At some point in your running life, it will hit you—wherever you turn, it will seem like everyone is talking about marathons. A lot.
Your real-world and online running friends will share weekly humble brags about their long runs. People at 5Ks and 10Ks will tell you things like, “This is just a tune-up for my marathon” and “I’m training through this race.”
You’ll notice more and more articles here on Runner’s World about the world’s fastest marathoners, how to carbo-load, how to find the best plan for your goal, which $250+ dollar super shoe is best, the local woman running her first marathon at age 143, and so on. You might well start to feel more like a shamed sloth than a runner if you’re not training for a marathon.
You shouldn’t feel that way.
As the coauthor of one of the most popular marathon-training books, Advanced Marathoning, I hope I’m not committing professional suicide when I say: It’s okay to not run marathons. Not this season, not this year, not ever. You can be a completely fulfilled lifelong runner without ever even thinking about running a marathon.
Of course, marathons are great. For many people, covering the distance is a landmark achievement, one that brings a sense of empowerment to the rest of their lives. For runners aiming to go substantially faster than their normal training pace, nailing a marathon is among racing’s greatest satisfactions. Even experienced marathoners remain awed by the event, given all the physical and psychological hobgoblins that lie in wait along 26.2 miles of road.
But “great” isn’t a synonym for “be all and end all.”
After all, 26.2 miles is an arbitrary, not ultimate, distance, famously arrived at to accommodate the British monarchy at the 1908 Olympics. Would you feel inadequate if, on the way home from a marathon, you saw a “26.3” bumper sticker? Someone who does a trail 50K isn’t more of a runner than those who “only” do marathons, nor are they less of one than those who do 100-milers.
More important, running isn’t about one-upmanship. We run because doing so imbues our lives with pleasure, meaning, and well-being. If for you that entails running a marathon—this month, last decade, in 2030, whenever—cheers to you. If for you that entails racing the mile, or never racing, or running 27 untimed solo miles on a trail just for the hell of it, cheers to you as well.
And cheers to you if you run as much as you want, as fast or slow as you want, for whatever other reasons you want. We all have enough obligations in our lives; don’t ruin running by making it another area of have-to instead of want-to.
Scott is a veteran running, fitness, and health journalist who has held senior editorial positions at Runner’s World and Running Times. Much of his writing translates sport science research and elite best practices into practical guidance for everyday athletes. He is the author or coauthor of several running books, including Running Is My Therapy, Advanced Marathoning, and Meb for Mortals. Scott has also written about running for Slate, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other members of the sedentary media. His lifetime running odometer is past 110,000 miles, but he’s as much in love as ever.
