Running a marathon is no small feat, so why does it feel like everyone is doing it?
Despite less than 1 percent of the U.S. population having completed a marathon, according to Everyday Health, many University of Maryland students are ready to take on the challenge.
If training to run 26.2 miles wasn’t enough, another semester of college adds to the pressure. Some students at this university aren’t letting that hold them back, like Camilla Rinaldi.
The senior environmental science and policy major ran the Marine Corps Marathon in October. This was Rinaldi’s second marathon, having run her first one last fall on the C&O Canal Towpath, a nearly 185-mile trail along the Potomac River.
Training for the marathon while balancing college life was stressful, Rinaldi said.
“Some days I’d have to get up at 5 a.m. just so I’d be done running by nine and then could go to my 10 a.m. class,” she said. “It was a sacrifice that I wanted to make in the end.”
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Katie Monahan, a senior marketing and supply chain management major, acknowledged the difficulty of training alongside academics.
Like Rinaldi, she said she sometimes struggled with motivation, especially during her grueling training sessions.
“I’d be waking up before all my roommates and running for four hours … it was hard,” Monahan said. “But it was all worth it in the end.”
Both Rinaldi and Monahan said they ultimately found the inspiration to continue pushing on, despite the hardships.
As a long-distance runner since fifth grade, Rinaldi said she still finds it thrilling.
“I always knew I was going to do a marathon. I just didn’t know it would be this early in my life because I thought it would be too hard to do with college,” Rinaldi said. “But after running for so many months, you just kind of get your schedule down.”
Monahan said her dad, who ran around 30 marathons, inspired her to try one herself.
As Monahan ran her first-ever marathon, her dad ran his 22nd and final Marine Corps Marathon.
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“He gave me a lot of advice on how to train and how to fuel properly,” Monahan said.
For students like Malia Schmelzer, these long-distance runs can become more spontaneous affairs.
Schmelzer, a sophomore philosophy, politics and economics and Spanish major, ran her first half marathon on Saturday at the Ocean City Running Festival.
She went into the half marathon with minimal training. Schmelzer wanted to get back into running and decided to try out a half marathon for fun.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into, but there were a lot of people,” Schmelzer said. “The adrenaline’s gonna get you through, even if you haven’t really run a whole lot.”
Schmelzer called the half marathon a “great experience,” with support from both runners and crowds on the sidelines.
“Families everywhere … everybody from all ages there cheering, it was just really wholesome,” Schmelzer said.
After completing her first half, Schmelzer tossed around the idea of a full marathon in the future but with more training. Monahan similarly sees herself continuing to run marathons after college. Rinaldi hopes to do one marathon every year.
Monahan said that once you start running races as long as half and full marathons, you have to keep going back for more.
“I feel like I have the bug now. It was just so much fun,” Monahan said. “And the crowd was so great that I think it’s just something that will be fun to work towards.”
