I started training for the Canberra Marathon in December 2020 – logging 683.95km and almost 83 hours of training before the big day. I ran through torrential rain, through heartbreak when my best friend died 3 weeks out, logged many KMs alone in the dark and many grateful KMs with wonderful friends. I had a strong training block, managing to get through injury free (thanks to my coach Gav and my PT Julz) with only a few little twinges in the hips and knees to manage.

Regardless, I think I started mentally sabotaging myself about a week out, freaking out that I’d been eating too much since the death of my friend to run a good race anymore. I was bloated and my clothes felt tight – my confidence was pretty low. I stressed out so badly that my body rebelled in various ways including breaking out in hives the week before the event.

The night before the event, I settled in for a good night’s rest, heading to bed as soon as my little one was asleep – knowing I’d only get max 6.5 hours but that’d get me through.

2 hours later, I was woken by loud partygoers in the foyer of our complex heading to/from a party in one of the apartments above us. The bass from their music was reverberating through the floor and they were stomping around on the roof. We asked them to tone it down multiple times, but they kept me awake until we eventually called the police at 2am and I managed to fall back asleep. At 4am my alarm went off, and I roused my tired body and fragile mind to prepare for the event.

Everything was laid out which was a godsend as I could run on autopilot, and I had my usual event day breakfast of waffles with jam made by my friend Penny from her GG’s fruit trees before heading down to the car. On surfacing from the basement I discovered… it was raining. This was the last straw for my poor little brain – I ran a half marathon in the pouring rain a few weeks ago, got the worst chafe in history, and I don’t think I could mentally have done the marathon if I knew it was going to rain the whole time. I let out some pretty colourful language, circled the block and headed back inside for some ziplock bags to protect my electronics just in case.

Thankfully, the rain passed as I headed to town. I was glad that I’d tested the drive in to the carpark through the road closures with a few contingencies on Saturday, and easily got a park very close to the event village. I was already receiving some supportive messages from friends which was so helpful and got me through.

I went to the RMA tent hoping for a friendly face, but found it empty as the ultramarathon was close to starting and everyone was up at the start line. I headed over to the main village to try to find Kaye, who was volunteering, and was wandering aimlessly in the dark when a friendly voice behind me asked if I had found the RMA tent. That’s the wonderful thing about RMA. Just seeing that logo and knowing you’ve got a friend in your corner even if you’ve never ever met before. I turned around and promptly burst into tears.

The lovely RMA was Bernadette, who was so kind to me, asking if it was my first marathon and staying with me keeping my spirits up til we started. The start is a huge blur of running into my friend Andrew who was also running his first marathon, finding Mel, Rose and Nicole for pre-race encouragement and photos, and finding my friend Jing whose dad had offered to run with me (but was soon way too fast for me!). Before I knew it, we were off to a rolling start on beautiful Ngunnawal and Ngambri country!

Besides a short stop to retie my shoelaces and fix my bib, the first 12km went really well. I took my coach’s advice not to think too hard about the marathon and not to dig deep or dwell mentally at this point, relaxing and taking in the sights as we ran up around Parliament House and taking time to notice who was around me. I passed my friend James under King’s Avenue Bridge – he was already returning from the first loop, a billion KM ahead of me, on track for his sub 3h marathon! We roared encouragement at each other from across the road. His beautiful wife, my lovely friend Victoria, popped up sporadically on course with boundless positive energy and encouraging signs. I chatted to a guy named Bob near the 10km point who is 69, on his 288th marathon and this being his 35/6th (sorry Bob, I can’t remember for sure) at Canberra. He currently holds the record for most runs of the Canberra Marathon and he said it’s his favourite!

At about 12km in, things went a bit downhill. I had run straight past the portaloo (SINGULAR – this was sadly a theme throughout the course) and then shortly after (of course) started to feel reaaaaallyy sick. My coach and I meticulously planned my fuel breaks and I had a race plan written on my hand including at which aid stations I’d refuel and with what, and I’d carefully added where the bathrooms were. I looked at the race plan on my hand and thought I’d be OK until the 17.5km aid station, where there was allegedly a bathroom.

A few KM down the road, a few runners squeezed through a gap in the fence around a builder’s portaloo on someone’s front lawn and I seriously thought about doing the same. I kept going, also running past the aid station at the YMCA at Yarralumla as it was technically on the other side of the course after the turnaround point, had runners passing from the other direction, and there was no mention of a bathroom there on the course description anyway. I felt safe knowing there’d be one in only a few KM. At this stage I passed Jing’s dad and then Andrew who had made their way to the turnaround and were on their way back – big waves and high fives.

I felt so sick by now and it was affecting my pace, and I was hanging on by a thread when I reached the turnaround to find… not only no bathroom, but NO AID STATION AT ALL!

I should have cottoned on that my race information was totally wrong when the aid stations started appearing not quite where I thought they’d be. Turns out they’d changed since my coach and I planned it all out (or maybe we just got it wrong). This is where I lost confidence in my race plan, which affected me for the rest of the event. I held off on a planned gel to avoid irritating my stomach further, and set my sights on the YMCA aid station I’d passed on the way to the turnaround. I thought several times about going off course to the Yarralumla play station or one of the public toilet blocks, or ringing the doorbell of one of the fancy houses on the lakeside, but held off. There was a no bathroom at the YMCA but the vollies told me there was one a few hundred metres up the path. It saved my life and I could have cried with joy.

Heading out of Yarralumla, I tried to regroup. I read some of the notes my friends had written to help keep me going in tough times during the race, I reached the halfway point, I was greeted by Victoria and Ethan (cheer squad extraordinaire) who ran with me for a bit, and saw Rose and Mel back near the Parliamentary Triangle, ringing cowbells and cheering for me – all of these things gave me a small mental boost. I ran into Charmaine from RunAmok tights and embarrassingly fangirled out (and cursed my traitor body for making me need to run the event in different shorts from my previously planned RunAmok brights!). I was heading for the Parkes Way out and back leg, which I had been kinda looking forward to as it seemed like a nice picturesque cruise along the base of Black Mountain and the lake. I WAS WRONG.

Parkes Way was the hardest part of the race for me. The wind really picked up here, and we ran into a freezing headwind the whole way out. I was cold. I was miserable. The run along this road is bleak and boring, the field had really thinned out here, and it’s basically impossible for spectators to get there so it felt very lonely.

Someone had dragged a speaker out and was playing the guitar for the runners out on a lonely corner of the road and I loved him for it. A few runners were lying on the ground being helped by St John’s ambulance on the roadside by this point, and I passed a girl who was obviously in pain and limping but determinedly soldiering on. I was so scared that would be me soon. I had no confidence in my race plan at this point and was terrified I’d get sick again, KMs deep on Parkes Way, with bumper to bumper traffic in the other lane and nowhere to hide – ending up in the middle of the road like Maya Rudolph in Bridesmaids, but without the cover of a wedding dress. It took everything I had mentally to keep running out to the turnaround point.

Incredibly, this is where my friend Penny saw me as she and her family drove past, and sent me a friendly message. Frenzied beeping on the way back also turned out to be my lovely friend Gen, who had been so excited to spot me from the car she leant over Mark (who was driving) to beep the horn furiously! I mistook it for someone cranky that runners were closing the roads.

Coming out of the Parkes Way out and back, I knew I just had to make it to King’s Avenue Bridge and I’d be close to the final Telopea Park leg. After studying the course, I knew ahead of time that leg would either make me or break me. It comes after King’s Avenue – right when you are SO CLOSE to the finish line but you have to veer off the OTHER way for a final 5km loop. It is also at the very start of the marathon – so you have to do it twice over the day. Knowing this, I made friends with it the first time I ran it. Learning the corners. Making it a familiar and welcome part of the home stretch in my mind. And now, oh how I longed for that loop. I needed it. But first I had to get there. I passed 33.5km (the longest I’d ever run!) and the famed “wall” where most runners start to feel it – they say marathons are made in the last 10km. My legs were starting to get tight and crampy, and I desperately sucked down more electrolytes to try and stave off the cramps.

I was alternating walking and running at this point, feeling pretty dejected, but I knew my FIL (who has run many marathons!) was going to try and be somewhere around here. I ran towards a lone spectator in the middle of Parkes Way, and it was him! John! I was so happy to see a friendly face and it cheered me up no end. I was so sad to have to keep running!

At this point, I turned to some of the messages coming through on my phone (thank you guys) and again to some of the notes I had with me. My friend Michelle, also a many-time marathoner, wrote me a note that almost brought me to tears. She gave me some tricks to try (like the Paula Radcliffe counting trick, which got me running again), and talking to other runners! Of course! I am a mega extrovert (albeit a shy one, which is confusing) and had been happily chatting away at the beginning of the course but had got so into my head over the last 20kms that I was in a real sadness hole. Aside from yelling “go RMA!” and “thanks Vollies!” diligently at almost every opportunity, and a few encouraging nods and words with other runners here and there, I hadn’t really properly engaged with anyone! I caught up to a few runners ahead of me and that’s where I met Mark.

I can’t really remember how we started talking, but I think I started the convo with a question – “does your watch say this course is long, too?!?” – my Garmin had slowly crept to 600m ahead of the official distance flags I passed (the GPS could easily be wrong), and it was a real headgame to think you were 600m further ahead than you were all the time. Mark kept pace with me and became my new best marathon friend for the next few KMs – right when I needed a friend the most. It was his first marathon too, and we passed the time chatting away. I channeled my friend Carley and kept up a steady stream of encouragement the whole way – “We’re doing a great pace for this late in the game!” “Not long now!” “We’ve got this!” – which in all honesty was more for myself than for him! Running with Mark had me consistently RUNNING again. Without him, I would have gone back to walking dejectedly, and when I expressed this to him, he said the same. Finally I got to say the words I’d been longing to say for awhile… “ONLY A PARKRUN TO GO!!!”

We turned down to the Telopea Park loop I’d been so longing for, and Mark said to go ahead as he was going to slow down for a gel and walk break. I heard a man up ahead bellowing my name. It was my coach, Coach G! Out on course with his wife and puppy, he came running towards me to give me some encouragement. I was so happy to see him. He told me to just keep steady for the next few KMs and then I’d find it. I had this.

I ran off, around my friendly Telopea Park loop. Aside from the familiarity, I also loved this part because you could see runners on the other side of the loop and it felt more populated. I was yelling out encouragement, they were yelling out encouragement, and I was feeling good. Coming out of Telopea, there were Victoria and Ethan again. They ran me the whole way home. We ran past Coach G again, who told me “DON’T STOP RUNNING NOW!” and past my friend Alison, cheering and ringing her cowbell and screaming “THEY’RE ALL WAITING FOR YOU AT THE FINISH LINE!!!”. We held steady up until the finish chute where Victoria sent me on my way – promising to be there at the other end.

I summoned everything I had, and picked up the pace, running as fast as I could to the finish. I entered the chute, and a horde of RMA started screaming my name and ringing their cowbells. I ran across the line, arms outstretched, feeling every emotion under the sun and so grateful to have the opportunity to achieve this feat, and a body that allowed me to do it. A volunteer called my name and handed me a shiny marathon medal. Yes, I cried.

Post-race is a blur of congratulations from my wonderful friends who stuck around to see me come in, a welcome calf massage at the Fisiocrem tent, and some time back at the finish line watching more runners come in.

I saw friends I’d made along the way run in flanked by their friends and family, I saw people run in clinging to one another with the emotion of it all, I saw a guy come through who’d I’d seen a few times on course in his wheelchair (not a racing chair, either!)… and that girl I passed limping along Parkes Way? I saw her come in, still limping and absolutely overcome with emotion that she’d made it. Yeah I lost it then too. Feel like a good cry? Stand at the finish line of a marathon, I tell ya.

I thought this would take me about 5 hours, and I came in at just over 5:04. While this was a little (Teeny! Tiny!) bit slower than I’d hoped for, I wouldn’t change a thing and I don’t care. I’m so happy. I learned so much about myself and others on this journey, and I had to go through every single second, and every single part of it to get to the end. I would relive every high and every low. This is why I started running. To learn to be ok with not feeling ok. And to hold on and keep going. Because in the end, I made it. I am a MARATHONER.

Thank you to everyone who supported me, ran with me, donated to my charity page, sent, wrote or said a kind word, waited for me, stood in the cold for me, screamed for me, and brought me home over that finish line. Thank you to my incredible RMA community for more than I can ever express. Thank you to my coach Gav and my PT Julz for helping me get here injury free. Thank you to Victoria for your massive support and thank you to my wonderful husband Sacha for putting up with the early mornings and all of the nerves. I will never forget this day.

Erica Sparke, Canberra RMA.