Running a marathon is a physical feat that not many people achieve in their lifetime. At Berkeley High School, student athletes take on the challenge amidst their hectic academic schedules, proving their athletic and mental resilience.
BHS senior Madeline Bramwell spent five months training and preparing for a marathon, which she completed in April of 2024. As a BHS track and cross country athlete, Bramwell chose to do a marathon her junior year, despite having a full plate of classes. “I figured, young body. Pretty resilient. I felt like I could do pretty good,” Bramwell said.
Bramwell also wanted to achieve something only for herself. While track and marathon are sports concentrated on competition with others, for Bramwell, the marathon was a personal race to work towards, where she didn’t have to compete with anyone but herself.
A habit of success that brought Bramwell to the finish line while balancing school and training was time management and not getting in her head about immense amounts of school work and training. Anxiety about having an overwhelming amount of tasks was a mental struggle for Bramwell as well. Being able to push past the mental block and complete what she set out to do was huge for Bramwell. “When I’m anxious about something, I can get in a cycle of being scared about getting the work done to achieve it, so then I won’t do it. So I’ll get a cycle of just not doing it. So just, kind of pushing past that initial fear,” Bramwell said.
While most runners spend months in preparation, another student at BHS ran a marathon spontaneously. Emmett Price, a senior at BHS, impulsively turned a 16 mile run with his friend, Samuel Sutton, in Tilden Regional Park into a marathon. “It’s cross country season, we got to go on a run. And so he was like, I’m trying to get 16 miles, And so I said, okay, sure. 16 miles, whatever. And then we ran 20. Then we were like, we should just finish it out and do a marathon,” Price shared.
While unplanned, a marathon was something on Price’s bucket list. Price said that both him and Sutton pushed each other to finish out the full 26 miles, despite many challenges. Physically, the terrain and trail in Tilden is very difficult, more so without enough water or food. “We kind of pushed each other, and there were various times where each of us wanted to bail. I think he pushed me to finish, and I pushed myself to finish,” Price said.
Another physical feat achieved was that of BHS junior Hani Khayatei Houssaini, who walked one hundred thousand steps in one day. The walk took well over 12 hours to complete. Walking was a daily activity that Khayatei Houssaini found pleasant, on the contrary to his primary sports, track and cross country. Running had been a source of mental health issues for Khayatei Houssaini, and completing one hundred thousand steps felt like a nice change of pace. “My mental health at the end of the year was pretty bad, and I felt like I was kind of bored and everything felt very similar every day. And so, I was eager for something a bit different,” Khayatei Houssaini said.
Taking on the challenge with friends and support was vital for Khayatei Houssaini. Khayatei Houssani shared the differences between having a step goal and a distance goal. For his step goal, it was harder to determine when the walk would end, because steps are self determined by speed and size. Khayatei Houssaini’s motivation was to complete his goal. “It’s momentum. Really, that’s what it is. Some people call it the sunken cost fallacy, once you’re in it, you can’t really quit. But I think in this case, a step goal, it doesn’t make sense to quit. It really doesn’t, because you’ll feel defeated for the rest of the day,” Khayatei Houssaini said.
Although these students took on different feats, the challenges they faced were similar. Both the unofficial and official marathons took great tolls on the students bodies. While generally physically prepared, all athletes mentioned nutrition as something they would hope to better prepare for next time. Their final consensus was the positive mental impacts and self pride in finishing marathons. “I think more people should run marathons, I think everyone can benefit from it,” Bramwell said.