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The Quarantine Marathon: A 24 hour "Quest"

May 17, 2020 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
So the 24 HOUR marathon finally happened. Oliver and I decided that for our Quest, under the new conditions, we would follow the path of YouTuber and runner, Beau Miles, and his video "A mile an hour: A different kind of marathon". If you haven't watched it, you totally should, he's awesome and the concept was awesome. The idea is that you run one mile per hour (with the occasional 2 miles in a row so that the math works out) over 24 hours to do 26.2 miles. During the 50 or so minutes when you're not running, you complete a variety of random tasks to have the most productive day possible. The marathon "simply" provides the structure to complete as many tasks as possible and be as productive as possible with the time you have in a day.

Upon deciding to embark on this effort, I had exactly one month and 5 days to get my body from not having run in over a month into shape enough to complete this monstrosity. After a month of fast-tracking training and my longest run being 7.5 miles, I decided I was in shape enough to run 26.2 miles over the course of Saturday the 16th into Sunday the 17th.

In the days leading up to this effort, Oliver and I created a plan with roughly 30 tasks that we wanted to complete in between the miles. These included anything from working in downtown DC with the nonprofit Print to Protect to making dinner to mowing a neighbor's lawn to watching Tintin at midnight. With this plan and a general idea of what kind of footage we needed, we planned to start at 8 am on Saturday at GDS and finish at GDS at 8 am on Sunday.

Below I listed all of the tasks I was able to complete.

SATURDAY:
We began at the 42nd street doors at exactly 8 am and did the 2 miles on the classic Ward and back. We then hopped in the cars and headed down to Eaton Workshop in downtown DC to work for an hour at the nonprofit started by GDS's very own Jonah Docter-Loeb Print to Protect. After helping organize boxes for an hour, we went off for the next 2 miles, running around haphazardly around downtown DC. At this point, it's about 10:30 and we headed to our separate houses where we would only see each other through Facetime until the next day. The rest of the day followed the structure it was supposed to: run a mile at the top of every hour, roll and eat for 10 minutes, and then work on the task we had assigned to that hour. Before the quest, I created a loop around my neighborhood that was exactly one mile, so I ran that 21 times (not super fun). The running on Saturday wasn't too bad and even though I was definitely not in great shape, I didn't have too many low points. My quads and knee were kind of ripped up from the beginning and they kind of just settled into the running. Essentially, running mile 8 felt almost exactly the same as running mile 18.

SUNDAY:
This is when things started to get much harder. These miles that were in complete darkness were a suffer-fest. The running wasn't actually too bad and my breathing throughout the entirety of the 24 hours and 26.2 miles stayed constant and was never really hard. My legs weren't perfect, obviously, at this point but they didn't feel all that different from mile 10. My knee was completely gone and I couldn't even do the quad stretch we normally do and try and bend it. However, what made this section of the quest so much more difficult was the mental strain I was undergoing. By 2 in the morning, after having been working and doing jobs for the past 18 or so hours, my mind was completely dead. I was in a zombie-like state and the running became the only break in the monotony. I was still doing jobs, but my motivation to try and be productive was completely gone. Sleep was becoming so tempting and I was in, for the first time, a true low point. At 3 am Oliver and I, got to take a nap because it was included in the list of things to do. I passed out instantly and then when I woke up to go out for my next run, my mind had almost reset. The cold wind as I began to run jolted me awake and I escaped the low. We finished off the rest of the night hours with very few tasks and at 5 am we got to take a super refreshing ice bath. At 6 we made breakfast for our families and ran the last loop of our neighborhood's. At 7 I drove back to GDS, 24 hours later after driving there on Saturday. Seeing Oliver was a refreshing sight and we headed off, keeping our distance, on our last 1.2 miles on the warmup loop and neighborhood of AU park. My legs at this point actually felt great and for this mile and the two before this, I dropped the pace down to mid to low 8s. With our family's holding up a finish line we got on Amazon a couple of days before, we completed the marathon. In the end, I ran: 26.24 miles for 3:57:08 hours. Technically, the definition of an ultra marathon is any run that is longer than the traditional 26.2, so TECHNICALLY, I believe I also just completed my first ultra (Oliver and I have made plans that after college we will run a real ultra together). In my loop, I had to finish every time with the hill that leads up to my house, so I also climbed roughly 1,800 ft (fun).

Overall this was a hell of an experience. I definitely learned some stuff about myself and got more chores done than I have in the last month. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend this to others, but if you're bored during quarantine, it's a good way to run a marathon and get some chores done. If my long ramble didn't make much sense, lookout for a video that Oliver and I re going to make from the over 500 clips we filmed throughout the 24 hours.

Tasks I completed in between the running:
1) Worked with Print to Protect
2) Picked-up trash on the run
3) Mowed neighbor's lawn
4) Worked in the garden and plant seeds
5) Painted wood for the ski chair lift
6) Read a book
7) Got a haircut
8) Played ping pong
9) Cleaned out driveway
10) Baked cookies
11) Painted part of the bedroom
12) Trained the dog to go over jumps
13) Built with legos
14) Made dinner
15) Built a fire and made s' mores
16) Learned how to shine shoes and tie a tie
17) Wrote a reflection
18) Watched Tintin
19) Played (and won) a game of chess
20) Took a nap
21) General cleanup around the house
22) The dishes
23) Took an ice bath
24) Watched the sunset and sunrise
25) Made breakfast
26) FINISHED