When I ran my first marathon at Sydney Blackmore Festival in 2014, it felt like one of the most significant achievements of my life. Training took over 5 months. While I was training, my endurance and resilience grew greatly. I’ve enjoyed it so much that in 2016 I ran the second one at Gold Coast.
It was easy to run the first 20 km but I had to invest great mental strength after 30km. Funnily, later on, I read about the mental stages humans go through when running a marathon. I can strongly relate to all of them. Recently I found this blog’s title and I say is a good one. I’ve lined the mental stages related to marathon running. It brings me joy when I read them. Despair is the stage where I seem to ponder the most.
The mental stages are:
- Excitement. You’re standing on that starting line feeling ready to take over the world.
- Confidence. “You’ve got this.”
- Denial. “You are fine. This is not a crisis.”
- Disbelief. “What do you mean I’m not even halfway there?”
- Despair. “Why did I ever think this was a good idea?”
- Determination. “It’s time to dig deep and get the job done”
- Elation. “I DID IT!” That’s right, you’ve crossed the finish line and you’ve never felt better about yourself. This is the biggest achievement of your life.”
When I relate these stages to parenting you may question what age of the child you’ll reach despair first. It is different for all of us.
Anyway! During the despair stage, I was in great physical pain and the power I used to get to the finish line came from my mental strength. I felt anger, and frustration and wanted to give up but the crowd kept me going. I didn’t realize how great my achievement was until it passed. Anger is a secondary emotion and it follows other feelings like terror, grief, etc. Humans tend to remember the hardest times more than the easy ones. Overcoming the hardest time experiences improve our endurance and strength.
To run a marathon we need more than a strong body. We need a strong mind, mental focus, inspiration, resilience, motivation, social support, and not at last, braveness.
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