I’m a Run Coach. Here’s Why a Marathon Doesn't Have to Be Your Ultimate Running Goal

Women's Health may earn commission from the links on this page, but we only feature products we believe in. Why Trust Us?Getty Images / IllustrationThis time of year, after most fall marathons have ended and our feeds have seen weeks of people crossing finish lines at some of the biggest in the world in Berlin, Chicago, and New York, it’s really hard to avoid feeling like you should run a marathon. I personally have posted countless videos of myself on the internet saying, “I’m never doing this again,” and even I’m tempted to go back on my word every November.To be fair, I love the marathon. I’ve run 12 of them. I’ve run them very, very fast. And I’ve run them very, very slow. My first one changed my life. It gave me the courage to move to New York City and try to figure out what to do after graduating college. Six months later, I became one of the first running influencers, and I’ve spent the 12 years since building a global community, Badass Lady Gang, to help thousands of women belong and redefine their relationship with strength, power, and what it means to be a runner.But I also feel complicated feelings about the marathon. As a running coach, I’ve watched the same conversation happen online for over a decade. Somewhere along the way, newer runners are told, or quietly absorb, that the marathon is the ultimate finish line. Which makes sense, right? Our brains love order and hierarchy. When you think about what it means to progress in running, it feels logical: going faster and farther are straightforward ways to show you’ve improved. But that’s not how it works. The marathon isn’t the objective ultimate goal. Or always the most fun one. And, it’s definitely not something that every runner needs to chase.Every year I watch too many runners struggle through the training not because they lack commitment or drive, but because they’re chasing a goal they didn’t fully want or that their life can’t accommodate right now. And honestly, it’s just a really hard distance to master! A fellow coach and pillar in the community, Peter Bromka, put it best: “The marathon owes you nothing.” I hate that he’s right. You spend months killing yourself (metaphorically) for one huge goal, and then anything can happen on the day. It’s too hot. You get hurt despite doing everything right. You have an off day and watch your goals fly out the window.We’re in the largest running boom the sport has ever seen, and I think it’s largely because we’re lonely. One in five Americans said they always or often felt lonely or socially isolated in a 2018 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And the stakes are real: the U.S. Surgeon General has warned that loneliness carries health risks comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Running is one of the few activities that genuinely makes a dent in the loneliness epidemic because pretty much anyone can be a runner (even though it is easier and more accessible for some more than others). You can be fast, slow, old, young—if you’re lacing up your sneakers and moving, you’re a runner. Come marathon season, we also hear stories of the incredible adaptive athletes who cross finish lines with a range of disabilities, too.Basically, there’s a reason run clubs are hot right now. They give people a way to put their phones down and find a community. The more you show up, the more you see people of all shapes, sizes, ages, fitness levels, and backgrounds crushing distances you thought weren’t possible for someone like you. Before you know it, you’ve signed up for your first half marathon and everyone is asking when you’ll run a marathon. Once you get on that path, it’s hard to stop.Loneliness isn’t the only thing fueling the boom. We’ve also lost the sense that we control our livelihoods, our schedules, our futures. A marathon is something you choose. It’s one place where you get to call the shots: you set the goal, decide how to train, and define what success looks like, even when curveballs come. It gives you back agency in a world that feels uncontrollable. And in an age when we produce our lives online, it looks great on a feed. It’s badass to train for a marathon, especially when you feel like you have nothing else exciting to share.So yeah, it’s not just a feeling that everyone’s running a marathon lately. It’s real. Over 1.1 million people applied to London. Chicago saw a 12.2 percent jump in participation from 2023. New York jumped 15.1 percent in the same time period. Races sell out in hours. Getting a bib is almost as hard as finishing 26.2 miles. That’s not an accident.I work in this industry, and I can tell you a lot of money is spent each year making you feel like you should run a marathon. Last year, New York Road Runners, the nonprofit behind the New York City Marathon, spent $3.8 million on advertising and promotion. And much of that content is built around one image: a runner crossing the finish line, arms overhead, tears in their eyes, sharing how they became the person they always dreamed of being. It works. It makes you believe transformation is possible, and it is. But the marathon industry has weaponized our deep desires to belong, to achieve, to become, and forced us on 26.2-mile slogs across our respective cities.The result: This overwhelming pressure that everyone needs to get out there and run a marathon—and an exponentially growing number of sign-ups. Never in a million years did I think we’d get to a place where getting into a marathon was almost as hard as running it. But here we are.I spent a decade being paid by the biggest brands in the world to promote the marathon. I built my business on being vulnerable online and sharing my own transformation through running. So believe me when I say: Not everyone needs to run a marathon.Why I Thought I Needed to Run a MarathonBefore I tell you why you don’t need to run a marathon, let me explain why I first decided to run one. It was never something I envisioned for myself. In my mind, “real” runners ran marathons. (Kooks, if I’m being honest.) Then, I graduated from college with a theater degree and had to start paying off my student loans. My community scattered. And I couldn’t run from the grief I’d suppressed after losing my brother my freshman year of college in a tragic accident.Or could I?On Thanksgiving morning in 2012, I started actually running from my problems. Running was brutal and wonderful in a way that left no room for my feelings. It demanded every ounce of attention just to keep putting one foot in front of the other or fall over and pray for a quick end.I know. Dramatic. But I was the person who made the jokes about only running from the cops. Or a bear. I missed over 70 days of school my senior year ditching PE to avoid running. But desperate times! Running really did feel like a lifeline.Running gave me structure and something to feel excited about. Becoming a runner gave me something to work toward and confidence when friends and family asked me what my plans were now that I graduated from college. Instead of saying, “I don’t know if I’ll ever work a day in my life doing the thing I love most,” I could say, “I’m training to run a marathon” and feel pride and purpose. They would look at me gobsmacked and impressed. “YOU! Running a marathon? WOAH!” Yeah, I’d think to myself beaming with pride. ME.I went from couch to marathon in seven months. The running magazines I turned to for advice told me I shouldn’t do what I was doing. “You should run for at least a year,” “Going from couch to marathon shows you don’t respect the distance.” (Those were actual pieces of advice in articles I remember reading when I was training for my first marathon.) But I wasn’t running for a time goal. I felt like I was running for my life. I had to do it.Training was horrible in the most fulfilling way. This was 2013 and learning to run was very different from what it is now. There were blogs written by former high school or collegiate runners or message boards with the type of runners who told you you didn’t belong if you loved to hate running like I did or ran slow. I didn’t know what I was doing. I made every single mistake you could possibly make training for and then running a marathon.The biggest? I wasn’t ready. I grabbed a free plan from an app, ramped up my mileage way too fast, and got hurt almost immediately. I ran in shoes a size and a half too small. I didn’t know how to take energy gels (and ran the race with an absurd number of them sandwiched between my two sports bras). I wore nipple guards made for men, terrified my nipples would chafe.And despite all the mistakes and missteps, running my first marathon saved my life. When I crossed that finish line, I immediately had this sense of if I could do that, there really isn’t anything I can’t figure out how to do.I’ll never forget watching my first New York City Marathon from the sidelines the year I moved here. We were near the finish, at Columbus Circle, and I knew immediately that I had to run it the next year. I felt so proud to be one of the crazy people who had run a marathon, and so connected to what the runners were going through. There’s nothing like belonging to a group that has shared something so grueling and rewarding. And so, one marathon turned into two and before I knew it, I was a person who ran marathons for fun.Why My Relationship With the Marathon EvolvedCoaching changed everything. I’ve watched a mom of three in her 40s break two and a half hours in the half marathon after years of believing she’d never be fast enough. I’ve watched countless women who’d been convinced they couldn’t be runners, because of what they endured in PE class, finally feel strong in their bodies while training to run a fast mile. I’ve watched women facing everything from depression to addiction pick up running as a tool and use it to get through the hardest stretch of their lives. And I realized the same joy, transformation, and belonging happen at every distance. There is no hierarchy.But, it’s more than that. Oftentimes, when we talk about the marathon, we don’t grapple enough with the reasons it may be easier for some. Back in my 20s, the marathon was genuinely easier. Everything is easier in our 20s, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. We have bodies that recover much quicker, time that’s actually our own, and energy that feels endless.I had all of that when I ran my first marathon at 24. I was braver, more naive (a gift!) and had no idea how to sit still in discomfort. I thought movement was the quickest way through, so I threw myself fully into crossing finish lines. (Funny enough, taking a break from marathons taught me what it means to sit in the hurt and actually do the work to heal.) That doesn’t mean that once you hit 30 or 40, your hopes of running a marathon are out the window, but it does mean that as you get older, you should be kinder to yourself if things feel hard or don’t look as shiny as they may seem online.Which brings me to something we don’t say enough: a lot of the runners we look up to or love following on social media—the ones who are making us feel like we have to be a part of this—are often younger, and what we see is a story they’re producing. When you’re feeling inspired by a creator, or measuring your own training, chip times, or total races against theirs, remember who and what you’re comparing yourself to. This may be someone whose whole job is to run and work out, who has access to endless training and recovery resources, and who isn’t sharing the full story about their highs and lows. Social media literacy matters. Without it, we’re measuring ourselves against a bar that wasn’t built with us in mind.What I Wish More Runners Knew Before Signing Up for 26.2When runners come to me and are deciding whether to throw their name into a marathon lottery or sign up, here’s what I tell them.Don’t run a marathon unless you feel compelled to.Not pressured. Not because you think it’s the logical next step. Compelled. That pull that screams, “I have to try this,” or “This matters to me more than anything else in the world.”Marathon training is long and it beats you down, both physically and mentally. As a coach, my job is to help my runners uncover what’s really driving them: their real why. Because your why is the only thing that gets you out the door when you’re tired, sore, and regretting your entire decision. It’s the north star that keeps you lacing up on vacation, when your kid is sick, on a lunch break, before a wedding, on an 89-degree day, when every part of you is done. Without it, you’re just suffering for the sake of suffering.Training is a huge commitment.It really is an unpaid (and expensive) part-time job. It requires hours of running and strength training every week—for months. It requires flexibility in your schedule and will leave you feeling exhausted, hangry, and spread thin for at least 16 to 20 weeks, depending on what your running looked like before you actually started marathon training.And don’t even get me started on timing. You’re either training in the dead of winter where it’s freezing, dark, and icy when you wake up and get off work or in the summer when you’re juggling summer vacations and brutal heat.How do you feel about running 15 miles around the Grand Canyon or in Italy? Is that doable? What about the weddings on your travel schedule? What do your weekends look like for the next four to five months? If you sign up for a marathon, they look like a whole bunch of staying in, waking up early to run double-digit miles, and obsessing over the forecast for this weekend’s long run.Not everyone has the time—and that’s totally okay.Moms. Caretakers. People with busy, unpredictable lives.I spend half my coaching time talking athletes off the ledge when life throws wrenches in their training and they feel like they’re failing. You end up traveling relentlessly for work and aren’t comfortable running in the dark in a city you don’t know. Or you hate the treadmill and have to do most of your training on one. Your kids get back-to-back-to-back sicknesses and you spend four weeks not able to run because you’re fighting off what they had. A parent ends up in the hospital. A partner gets a diagnosis no one saw coming. Extreme weather, which is becoming a new normal for many of us, makes training complicated or even inaccessible. The list goes on and on. Anything can and will happen during marathon training.The question isn’t, “How bad do you want it?” That’s not how life works. No excuses? Tell that to a parent who doesn’t have reliable help. It's whether you have the time—real, uninterrupted time—to train the way you envision and the wiggle room to adjust to any and all of the above scenarios.Social media makes it worse.It’s about so much more than everyone posting their curated, perfect peak weeks.Influencers know what to say to speak to whatever insecurities or fears you’re feeling. Or what to say to get just enough engagement, or outrage, to get our numbers higher. Running a marathon is big business and most of your favorite influencers are making a lot of money sharing their stories. Sometimes, it honestly feels like exploitation. Which is gross. But I wish more people understood that no one is sharing their actual lives.The second you start filming yourself, whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re producing. You’re making choices that will resonate or earn engagement. So whether someone is sharing the highlight reel or highlighting everything that’s going wrong, remember that you will never know what’s actually happening.Keep that in mind if you catch yourself comparing your undertrained or ordinary reality to someone else's seemingly perfect one. And keep it in mind when you relate to someone who says their training has been a train wreck too. I can tell you firsthand that making running interesting and entertaining is very, very hard.If you struggle with perfectionism, marathon training may feel like you’re riding the struggle bus. But if you can train, show up imperfectly, and work with your perfectionism, look at social media with a grain of salt, and feel proud of what you could do, then you're in for an incredible ride.The Most Meaningful Running Goal Isn't Always the LongestI’m here to remind you that not everyone needs to run a marathon to transform their life, find belonging, or to have a great time being a part of something spectacular. I say this as someone who loves, reveres, and had her life changed because of the marathon: It really is just a distance. Real change doesn’t come from running 26.2 miles. It comes from specificity and intention and showing up for yourself, whatever that distance is.There are so many other goals you can pursue with running that will give you the same result. Have you ever gone all in on a 5K? Or a 10K? Spent 16 weeks working to see how fast you can run a mile? Run the perimeter of your town with a group of friends? Can you train for a half marathon with a friend who has never done it before and be their cheerleader every step of the way? These aren’t less impressive goals. They’re your goals. And they hit just as hard.Goals are empty without meaning. The marathon is a spectacle that feels like the ultimate test. But taking on the biggest, most difficult challenge in a sport isn't the only place where magic lives. You can find that same feeling in other distances, other challenges, and other ways of pushing yourself. The real work starts when you ask yourself one honest question: "Why does this goal matter to me?"The marathon is an incredible accomplishment. But there is no hierarchy when it comes to distances and goals. It’s not a ladder. Just because you run a half doesn’t mean that you should run a marathon next. And, you can spend your whole life running and never even think of attempting a marathon.You get to decide what fills your cup, what challenges you, and how you spend your time and energy. Only you have the power to choose what changes you.So the next time FOMO creeps in and you feel like you’re missing out if you don’t run a marathon, remember this: You already have everything you need to change your life. You don't need 26.2 miles. You just need to show up for yourself.Can you run a marathon? Yes. Should you? That’s entirely up to you.