Waterfront Marathon Will Challenge Me In A Much Different Way!

By Jason Sutcliffe

On October 20th, I will face a very difficult challenge. I will be participating in the Scotia Bank Waterfront Marathon. Normally I am beyond physically prepared for events such as this one. I have put in the work and made the training far tougher than the race itself, and it is just a matter of staying focused and running my race.

This time it is a little bit different; I have had a lot of things going on personally and with school. I have not been able to train like I would have liked to, or should have for that matter. That being the case this race opens up a whole new set of challenges, but challenges that I look forward to overcoming.

I am going to learn a lot about myself in this race as I am not as physically prepared as I would like to be. It is going to be a mental challenge. I am going to need to be tougher mentally than I have had to be in the past. There are going to be points of the race that are just excruciating, specifically the last 10 kilometers.

Anyone who runs marathons or marathon distances will tell you that the last 10k is when the race starts. That is when runners must call upon their physical fitness, physical abilities and mental strength. This time I am going to be relying heavily on my mental strength. Do not get me wrong I am in good shape, but a marathon calls for runners to be in great shape.

I am looking forward to challenging my mental toughness; this is going to be the first time where I am this physically unprepared. I know that this probably sounds crazy to some people that I am even considering running a full marathon when I am openly admitting that I am not as prepared as I would like to be, but I embrace challenges like this.

It is easy to claim to have the mental toughness to pull through moments of adversity, but it is a very different thing to prove it. I pride myself on being strong mentally, I have lost many, many, many times in my life, but I have never been broken mentally. I have never allowed someone, or something to break me to the point where I quit. This challenge is going to put that will to the test like never before.

This is obviously not the ideal situation for me to be running this race, but I will make the best of it, and embrace the challenges it brings.