by Iciar Iturmendi Sabater

Graphic design by Anaiah Reyes

It is often said that getting a PhD is like running a marathon. As someone who tends to take things literally, I’ve embraced this metaphor wholeheartedly. Now, as I enter the third year of my PhD, I am also training for my first marathon.

Completing a marathon, a gruelling 42.195 km, is an achievement that parallels earning a PhD in terms of exclusivity: about 1% of Canada’s population have a PhD,¹ while less than 1% globally have finished a marathon.² I suspect that the percentage of marathon finishers amongst PhD holders is higher than in the general population. Here’s my reasoning: being able-bodied, having the time management skills to accommodate four to five runs a week, work on multiple research projects, and being long term-oriented are just some of the factors that facilitate success in both marathon running and PhD completion. Of course, these are my own untested hypotheses—hence the lack of citations, which I’ve grown so accustomed to providing as my academic career progresses. 

Running has precisely taught me to balance reason and intuition: to listen to my body, harness its power, and follow my instinct. Following this principle, I would also argue that while the predispositions presented earlier are facilitating factors, they are not sufficient to train for a marathon, nor to defend a PhD. Again, based on my own subjective experience, a strong sense of commitment and responsibility, perhaps even stubbornness, are also indispensable to long distance running and completing a PhD. These traits are often fuelled by a competitive drive—primarily with oneself. The runner is excited by increasing their mileage and improving their strength. For PhD candidates, the thrill comes from running further experiments or testing their findings through alternative analysis pipelines. 

 More attributes are shared between these journeys, with organization and planning being crucial to both pursuits. A PhD student must learn to structure experiments and plan years in advance to produce a thesis. Similarly, a runner needs to plan their training, balancing both strength exercises with diverse types of running workouts, to avoid injuries and fit them into their daily schedule. For example, I am currently following a specific 14-week marathon plan, but I am not starting from scratch. In fact, I have been consistently running an average of 25 km weekly for one year and have completed three half-marathons in the past three months, increasing my mileage in the lead-up to each race. My marathon plan is structured such that in the first four weeks, I focus on building strength through anaerobic exercise, which does not require oxygen to power muscle contractions. Strength training prepares me to increase my running mileage progressively, averaging 35 to 40 km per week during this period.

Much like how pacing oneself through the persistent but gradually increasing demands of a PhD leads to success, the key to training for a marathon is mostly running slowly during training. Running slowly primarily engages the aerobic system teaching your body to efficiently use oxygen. Training at 60-70% of maximum heart rate like this is referred to as ‘heart rate zone 2 cardio’, which helps us  build our base of endurance necessary to complete a marathon. When running slowly, your body relies more on fat as a fuel source instead of carbohydrates, increasing the ability to burn fat for energy preserves of glycogen stores for the later stages of the marathon when you need them most.³ Similar to marathon training, building new academic experiences and skills at a sustainable pace is necessary for a large portion of the journey.

On weeks four to twelve, my mileage keeps progressively increasing up to 60-65km a week. I mostly run slow but also introduce interval training and ‘fartlek’ sessions. Fartlek, meaning ‘speed play’ in Swedish, involves alternating speeds during a running session, such as changing my pace every minute during a one-hour run. Similarly, interval training involves running faster in short bursts, like doing ten series of 800 meters, each faster than the last. This reminds me of how a PhD student’s workload fluctuates throughout the year. How is it possible that, in the same week, I have a funding application deadline, a Program Advisory Committee meeting, a request to peer-review for a journal, and an invitation to revise and resubmit a manuscript that’s been dormant for months? These weeks certainly feel like an interval training session. Similar to how these busy periods of work as a student likely increase my stress tolerance and efficiency as an academic, fartlek and interval training improve one’s lactate threshold—the point at which lactic acid starts accumulating in the muscles, causing fatigue. A higher lactate threshold allows you to maintain a faster pace during the marathon without getting tired as quickly. Overall, these types of training enhance both running speed and form, harnessing aerobic and anaerobic energy.(3)

Every week there is a long-distance run at a pace that feels comfortable. The longest distance I plan on running is 32km, about three weeks before the marathon. Lastly, the final three to four weeks before the race are for ‘tapering’, when one reduces the volume and intensity of training to recover from fatigue and be in perfect shape leading to the race.(4) I am afraid that my academic tapering time will mostly come once I defend my thesis, although travelling to international conferences has definitely provided me with energy and motivation along the way. I would argue it is equally important for students and academics to find small bits of ‘taper’ time throughout our busy schedules to prevent us from burning out.

Overall, running requires such a similar skill set as pursuing a PhD that I sometimes find myself using one as an excuse to procrastinate on the other. I would delay writing a manuscript to go for a run or consider skipping a training session to read a newly published article in my field. Since both require a nearly equivalent effort, it feels as if substituting one activity with the other won’t make me feel unproductive or lazy. Ridiculous, I know. But why else would anyone want to train for a marathon while pursuing a PhD (other than to justify one’s procrastination drive)?

Running helps you learn better and faster. When I travel to a new place, I go on a run. I run the through the streets or paths that I would otherwise cover in a car or on the subway, which blind you from the everyday, ‘not-so-touristy’ details of the place. This helps my orientation and makes me comfortable in the unknown. I enjoy passing as a local. While running, I learn to listen to my body and appreciate what I am physically capable of doing. I connect better with my thoughts and understand my mood, which is usually lifted after I run—thank you, endorphins. Through running I have met new friends of different ages and backgrounds who encourage me to be my best, and to whom I can complain to when I am feeling lazy or exhausted. Running empowers me.

In the midst of paper-rejections, null findings, failed funding applications, frustrating code debugging sessions, and endless corrections to address after my supervisor reviews my writing, which make up the not so well recognised reality of a PhD’s student daily life, running has, most of all, helped me remain confident when I would have otherwise doubted myself.

References

1. Government of Canada. Occupational profile and work tasks of Canadian PhDs: Gender and field of study differences [Internet]. 2022 [cited 2024 Aug 20]. Available from: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2022012/article/00002-eng.htm

2. RunRepeat – Athletic shoe reviews [Internet]. [cited 2024 Aug 20]. The State of Running 2019. Available from: https://runrepeat.com/state-of-running

3. Seiler S, Tønnessen E. Intervals, Thresholds, and Long Slow Distance: the Role of Intensity and Duration in Endurance Training. | Sportscience | EBSCOhost [Internet]. Vol. 13. 2009.4. Smyth B, Lawlor A. Longer Disciplined Tapers Improve Marathon Performance for Recreational Runners. Front Sports Act Living. 2021 Sep 28 [cited 2024 Aug 20];3.