satisfaction
thoughts from the london marathon
When Marc Hufnagl taught us Wordsworth in 10th grade British Lit, I don’t think he imagined me (of all people) running the London Marathon and experiencing this same wonder and awe and sublime that Wordsworth described.
I finished the London Marathon!!! It’s crazy. Really, it’s been crazy this whole year. But, this is really truly wild.
Thank you to the many friends and family who donated to Refuge, the charity I ran for this year. Refuge does such excellent work to protect and support those affected by domestic violence. I am so grateful for the opportunity to run for them, and for your support. In total, we raised £2,797, surpassing the goal of £2,500!
Below, barely edited, loose thoughts from my journal on running the London Marathon on Sunday, April 27th, 2025.
Before the Marathon — written on a piece of scrap paper on the train to the start line
Thoroughly confused as to why I decided to do this.
I guess a sense of proving to oneself that these things are possible — perhaps really about wanting these stories, narratives of who I am. Am I missing the main point though? Getting distracted?
I feel this pressure now: to ascend, to proceed with what I’m supposed to do with my life. Yet also, I’m not even sure I wish to use life on the ephemeralities of “success.” What lasts, do you think? Why last too? What call us to history’s eyes?
These days, I wish to dance and to eat and to read and to love. But also, perhaps, is the pleasure of the body taken from the clarity of mind? Yet, how blissful, a life of making love, making life, smelling flowers, laying on grass.
Running is a mental game. It’s about finishing, keeping going, saying we’re not stopping today.
I’m not stopping today.
After the Marathon
It’s Monday, but the sun dappled through the leaves like a Sunday; a romantic storybook Sunday morning, the kind when you wake up next to someone, and you go for a coffee in the quiet streets, everything a little bleary. Maybe I’ve always thought of morning as a bleary experience; because I’ve needed glasses since second grade, I’ve never woken up clear-eyed.
Let me tell you about yesterday’s run.
I started the day apprehensive. Woke up, got dressed, drank coffee, rushed to the train and the start line. Basically had an existential crisis on the train (as you read above).
When you get off the train, there is an energy already in the air. So many people, runners and spectators, shouting encouragement. I decide at the last moment to ditch my running pouch, the one I bought at Decathlon two weeks ago, in the lorries — I ditch everything, keeping only a few gels and my AirPods.
I’m group 13. We get put into the starting box around 10:40, for a start time at 10:53. It’s remarkably precise.
I start, slow. So many people pass me, but I think they’re going too fast, if I’m honest. I’m just thinking: “The slower the better.”
I clap the hands of rows of children. It’s an astounding heaping mass of faces, so many people shouting for strangers. The first 10k pass in a blur. I have this distinct thought: “1/5th down” — and suddenly, the whole thing feels possible.
I head into Cutty Sark. A boy I’ve been seeing is waiting for me there, and I run with my eyes searching for him. It was a veritable sea of people. But, he seemed a foot taller than everyone around him, and in that moment, he was so clear to me.
I run to him, a little off the main track — maybe that’s also why I saw him; there were no runners in that direction. He shouts my name, and he reaches over people to kiss me. It’s such a rush of adrenaline. Seven miles in, a kiss: like a flying a kite and catching wind.
I barely feel my body as I round the first half marathon around Tower Bridge. APT, Dog Days are Over, and other songs from a run playlist blast through my ears. I see Team Refuge — the nonprofit I ran for, and they all shout my name as I run past.
Half down. Half to go.
The next section was the hardest, through Canary Wharf, miles 13 through 20. Every part of my body took a turn to tell me how annoyed it was at me.
I’m counting the miles till I see Aashika and Aarti, who flew in from New York and who wait for me at Mile 18. I’m looking for a purple sign that says “Stroke Association,” and suddenly, there they are! I get a power bank for my phone, and a feeling of victory approaching.
At some point, I start listening to What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami. I don’t know why I downloaded it on the train ride here, but it was exactly the right thing. It buoys me. In my head, it’s only the Murakami and the cheers of the crowds—so loud to drown out any other thought I could have.
I think past mile 20 is when running becomes easier than walking, and the body simply keeps going. It was a real quiet: no body, no mind. The whole enterprise of individuality seemed to cease.
Randomly, the body or the mind would interject, but I could quell it. The mind heard the refrain “America, the beautiful” in something Murakami said, and had to play Whitney Houston’s version (ha!). The body, at mile 24, started a light choking sensation of tears of almost being done. Not the time, something in me replied, twenty minutes left.
At Embankment, near Somerset House, the final mile, I see Alan and Chelsea, who came to London from San Francisco, and I float on this last minute feeling of love. The whole route felt like love. People shout your name as your run by, and if you look at them and pump your fist, they will keep shouting your name. I felt in the last two miles that I was simply a reflection of the energy around me, lifted by it forward.
There wasn’t a single moment, after mile 20, when I had to say to myself: “Keep going.” I never had to try to keep going. Going was the default.
Murakami starts with the idea that pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Suffering is a choice. I didn’t suffer this run. I felt only continuance, awe, and wonder.
So much wonder — as you turn onto the final stretch along the Thames, you see the glittering river in the bright sun, the tree lined St. James Park, and then Buckingham Palace. It’s stunning this city. It’s as Wordsworth writes: “Never did sun more beautifully steep / In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; / Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! / The river glideth at his own sweet will”
I took off my AirPods for the last 385 yards, to the finish. Extraordinary.
I cried after I got my medal. Relief. Relief, honestly. But, something more too — like returning the body, mind, and soul together, pain and feeling and sense of self again. I felt a bit during the race that I was simply the wind — and it was like returning to the idea that we mediate the world with ourselves, with our own eyes.
During the course, I drank so much water, perhaps 7 bottles of water, so many cups of electrolyte drinks, and I consumed orange slices supplied by spectators, a banana at mile 6, three gels, and 5 advils.
After I got the medal, I walked the five minutes to Brown’s Covent Garden, where Refuge was hosting our afterparty and where I planned the rendezvous location with my friends. As I walked in, I felt the swell of recognition and love — feeling a bit manic and charged with an incredible wonder. Satisfaction.
