"Trust the process. Your time is coming. Just do the work and the results will handle themselves."

This week I’ve been a little more anxious than usual.

I’ve been feeling sudden, minor pains, twinges, or stiffness in my hamstrings. They’ve gone away quickly, but, nonetheless, they’ve got me concerned.

A tiny tickle in the throat has convinced me that rather than simply needing to cough and clear my throat, that I’m about to catch a horrendous cold or flu.

I’ve become convinced that I’m unprepared, or at least underprepared, and that I perhaps haven’t been putting enough work in.

I’m overthinking the weather, my diet, and what I’ll be wearing.

There’s no doubt about it - I’m going through a mild form of ‘Maranoia’.

A portmanteau of "marathon" and "paranoia", it refers to the intense pre-race anxiety, self-doubt, and irrational worries that runners experience in the final weeks leading up to a marathon—especially during the taper period when training mileage drops.

I’ve been working towards October 25th for a very long time.

My second marathon in Frankfurt, I’m hoping, will see a huge improvement on my first in Edinburgh, and represent a fulfilling effort for the cumulative efforts I’ve put in during my training block.

The thought crossed my mind during my penultimate run before travelling to Germany on Friday that these feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and self-doubt are exactly the sorts of barriers faced by some of our most anxious students at ERS on a daily basis: that things are working against them; a foreboding sense that something bad will happen; second guessing themselves and their approach.

Fundamentally, I know that this is because they care - and that they want to do well.

This is exactly what I feel about this coming Sunday.

It’s at these moments of doubt and self-reflection that I tell myself to trust the process.

During my taper period, where I’ve been running less in order to preserve energy and make sure I’m fresh for the race, I haven’t been losing fitness, I’ve just been storing it. Less time out running has meant more time thinking. Scrolling Strava has shown me that many of my running connections have been out stacking up the miles, but these runners are planning for a range of different events, and not tapering like I am.

It was back in March that I decided I’d sign myself up for my second marathon. I’d just run the Berkhamsted Half Marathon, and decided that, while my time was perfectly reasonable, I could push myself to better times and better distances.

I was running around 30km a week at that point, and knew I had to put more time in. I upped this to 50km per week in April and 60km per week in June. I regularly attended running club sessions at both my Athletics Club (Chiltern Harriers) and within the school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Hill sessions and speed sessions at a track were incorporated within my training plan, and I started to also bring in long runs on a Sunday.

All of this has widened my expertise and skillset as a runner. I’ve become faster and my endurance has improved. And because of this, my times have improved hugely, and my confidence has grown in tandem with this.

I ran 5km in under 19 minutes 30 in May, and did so again at a Parkrun in July.

I ran a 10km race in Thame in 41 minutes and 40 seconds in June, improving my personal best at the distance by more than two minutes.

These achievements have all come as part of a bigger picture - pushing myself to the best level of fitness I’ve ever had, and pushing myself to achieve ever more challenging goals. Initially, I had hoped that I’d be able to run this upcoming marathon in under 3 hours and 30 minutes - and now I’m targeting 3 hours and 15 - and it feels comfortable to aim for this.

It’s been 9 months in the making, through a hot summer where I felt the only comfortable time to go out running was at 6am, or even before.

Over this training block, I’ve run in Egypt, in Italy, in Scotland as well as in England.

I’ve run hilly races, I’ve run flat races, I’ve run on my own, I’ve run in pairs and I’ve run in groups - and I’ve enjoyed every run - I can say that with certainty.

All of these locations, these conditions and these circumstances are part of a bigger picture - the more I run, the more comfortable I have felt at faster speeds, and at extended distances. It has all been part of a process of improvement - which has taken time, and effort to get me to a position of confidence in my own abilities.

In addition to this, the more I run, the more my emotional health has benefitted.

I really dread to think where I would be had I not been running regularly - it is the most effective stress reliever I have found in my life to this point.

Similarly, it’s important for our students to adopt this mindset when things get tough - to trust the process they are a part of here - to draw on the supportive and nurturing community they are part of, to trust the staff who put in a great deal of effort day in and day out to help them, and to believe in themselves to set challenging goals to achieve.