The road to the marathon (part 3): “I’ll do the last kilometres of the marathon on determination.”

Student Christian Meckelburg will be running his first marathon; staff member Iris * will be running her first quarter marathon. Every week, one of them gives us an update on how his or her training is going.  “I’ll do the last kilometres of the marathon on determination.”

Last week, Christian Meckelburg did more cycling than running. “I’ve led a very isolated existence these past few weeks,” says Christian. “I had to study a lot for my examinations. This meant that I didn’t have much time to run.” But while studying may improve your mental condition, ultimately, running a marathon comes down to your physical condition. “I went spinning two or three times at the Erasmus Sports Centre. It’s an excellent way to stay fit, and you’re finished in less than an hour. I didn’t have more time than that on weekdays.”

In the weekend, Christian will be able to put on his running shoes again. “Things have been going very well up to now. I’m running 20 to 25 kilometres at a stretch.” That’s around half the distance he’ll be running on the day itself. Nevertheless, he doesn’t intend to add a lot more kilometres to the individual runs in his schedule. “It’s not healthy to run marathon distances on a regular basis. I’ll be limiting my training runs to 30 kilometres. Which means I’ll have to do the last few kilometres of the marathon on determination.”

To keep track of how many kilometres he has run, Christian often makes laps around Kralingse Plas. “Each lap is approximately five kilometres. So I do four to five of those.” Doesn’t it ever get boring? “It’s not that bad,” Meckelburg says with a smile. “I usually run in the evening, when it’s already dark out. As a result, I don’t get to see much of my surroundings, which means there’s not much to annoy me either.”