Until recently, I hadn’t really pictured myself running a marathon. I had a couple half marathons under my belt and had run too many 5Ks to count, but the marathon always felt too daunting. It wasn’t until a messy breakup last December that I decided to sign up for my first full marathon.
Running has always been a way for me to cope with trauma and grief. So as I sat around in my sweatpants sorting through my emotions and writing marathon stories for Runner’s World, I started to think of 26.2 miles as the perfect opportunity to help close out a chapter of my life that felt truly finished.
I knew that with the right training plan and good nutrition I was physically capable of running a marathon, but I was terrified of the emotional work it would take—which is exactly why I signed up.
“Running—and any form of exercise—can be a therapeutic process,” says Hillary Cauthen, PsyD, certified mental performance consultant and founder of Texas Optimal Performance and Psychological Services. “Some people go on this healing venture. Some people want to feel really proud and accomplished. Everyone has a different purpose.”
The emotional components of a marathon are just as important as the physical ones, Cauthen says, because it helps us stick to our goals and remember our “why.” “Outcomes are a natural part of our sport. We’re finishing a certain distance. We’re trying to get to a certain time or a certain place. It’s the meaning behind the outcome that matters,” she says.
To prepare for what I knew would be an emotional marathon journey, I sat down with Cauthen at the beginning and end of my training cycle and implemented a few of her tips throughout my plan. Those strategies completely changed the way I approached race day.
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I Set an Emotional Goal and Planned For It
It pays to set emotional goals for your marathon, similar to how you would set a time goal, Cauthen says. “Define what it is you want to feel at the end of this marathon,” and then follow it up with a plan to get there, she says.
If you’re looking to run toward a new feeling like relief, or release a feeling, like sadness or anger, Cauthen suggests some questions to ask yourself: “Have I leaned into the new feeling I’m trying to chase?” and “What would it look like to let that weight go?”
Within the first few weeks of training, I decided my goal was to face my fears and embrace discomfort rather than shutting down and shying away from it. To plan for that, I journaled almost every day to reflect, sit with my emotions, and come back to my “why.”
I remade my training calendar about three times until I got it right, balancing my strength goals with my runs, and attempting new kinds of workouts like double thresholds. Safe to say I was doing a lot. By the time peak week came around, I felt like I was on the verge of tears all the time, not quite in burnout territory yet, but tired enough to let out a good weekly cry.
Three days before race day, I sat on my couch crying over and journaling about what this training cycle had meant to me. I saw it as a way to face challenging emotions that I used to avoid or suppress. Just as I consistently showed up to face a difficult workout or training session, I learned to face difficult emotions. Instead of running away from those emotions, I ran through them.
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I Built Emotional Strength for the Marathon Just As Much As Physical Strength
Just as you get physically stronger through marathon training, you should also focus on building emotional strength, Cauthen says. This can often look like using your emotions as fuel for your training. “Tap into the emotion that gives you a cathartic release. It gives you power. It gives you strength. It gives you ownership, as long as you’re finding that it will serve you,” she says. “When you understand what you’re feeling and fully own it, you take back control of your internal world.”
Building emotional strength starts with asking yourself a simple question, Cauthen suggests: Is this emotion helping me or hurting me right now? “That awareness lets you redirect your energy. If the emotion can fuel you, use it to create intensity, focus, or courage. If it’s working against you, you can slow your breath, calm your mind, and shift into a more grounded state,” she explains.
If you went through a traumatic life event or intense grief and loss, you might run a marathon because it can be a way to reclaim a sense of self and a sense of control when you didn’t have one in the past, Cauthen says. “The training cycle just mirrors that process,” she adds.
This was part of my journey. I realized there is pain you can choose and pain you can’t choose. Once I saw marathon training as discomfort I could choose, it helped me reestablish a sense of agency. I embraced that discomfort and treated it as part of the process.
While the key is to stay in tune with your emotions, it’s also important to pace yourself, Cauthen says. “It’s not that misery loves company. Misery loves miserable company,” she says. “If you get stuck in an angry or anxious place then it can cause exhaustion and you’re never going to get to the breakthrough you’re hoping to feel.”
To get unstuck, she suggests using mindfulness techniques like “five-minute mind,” where you take five minutes to focus on your breath, do a body scan, and let go of angry or anxious thoughts to recenter.
To avoid emotional exhaustion during my training cycle, I made sure to focus on different key emotions for certain workouts. For example, I took a lot of my easy runs and long runs as opportunities to reflect on happy or sad feelings, then channeled anger or frustration into speed workouts, strength work, and tempo miles. I even ran one easy run with a friend each week so I could socialize and connect with someone, and get out of my own head for a while.
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I Didn’t Panic When I Felt Differently Than I Expected
While it can be great to use your emotions as fuel, don’t place too much pressure on how you expect to feel, because it can be very different from reality, Cauthen says.
Instead of an emotional breakthrough with lots of crying, it could actually look like a calm, confident approach because of all the healing, growth, and positive endorphins the training cycle can bring, Cauthen explains.
In this case, you’ve almost over-prepared emotionally for a big event, when your emotions might not actually be that intense. “You might have had a different outline of when you thought the feelings would come and they just might show up differently,” she says. “It might be in two weeks when you’re recovering when the emotions hit you.”
When I initially sat down with Cauthen earlier on in my training cycle, I felt like I was going to build up to a dramatic cry at the finish line. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I crossed the line and felt relaxed and happy that it was over.
I remember there were at least two points during the marathon that I began to cry. Around the halfway point, I saw a sign sticking out in an isolated, wooded part of the course that read something like, “the future version of you is across that finish line.” After seeing that, I got emotional and my breath quickened.
This happened again around mile 20 when “Call Your Mom” by Noah Kahan came on in my headphones. When I couldn’t catch my breath from the emotions, I remembered Cauthen’s advice to slow down my pace for a few seconds, take a few deep breaths, and channel my emotions into the run to keep going.
As I crossed the finish line, I didn’t end my marathon journey with an intense emotional breakdown like I anticipated. Instead, I felt like I was more in control of my emotions on the run than I ever had been before, and I’ll carry that with me moving forward.
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Kristine Kearns, a writer and avid runner, joined Runner’s World and Bicycling in July 2024. She previously coached high school girls cross country and currently competes in seasonal races, with more than six years of distance training and an affinity for weightlifting. You can find her wearing purple, baking cupcakes, and visiting her local farmers market.
