Running is a great way to discover new places – but was the Inverness Half Marathon a step too far?
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Inverness Half Marathon first-timer – and Ross-shire Journal contributor - Federica Stefani reports on her experience of pounding the city's streets after accepting a 'joke challenge'
“Ah, my old enemy… stairs.” Never in my life have I felt more connected to Kung Fu Panda’s Po character at the thought of climbing up – or even worse, down – a set of stairs.
This is what you get after randomly deciding to run a half marathon for the first time ever, with little to no preparation towards it. Don’t try this at home.
However, no matter how bizarre I look and feel when walk, sit down or sit up, my muscles begging for forgiveness, joining the Inverness Half Marathon this year was ultimately a very rewarding experience.
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It came out as a bit of a challenge that a friend threw in almost as a joke two years ago. The first year I decided to give it a miss (the excuse being that I didn’t have any decent shoes to train in and that there was not enough time to prepare myself for it, at least without risking hypothermia or slipping on the insidious black ice), but I joined as a volunteer and marshalled with my rugby teammates from Inverness Craig Dunain at the 2022 event.
It turned out to be a lovely and fun experience. So this year the idea was to try the full experience. Why not?
Throughout my life I have had a go at a variety of sports – from volleyball to tennis and martial arts, now happily settling on rugby – but I never considered myself a runner, and I had never entered a competitive running event before, so in my mind I had all these training resolutions that were to take me to the event relatively safely.
Almost none of it happened, unfortunately, but I survived and crossed the finish line – with the last bit of energy in my legs – at 2 hours and 24 minutes.
Running for me has never been about the performance itself. My first encounter with voluntary jogging (aside from the warm-up runs and whatever competition we were coerced to do at school) was when I was studying in Paris. With access to butter-loaded patisseries and scrumptiously good bread almost 24/7 at every corner, I turned to jogging in the Parisian parks mostly out of necessity, not to feel like the ultimate couch potato.
If I had to force myself quite strongly at first, it was also starting in a foreign land that gave me one of my favourite reasons to run – which is, to discover my surroundings when moving to a new place.
That took most of my focus away from the running itself, and more on the discovery side of it. When I moved to Nottingham, Cheboksary (a city not too far from Kazan in Russia), then Glasgow and Edinburgh – running was always a solitary treat, a way of connecting personally with a new place, discovering new details that I had not noticed while busy moving from one place to the other with a purpose.
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Then I discovered that, if I took it as time with myself, it was also about the mental health benefit. In some of my lowest moments, heading out for a run, no matter how strong the rain (in some cases, the stronger the better), it has always managed to switch the doom and gloom of a low-key day.
So, when it came to choose a charity to run for, Mikeysline was really the one that made sense to me. I have always admired their work – so vital, especially after the pandemic – and, even if I haven’t used their service directly, in some moments even knowing that there was an option helped make things better.
But, back to the half marathon. For various reasons (time, weather, travels, my dog being an awful running partner as he either speeds it or stops suddenly) I had not been able to prepare properly for the event. Knowing that the friend running it with me was very much in the same situation made things easier, however I was really unsure of what to expect.
I know that I can run a 10k relatively comfortably but was very much in the dark on how my body and mind would react past that distance. Thankfully, keeping a slow but regular pace helped.
What I think made it easier was the enthusiasm from all the participants – it felt great to be part of that wave of people, moving forward, and having the volunteers cheering at every corner. They have spent many hours in the cold and rain and for them to still be encouraging us on was amazing.
In the end, I feel it was a very instructive experience. I have seen bits of Inverness that I had never explored, I have shared a moment with a community I am very fond of, and I think that I have learned a lot about my body, how to listen to it better and how to feel its limits.
However, it will be a few days yet before my legs forgive me for signing up to this without consultation, and after all, this probably is only fair!
