The Time I Accidentally Ran A Half Marathon

March 12, 2022 ~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 3 Comments

Back in 2016, I worked on an outdoor education centre in Canada.

During one of my weeks off, I decided to take a trip to Vancouver Island with a few friends.

The journey to Vancouver Island was quite long and involved sitting on two coaches and a ferry for several hours.

By the time we arrived at our Airbnb, my legs were quite stiff from sitting down for so long so, the following morning, I decided to go out for a run.

I did not set off intending to run a half marathon.

I only wanted to go for a light jog to stretch my legs.

However, around 10 minutes into my run, I began to notice that things were slightly strange.

The streets were really quiet and there was no traffic on the roads, despite the fact that I was running close to the city centre.

A few minutes later, other runners started to pass me, one or two at first, and then several at once.

To go from seeing virtually nobody to seeing lots of people was quite confusing so I followed the runners around a bend in the road, curious to see where they were going.

I turned the corner and, all of a sudden, found myself being funnelled between a set of barriers leading to a blow-up arch. There were lots of people crowded behind the barriers, clapping and waving their hands in the air.

Stunned, I removed my headphones from my ears and realised that they were cheering.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was in the finishing straight of a half-marathon.

As the reality of the situation settled upon me, I decided to try and exit the race by climbing over one of the barriers. However, the sheer amount of supporters leaning against the barrier made this impossible.

One woman even patted me on the back and yelled the words ‘you can’t give up now honey, not when you’ve come so far!’ into my ear before shoving me back onto the road.

In the end, I had no option but to cross the finish line.

I stood dazed among the other finishers, most of whom were bent over double or collapsed on the floor, having run 21km.

I, in contrast, had run a grand total of 2km max.

After a minute or so, a volunteer shoved an energy drink and a chocolate chip cookie into my hand, before enthusiastically congratulating me and placing a medal around my neck.

Then, before I knew it, I found myself being ushered towards a beaming man who was holding a microphone in his hand.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, holding his hand out for me to shake. ‘You are our 2^nd placed female finisher!’

It turned out that, not only had I unwittingly finished the race, but I had apparently completed it in a time of 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Now, at this point, I should have corrected the man and said something along the lines of:

Instead, I looked him dead in the eye and said:

I’m not sure exactly what compelled me to say this.

Maybe I hadn’t wanted to disappoint the man, who looked so happy and thrilled on my behalf.

Maybe I was secretly flattered that he thought I could pass as an accomplished athlete.

Or maybe I had just liked the look of the free cookie I had received as a reward for finishing the race and didn’t want to risk it being confiscated if someone found out I was fraud.

No matter the reason, by accepting the fabrication that the interviewer had shoved upon me, I had begun to spin a web of lies from which there was no escape.

Evidently unaware that anything was amiss, the interviewer proceeded to ask me how I was feeling.

I wracked my brain, searching something that would make me sound like a legit sportsperson.

In hindsight, this made me sound more like an amateur surfer than an elite runner.

‘I bet you are!’ the interviewer said.

The interviewer patted me on the back. ‘Well, I’ll have to congratulate you for a second time then!’ he said. ‘Did you have a race plan?’

Considering I wasn’t planning on running the race in the first place, this was a pretty defunct question.

‘No, not really…’ I said.

The interviewer gasped. ‘You must be a natural then!’ He glanced down at my shirt.

I expected the man to laugh, but instead he nodded his head sincerely and said ‘it happens’ before moving onto the next question.

‘I get it,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘Keeping it on the DL. Wouldn’t want your competitors knowing your secrets.’

He nodded at a woman behind us, most likely the actual second-placed finisher, whose abs were clearly visible through her skin tight shirt.

I flashed him a strained smile, flabbergasted that he was even entertaining the idea that she and I could be considered competitors.

The man smiled back. ‘One last question and then I’ll let you go and rest. Those legs must be tired after all!’

There was a silence. The interviewer stared at me, a frown etched onto his forehead.

I looked down, cheeks burning, ashamed, convinced that my web of lies was about to come crashing down around me.

I prepared to hand over my cookie.

Then, the interviewer bent over double and started laughing.

Eventually, I left the finishing complex with a thoroughly undeserved cookie in my hand and a medal round my neck and, if I’m honest, the satisfaction of eating the cookie outweighed any feelings of guilt or remorse I may have felt about being a complete athletic fraud.

To this day, one hour twenty-five minutes remains my lifetimes best half-marathon time.

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How To Motivate Yourself To Exercise.

May 10, 2018June 13, 2018 ~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 16 Comments

When I first started doing exercise, I found it quite hard to motivate myself so I bought an ambitious amount of sportswear in the hope that wearing it would help me get into the mind-set of an athlete.

I reasoned that, if I looked like an athlete, I could delude my body into thinking it was capable of performing impressive feats of strength and endurance.

Once I started exercising, I was able to maintain this illusion of supreme athleticism for a short amount of time.

However, it soon became clear that I wasn’t an elite athlete and was, in fact, just a regular bog-standard unfit person.

Before exercising, I would perform elaborate warm-up routines in preparation for what I assumed would be a high intensity workout.

Warm up stretches are a useful way to prepare your body for exercise.

However, they are considerably less useful when they are used to actively avoid doing exercise in the first place.

Eventually, I decided that I needed to be more disciplined in my approach to exercise so I drew up a plan that detailed exactly how I was going to spend each workout to ensure that I spent less time stretching and more time actually exercising.

I thought that if I could stick to my workout plan, I would eventually fall into a routine and motivating myself to do exercise wouldn’t be such a struggle.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until my workouts started to deviate slightly from the routines that I had originally set out for myself.

At one point, I also tried going to exercise classes in the hope that the group camaraderie would help drag me through the workout.

The concept of the exercise class has been around since Mulan times (very historically accurate…) in which the renowned military personal trainer Li Shang whipped his recruits into shape to the tune of the song ‘I’ll Make A Man Out Of You’

‘I’ll Make A Man Out Of You’ is a highly motivational song that makes getting fit feel like a heroic mission.

However, the message relayed to participants in fitness boot camps nowadays tend to be slightly less stirring and dramatic .

At the end of the day, there is only one thing that will truly encourage me to exercise.

In theory, healthy exercise cancels out unhealthy cake consumption and everything balances out at a vaguely acceptable level of healthiness (this is a very scientifically accurate statement that I tell myself so that I can eat cake without feeling too guilty…)

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I’m Moderately Slow and Relatively Steady – So How Come I Haven’t Won Any Races Yet?

October 13, 2015January 19, 2016 ~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 3 Comments

Running is my perverse addiction.

I don’t know why I am addicted to running.

I’ve always had a somewhat addictive personality, something that established itself in childhood when I became addicted to the Sims 2 and, more severely, marshmallow flumps.

At its worst, I would play the Sims 2 for up to 6 hours straight.

During that time, I would have consumed up to twenty-five flumps.

I realised that my addiction was taking a downward, destructive spiral when I stopped visiting the ‘Create a Family’ room and started removing doors from walls and ladders from pool sides instead.

I sensed that having near complete control over the lives of others was getting to me.

I was becoming sick with power.

I was losing sight of the person that I had been and was turning into a brainwashed flump-guzzling monster. flump guzzler

As a result, I made a concerted effort to quit.

All things considered, maybe I am so addicted to running because partaking in regular cardiovascular exercise means that I can afford to eat as many flumps as I want without getting fat.

I have also considered the possibility that my addiction stems from the fact that sustaining running-related injuries such as Achilles Tendonitis, Plantar Fasciitis and hurty toes makes me feel badass.

I tend to get injured quite a bit when partaking in any form of physical activity.

I think this might be because I have the spatial awareness of a bulldozer.

When I am walking and happen to encounter an immovable object, my mind cognates that the obstruction is there but my body does not move to accommodate it.

When I am running and moving at (a marginally faster) speed, I often don’t even have time to acknowledge the presence of an obstruction.

A couple of months ago, I sustained my most significant running injury to date.

I was running through my local woods when my foot caught on a tree root.

The sudden introduction of an opposing force to my previously established momentum meant that I was thrust violently forwards.

My arms chose this exact moment to bypass any semblance of an autonomic reflex response.

They remained pinned to my side as the rest of my body dove liberally through the air.

The result?

In the Black Mountains of the Nebraska region, the harsh weather conditions and heavy snowfall of the winter season mean that the red fox is forced to adopt a unique hunting technique in order to access its prey.

I have included a GIF of this hunting method as I feel that it accurately captures both the motion of my body in the moments after I tripped, along with the point of impact upon the fall’s completion.