This year, on Sunday, November 3, the New York City Marathon saw over 50,000 runners weaving through five boroughs and roughly 42km. Laura Henshaw, one of Australia’s most-followed fitness creators and one-half of wellness platform Kic (along with Steph Claire Smith), was one of them.
Before running the marathon, Henshaw says the furthest she’d run was 34km. As a result, how she’d feel the last 8km of the marathon was unknown and she wasn’t prepared for how challenging it would be. She says she knew it would be hard but didn’t realise how much so until she did it. Another challenge was consciously stopping herself from running too fast at the start and burning all her energy early, which she’d been told.
“This was so much harder than I thought it would be,” Henshaw says. “There was so much energy going over the first bridge and people went out fast. It’s really tough in this moment to trust yourself and pull back on pace.”
Henshaw’s marathon day started with an hour-long bus ride at 5:30am to the start line site. From then, it was a lot of waiting and keeping warm before she started her run at around 11am. Fighting the urge to run fast with the crowd, she still found herself going harder than she’d planned and around the 28km mark, her legs and feet started to feel tight.
“I focused on trusting myself and knowing I had done the training,” she says. “I let go of expectations on pace and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other and getting to the finish line.”
As for the marathon differed from other runs, Henshaw says the energy that set it apart. It felt electric. Being surrounded by tens of thousands of people completing something so challenging together and knowing everyone was running for something meaningful to them was also special.
“It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience and now I truly understand why people do marathons,” she says. “We are so much more capable than we realise. We so often default to ‘I can’t’ or ‘That’s not possible for me’, but nine times out of 10, we actually can do it and it is possible. We just have to believe we can.”
To prep for the run, Henshaw worked with Kic’s physio Alana Murphy who supported her with running, nutrition, strength training and recovery (Murphy says her tips to help you hit your marathon goals here). She was also the first to put Kic’s newly unveiled marathon program to the test.
“I’m so proud that no matter where you are on your running journey, Kic has a program to help you run towards your goals with confidence — from 0-3km up to a half marathon and now a marathon,” she says.
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