How I Feel after Running My FIRST Marathon

Hooray! :-)) On Sunday I ran my first marathon. 42.195km (26.2 miles). It was, without a doubt, a HUGE success and my best race ever!!! I finished it strong, happy and in 03:48:36 placing myself 15th in my age group and 124 overall.

Don’t get me wrong, running a marathon is definitely very challenging and requires months of preparation. But if you’re willing to put in the time too, the results will follow. And they are SO worth it! Trust me on this.

As there are a lot of things to keep in mind when preparing for your first marathon – and I’d like to cover them all – I’ve decided to break the post apart and start a blog posts series instead.

Therefore, today I’m only going to focus on the emotional side. Here is how I feel five days later I ran my first marathon:

1. On top of the world! As I type these words, I’m sitting in my living room and keep smiling at the screen. Hell yeah! It feels amazing and no one can bring me down …not just yet! 🙂

2. I have this huge smile all over my face like I’m on drugs! (…just so you know, I’m not!) You see the smile is so huge that not even the grumpiest person in the world could change a thing. 🙂

3. Food taste so much better!!!

4. I surprised myself to have recovered extremely fast and even run faster the other day! Don’t believe me? Here is my activity on Strava.

5. I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life! And my legs feel so damn sexy… 😉

6. I just realized that I can do anything and everything! And as an example, I’ve already signed up for my second marathon in June, which it’s by the way a trail marathon called Biggesee Marathon. Interested in joining too? Here is the page where you can also sign up – Biggesee Marathon.

7. I’m still enjoying the sweet taste of not-giving-up and its rewards!

8. I’ve not only grown my patience, I also realized that the best things in life are SO worth waiting for! Just so we are clear, having patience used to be really hard for me.

9. I’m now experiencing this hunger to do better in every aspect of my life! I even feel ready to make some major life changes. Oooops! (can’t tell you about that just yet) 😉

10. And now, last but not least, I feel very proud of my accomplishment! So proud and HAPPY that I wanna give back to the community by running and raising money for a good cause. So here I find myself taking part of the Wings for Life World Run on May 8th in Breda, the Netherlands. And this time I’ll run for those who can’t.

What’s Wings for Life, you ask?

Wings for Life is a not-for-profit spinal cord research foundation. Their mission is to find a cure for this devastating injury. With your donations they fund world-class scientific research and clinical trials around the globe aimed at healing the injured spinal cord.

Let’s face it, spinal cord injury can happen to absolutely anyone at any point in time. A slip, a fall, a car accident and life can change forever in a heartbeat.
Nevertheless, I’m so excited to be able to donate myself and also run to make spinal cord injury curable. If YOU also wanna be part of it, you can simply donate a small amount of money, even if it’s just 5 or 10 Euros.

Let’s help those people with spinal cord injuries walk again one day!

Thank you in advance for all your support! Here is my profile on Wings for Life World Run Donations page.

Now, my message to YOU is: if you do the work, you get the reward. It may not be the reward you want right this minute, but eventually you will get it. So stop your temper tantrum, wipe your nose, and get cracking. There is so much to be gained from pushing the rock up the hill.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Meanwhile, stay healthy and be happy!
Xoxo Cris