It’s 6:00 in the morning, and you are nervous. Your heart is racing, and this is the day you’ve anticipated for months. It’s crunch time. This anticipation is what third year Serena Dingler experienced on May 1st when she woke up to participate in her first ever marathon.
The OC Marathon, to be exact. The twenty-six mile course for the most part is relatively flat and downhill; however, there are some “speed bumps” to say the least. Regardless of these occasional hills, contestants ran through several local coastal cities including Newport Beach, Santa Ana, and Costa Mesa.
“The run itself was beautiful,” Serena said. “You start at Fashion Island, you run down the hill off of MacArthur where you are able to overlook all of Corona Del Mar.” But despite these scenic routes, the OC Marathon is nothing short of a challenge. There were times when the pain got so bad that she thought she would have to stop.
Between mile eighteen and mile twenty-two is the point in time that runners call “hitting the wall” because the body has depleted all of its available glucose. Often times runners feel as though they are about to pass out, they have body cramps, things start to blur, and hearing may go out. But for Serena, it was “just really hard to breathe and my heart rate was really up.” It was during this time that Serena began taking a break and walked for a bit. But despite these mental circumstances, Serena was able to follow through with her goals and continue on with her race.
“I remember there was this one poster that I ended up putting up as my Facebook status later that said ‘pain is temporary, pride is forever’ which really motivated me to keep on going. Not to mention all the little kids on the sidelines who gave me high-fives.”
When Serena reached the last few miles, there were two factors that had really helped her carry on with the race. First, she noticed a particular group of people running together with the same shirts on. However, instead of just simply running in a pack together, these people were running together because they actually physically pushed a man in a wheelchair through the entire race. Around mile twenty-five, the group had passed her and this really helped motivate her to push hard until the finish.
“It made me realize that I have to finish because a whole team of people are here together to make this one guys day because he can’t move anymore. This truly showed me how many opportunities I have physically, mentally, and emotionally. That was my main push at the end,” Serena said.
The previous year Serena ran the OC half marathon and the last song she chose to listen to was the song “I Made It” by Kevin Rudolph. Coincidentally, in the last steps of her full marathon race, Dingler clicked the shuffle button on her Ipod, and the same song she had ended with last year came on. “I felt like it was destiny because it was so random that the song had just come on. It got me so pumped!”
Serena describes crossing the finish line as a “surreal moment” in her life. Prior to finishing, Serena had come up with a main reason as to why she had participated. “Honestly, we are given our life for a reason, for a purpose, and we should take full advantage to do anything we want to do. This was my goal and I never thought I would accomplish it so fast.” She had only had three months of training. “I had that advantage to do it because I was blessed with the legs to do it, the ability to run, the friends and family for support, and as cheesy as this sounds, when that last song came on I knew I was able to make it happen,” she said.
Even a few days after the event, Serena is still trying to process the whole race. “Realistically, I think it hasn’t hit me yet because I never thought I would be a runner, I never thought I would even enjoy running. But this just really proves more and more as I think back just how much simply putting your mind to something can allow you to accomplish it. You just have to learn to have endurance and perseverance through hard struggles you endure in order to come out stronger in the end.”
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UC Irvine chapter.