How I Ran a Marathon as a Non-Runner by Camilla Lundin

I am not a runner. Or at least that’s not how I saw myself in high school. During physical activity class I didn’t run 3 k fast enough. That’s at least what I believed was one of the reasons I didn’t get the grade I was aiming for in that school subject. My teacher put a lot of emphasis on running when she sat the grades for the students. 

I have since then made a personal journey and can now proudly say that I’ve completed my first marathon.

The selfie I sent to my family before it was time to run and after I’ve got a bird pooping on my leggings (it has never happened to me before and yes I got to practice some positive thinking after that haha)

Here are some insights I would love to share with you from this.

1.You can decide who you are and who you’re becoming at any point of your life. You can change your self-image and what is possible for you in your life. Just because you weren't the child in your family who helped with IT or knew all about personal finance growing up - doesn’t mean you can’t become an excelling programmer or kick-ass investment banker later in life.

Only YOU decide what’s possible for you.

You can decide this at any point of your life, the past is only the past and doesn’t determine your future. 

2.Who you surround yourself with matters. For some reason I’ve been surrounded by marathon runners, this includes my parents, best friend Vendela, colleague and brothers of my boyfriend.

Being surrounded by people who have accomplished something you thought was impossible for you can after a while plant a seed in you “Maybe it’s possible for me too?”.

For me it started with a seed like that until finally I felt this year “I’m 100 % sure I can do this. If they can, I can do it too”. 

Today I got this message that made my day from a member of Business & Dreams Members’ Club who asked me some questions about how to prepare for a marathon:

This truly shows the power of who you surround yourself with.

Since high school I’ve been running from time to time and started to enjoy the endorphins from it. It’s truly the best feeling afterwards!

I ran a 10k race and a half marathon. After that my mind started to process if I could do a marathon.

In 2018 I saw that a now member Cassandra Brunstedt had run a marathon and I got an impulse to write a message. This is what I wrote:

I got the most supportive message as a reply. However it took some more time for me to do this due to different reasons.

One year I just got lazy training after a girls trip to Marbella drinking too much wine haha. Two times I trained for marathons but they both got canceled due to the pandemic.

This leads me to the third insight:

3. Keep striving for your goals and trust the timing of your life. Things might not happen when you thought they would. But to me it doesn’t matter. You can keep going and they will happen for you when the right time comes. Trust that and accept that with non-resistance.

I love to once in a while challenge myself. Push myself beyond what I first thought was possible. Where it’s uncomfortable because it’s outside of my comfort zone. Because I know that’s where growth happens. That’s when your mind starts to realize how much you're capable of and how amazing experiences you can have if you dare to go for it. This could be doing a TED Talk, running a marathon or my next challenge: doing a 10 day Vipassana retreat.

I think at least one bigger challenge a year is fun to do.

This year I got the impulse to sign up for a marathon, I felt like I was mentally ready to do it. Now I just needed the physical part as well haha.

Here are some practical tips if you think of doing it as well: 

• I started training about 8 weeks before the marathon.

• I ran 3 times a week, 2 shorter 6k runs (sometimes replaced by a Barry’s Bootcamp Class) and one longer

• The longer I started at 10k and then increased gradually every week up to 25k

• The week before I run a 10k

• The days before I didn’t run to rest my legs before the big day

• I also trained some strength to build up the muscles in my legs

One rule I had was to always listen to my body and never push it too hard. It’s easy to get injuries when running long-distance so it was important for me to be careful to avoid that. If you can train 3 months before the marathon that would definitely be even better even though this worked well for me in this case.

I personally didn’t put any pressure on myself regarding speed. I liked to focus more on persistence and I could move as slow as I wanted during the practices and during the marathon. The goal was just to do the full distance which worked well for me as a challenging goal without being too overwhelming. 

Meeting my mum and family dog at the finishing line - we celebrated with some good food and ice cream in the park. 

The feeling of accomplishing this goal was amazing and I want to say for anyone who has a goal, this one, something similar or something completely different: IT IS POSSIBLE.

You can do anything you set your mind to. I believe there are so many people who could run a marathon, do a TED Talk, or anything else you dream of.

You just need two ingredients: the desire to do it and the belief that it’s possible. 

When I signed up for this I didn’t tell a lot of people. Only a few selected people knew. The reason for this is I didn't want anyone else's beliefs to affect me. I wanted the belief to come from me, from my inner belief.

If you for instance tell someone abut your business idea it’s easy to get affected by how they react. But this reaction says more about them than you. They think about what’s possible for them - not for you. No one knows you as well as you know yourself.

Lastly, the best investment I believe you can make is raising your inner voice to be kind. This can be done through journaling, meditation and other practices.

When I was running and it was hard I could hear the voice in my head saying “It’s okay, you can go slow, but you’re not a person who stops moving forward”. I was happy when I observed how kind the voice was to me, and I know this was due to previous work with personal development. 

So yes I guess now I don’t know if I’m a runner or not. We can say that I’m a non-runner who decided that I could run a marathon. And I am 100% confident that you can do it too if you desire to.