Running marathons is a fetish, and this event has gained a very special status.
I’m talking about redundancy here, but whoever practices it, even once, becomes a marathon runner, a word to be vocalized with care, the syllables clearly defined: ma-ra-to-nis-ta.
I’m in another, but I’m still affected by a certain imposter syndrome when running the 42 km, something I’ve done a little, 13 times, given my many years of gravel racing.
I import the concept of impostor syndrome from corporate psychoanalysis, in which professionals consider themselves incompetent for a leadership position, even when they “perform” it.
In the marathon I don’t observe the canon, the “cycle”, the preparation process of generally four months that every physical educator imposes on the candidate to become a marathon. It seems like I’m always disrespecting the thing.
I think I have a point: several of my 13 marathons were not sprints, there were moments around the third hour that I walked.
There is nothing in the regulations that prohibits someone from riding in a race, but this is a distortion, a clear deviation from the purpose.
This Sunday (7), at Mara in Rio, the story was a little different: I ran 100% of the time. I maintained the usual pace from the start, in Reserva, where Judas lost the Adizero, until Botafogo, but the advent of the 33 km sign started to trigger warnings for the “mental”.
Would it be time to take those walks, like I did in the desert in Calgary, Canada, just two Sundays ago, even without pain, cramps or any other physical impediment?
In Rio, the kilometers that passed, especially the odd number, seemed to me to be made for a quick stop, especially since the continuous Botafogo-Aterro route was an endless straight line, without distractions, despite perhaps the most beautiful urban scenery in the world that ululated as a gift.
And, mainly, despite the audience. Rio was on the streets, despite the polar cold on Sunday for Cariocas, and there were many people who said as we passed: “You’re already ma-ra-to-n-ista”.
Coach Marcos Paulo Reis has already told me that he is against sex on the eve of the marathon, so as not to generate “additional physiological overload”; I don’t know what he would say about my Saturday in Rio, which didn’t include a visit to Baixa Copacabana, it’s true, but I consumed half a liter of IPA for lunch and, later, almost that much sake at the spectacular Mitsubá, courtesy of partner Homero Cassiano and my partner Bruno Agostini.
If it weren’t for the publicist from Recife, Anselmo Albuquerque, who I met in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at in Barra and who kindly drove the Uber to the start, this report might not have existed. As we were lining up for the last wave of the start at 6:35am, he wanted to know what supplement I would use throughout the race.
He was surprised by the answer: isotonic, if offered by the organization.
The race is growing explosively in Brazil, and many of the new entrants don’t take long to become ma-ra-to-nistas. Anselmo, for example, started racing in 2017, already has two majors, Berlin and New York on his resume, and has completed the Rio marathon twice.
There is indeed a physical challenge in the marathon, and so it is not surprising that it is treated as a three-star Michelin, an exclusive Bordeaux edition, one made to cause commotion in the inner circle.
The columnist traveled to Rio at the invitation of Gol Linhas Aéreas
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