughout the process to make sure things are good and to see if there is anything that you can do to make improvements on this front if needed.

Be ready to join a community

During the race itself, communities usually pop up spontaneously. I found myself today, for instance, for hours on end running with Mike, a 74-year-old first-timer, and Natalie, a 20-year-old college student whose mom is a marathoner. We talked about all kinds of things. This is common in running a marathon—and it is part of the beauty of the sport.

(Oh, and if you're wondering, at about mile 23, Mike stepped on the gas and never looked back—he beat me by a good 10 minutes. I was thrilled for him! I want to be like Mike when I'm 74!)

Listen to your body

As someone who's had heat exhaustion, broken bones, plantar fasciitis, and more, I can tell you from experience that you will run into physical challenges during the training and/or the race. Listen to your body. And take appropriate actions. You won't regret it.

Know that you can do it

Across decades of research, renowned social psychologist, Albert Bandura (see Bandura et al., 1996) documented a simple truth about human behavior. If you truly believe that you can achieve some outcome, this simple belief increases, dramatically, your ability to actually do so. This phenomenon, that we call self-efficacy, is, in many ways, one of the most profound facts of human psychology. So if you hear yourself saying that you could never run a marathon, I say think again.

If you were to have told 24-year-old Glenn that I'd have completed 12 marathons by 2023, I'd have spit out my Natural Light. I was a couch potato with zero interest in physical activity at the time. At some point, I started to run. And I had a friend, Eric Cooley, a seasoned runner and senior faculty member where I taught at the time, tell me, quite out of nowhere, that he was sure that I could finish a marathon. His belief in me led to my own belief in myself. And here I am, several decades and 12 marathon finishes later. The power of self-efficacy truly cannot be understated.

Give yourself time to think about what you've accomplished

After the marathon, you will feel a panoply of emotions. These will range from joy to pain to awe—and all kinds of things in between. After you've finished a marathon successfully, you'll have lots of things to be proud of. And lots of lessons that you'll have learned. Give yourself time and space to experience this part of the process. Go ahead and feel pride—it is well-deserved and comes at no one's expense. Letting yourself process the many facets of your accomplishment will have all kinds of beneficial effects down the road for you.

Bottom Line

Long-distance running, in the modern world, is a fully optional endeavor. Yet many of us spend great amounts of time and money to engage in this sport. Partly, this point has to do with the fact that long-distance running has been part of the human evolutionary story for eons (see Lieberman et al., 2020). And partly this point has to do with the fact that there are a broad range of benefits and life lessons to long-distance running today.

Want to challenge yourself and build such skills as self-efficacy, compassion for others, and belief that you control your own destiny? Maybe, if your body is up for it, give marathon running a shot. I've been doing it for years and I wouldn't take this passion of mine back for one second.

Note: Big thanks to Shannon Guyton whose ideas very much helped shape the conceptualization of this piece—and who was an enormous support throughout the whole process. So appreciative.