There Are Days Where I Run Marathons

View from the back of an accessible van parked on a grassy area overlooking the sea. A person’s legs and trainers are stretched out in the foreground, with blue sky, scattered clouds and a calm coastline visible in the distance. Part of a wheelchair can be seen on the left-hand side of the image. The overall mood is peaceful and reflective, with strong “I’ve earned this sit down” energy.

I haven’t written a blog for a while.

Not because I haven’t had anything to say. If anything, I’ve had too much to say and not enough brain space to say it. Somewhere between running the London Marathon, recovering from the London Marathon, talking about the London Marathon, and repeatedly reminding myself that yes, I did actually run the London Marathon, I’ve been trying to work out what exactly the experience taught me.

Because it definitely taught me something.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it taught me that my body is capable of significantly more than I, or indeed most medical professionals I’ve encountered over the last thirty years, ever gave it credit for.

This isn’t a blog about “overcoming adversity”. Frankly, I think there are enough of those already. This is a blog about discovering that your body has a reserve tank that you didn’t know existed, and then discovering that the reserve tank also comes with a tax bill attached.

The London Marathon will, I suspect, remain the highlight of my year. Possibly several years, maybe my life depending on how things go...

There are very few experiences in life where you spend six months systematically making yourself increasingly uncomfortable, only to wake up one Sunday morning and decide that running 26.2 miles around London sounds like a perfectly sensible use of your time.

And yet, somehow, it was.

Training for the marathon taught me something that I think many Disabled people know instinctively but perhaps don’t always articulate: the body keeps score.

Not in a dramatic or punitive sense. More in the sense that everything costs something.

Every good decision. Every bad decision. Every period of stress. Every period of joy. Every late night, every early morning, every mile run, every hour rested. The body remembers all of it.

The strange thing about marathon training was that it was simultaneously one of the healthiest and toughest things I’ve ever done.

I became fitter than I have ever been in my life. I was stronger. I had more cardiovascular endurance than I thought possible. My confidence in my own body grew exponentially. I felt absolutely incredible.

I was also permanently tired.

Not “I could do with an early night” tired. More “if one more person asks me to do something this week, I may simply become one with the sofa” tired... and hungry...oh so hungry!

A person sitting in a powered wheelchair in a car park, leaning forward with their head resting on their knees after a run or training session. A black van and a red running buggy are parked nearby, with residential houses visible in the background. The image conveys physical exhaustion and the universal experience of needing a moment to reconsider one’s hobbies.

There was always a price to pay for that level of fitness. In my case, that price was time and energy. Every long run borrowed from somewhere else. Social energy, work energy, emotional energy, the energy required to do all the other things that make up a life.

And that’s okay.

In fact, I think that’s the point.

We’re often sold this idea that there is a version of ourselves that can be operating at 100% capacity in every area of our lives simultaneously. That if we just optimise enough, plan enough, work hard enough, we can become some mythical human being who runs marathons, has a flourishing social life, excels at work, sleeps eight hours a night and somehow also meal preps on a Sunday.

I’m increasingly convinced that this person does not exist.

Or if they do, I suspect they’re absolutely insufferable.

The reality is that we are supposed to have seasons in our lives. We are allowed to pursue one thing at the expense of another for a while. We are allowed to rest afterwards. We are allowed to be proud of ourselves one day and feel completely useless the next.

As a Disabled person, this feels particularly important to acknowledge.

There are days where I feel incredibly capable.

There are days where I run marathons.

And there are days where I feel profoundly disabled.

Days where my environment reminds me exactly how little thought was given to people like me when it was designed. Days where my support needs feel exhausting. Days where the sheer logistics of existing require more energy than I have available.

Those days do not invalidate the marathon.

The marathon does not invalidate those days.

Running the London Marathon did not make me less disabled.

Feeling disabled does not make the achievement any less extraordinary.

Both things can exist at the same time.

Throughout my training, and particularly afterwards, I was often told by many that I was inspirational.

I have mixed feelings about this.

I understand why people say it. Human beings have a tendency to place the things we don’t understand, and perhaps secretly admire, on pedestals. We look at extraordinary achievements and use them to measure our own capacity, our own resilience, our own worth.

I don’t think that’s entirely a bad thing.

What I do wish is that we were better at recognising the quieter forms of resilience too.

Not just the marathons.

Not just the medals.

Not just the things that can be photographed at the finish line.

I wish we celebrated the person who got out of bed despite everything telling them not to. The person who attended the appointment they were dreading. The person who advocated for themselves for the hundredth time. The person who survived a difficult year. The person who kept going when nobody was watching.

Because perhaps that’s what the marathon really taught me.

Not that I’m inspirational.

Not that I’m exceptional.

Just that human beings have an extraordinary capacity to adapt, to endure, to surprise themselves and to keep moving forward, even when doing so comes at a cost.

This year, there were days where I ran a marathon.

There have also been days where I’ve been defeated by a mental block, an inaccessible building, a lack of support, exhaustion, bureaucracy, or simply by the fact that sometimes being human is really bloody hard.

Both versions of me are real.

Neither version makes me any less Disabled.

And perhaps that’s what I’ve been trying to understand ever since crossing that finish line: that I don’t have to choose between being capable and being disabled, because I’ve always been both.

Action photograph taken during the London Marathon showing a frame runner smiling while pushing a green and white running frame along a closed road. Other runners surround them and marathon signage is visible in the background. The runner is wearing a white t-shirt, black cap and sunglasses. The image captures determination, exhaustion and the feeling of it all being worth it!