By Joe Ribton

How not to do a half-marathon

If I applied the same effort that I gave to training for my half-marathon to SCA I would be FUCKED. One big run a week interspersed with self-loathing and lazy evenings watching YouTube. I did not use all my time wisely. However, if I had applied the same effort that I have been giving to SCA to training for my half-marathon, i’d be fucked twice over. I’d have been getting up at 5 to run, maybe running at lunch some days and just sitting in the sweat, desperately trying to push the right keys on my keyboard with slippery sweat fingers. I would have crumbled like one of the big bits of asbestos next to my desk at school, and just like crumbly asbestos I would have smelt really bad the whole time. Here are a few other points at which I knew I had fucked it during my run last Saturday:

I couldn’t find a fanny pack. Don’t laugh. The fanny pack is a runner’s best friend, and I had let my girlfriend use the only one I could find. 349 other runners started that half-marathon with the blinged-up waist accessories of a music festival drug dealer, and there I was holding my water and Isotonic gels in my hands like an absolute melon.

I decided to book my run on the wrong day. Originally my half-marathon was scheduled for Sunday… When there was a light drizzle and absolutely no humidity. It got rescheduled to Saturday morning when, as I’m sure you know, it was hot as balls. For the first two laps of the course, I felt myself cooking on every side as I circled my way around the sun. Getting lightly browned like a rotisserie chicken. Don’t recommend.

The course defied all theoretical physics. I’m not sure what kind of M. C Escher, Leonardo DiCaprio Inception-style bullshit the route planner pulled off, but somehow the entire course was uphill. It was the literal epitome of an uphill battle.

I did not consider life after the run. This one surely has some higher moral that might help me with SCA. I did not, for one second, consider what would happen after the run. It was too far, it was beyond my comprehension, an insurmountable distance. I’d be running forever and then someone would carry me home and prop me up in the garden with a beer. What really happened is my parents left half way through, and I had to uber home with no keys, and proceed to sit on my doorstep for over an hour feeling like I might die.

I’m not too sure why, considering the 10 hour work days and the part-time job, I thought it was ever a good idea to give in to my girlfriend and sign up for a half-marathon. I have been so busy recently that the “too much on my plate” metaphor doesn’t seem to suffice. The plate was spilling over before I decided to put some shoes on the plate and tell it I was going to compliment my 12 hour pub shift on a Saturday with a 16 kilometre run on the Sunday morning. Anyway, just like with the run, I haven’t planned for post SCA and will welcome a good couple weeks of being sat on my doorstep doing nothing very very gladly.