JUSTIN LANGER: Finishing a marathon is so much more than running 42km, just ask Dave the cab driver

A few weeks ago, I wrote about George, a driver, who picked me up from Heathrow Airport. He collected me at 5am and drove me four-and-a-half hours to Manchester.

For the first hour of the trip, we sat silently.

Eventually George broke the silence, by asking what I did for a living. I told him. Nodding slowly, George, a Ghanaian, admitted he knew nothing about cricket.

He then told me he was a pastor, who drove to pay the bills.

When he started talking about his favourite scriptures, George’s whole face changed and we spent the next two hours discussing faith, hope, fear, and character forged through adversity.’

We were two strangers from opposite ends of the earth who had no business understanding each other, and yet we understood each other perfectly.

A few weeks after meeting Pastor George, I had another interesting encounter in the back of a cab.

While being driven to record a podcast in Manchester, the driver named Dave, had another fascinating story to tell.

Dave was seemingly any normal bloke. Well dressed. Strong handshake. Manchester accent. Bubbly personality. Big smile.

When he realised I was an Aussie, he mentioned he was flying to Sydney at the end of August. Being polite, I asked him why he was travelling to our side of the world.

It was then that his eyes lit up, as he told me about his passion for running marathons.

Not only was Dave’s enthusiasm inspiring, but I was intrigued as I have always been captivated and perplexed by the marathon.

“Is this your first”, I asked.

He laughed and told me he had done 95 of them.

Ninety-five marathons, and here he was, halfway through an ordinary Tuesday shift, telling me how he was about to get on a plane for 20-odd hours to run 42 kilometres over the Harbour Bridge, before flying home again.

Mad or awesome? A bit of both, I would say.

On Sunday he’s running the Sydney Marathon. His 96th mission.

The reason I was so taken by Dave was that at 55, I want to run a marathon. I think.

Talk is cheap I know, but there is not a Langer family event that goes by when my marathon-running brother, sister, brother-in-law and daughters’ boyfriends don’t take the mickey out of me for not joining the marathon community.

“I thought you’re meant to be tough”, is the common theme. If that’s not enough motivation, then I am not sure what is.

This Sunday morning, on opposite sides of the country, two crowds don their running shoes and will join thousands of running enthusiasts like Dave to do the same beautiful, ridiculous thing.

Here in Perth, more than 40,000 of us will fill St Georges Terrace for the City to Surf. Going since 1975, this annual event, not only raises important money for charity, but is also a lot of fun

On the other coast, another 40,000 will pour over the Harbour Bridge in the Sydney Marathon. As Dave excitedly told me, Sydney is now the seventh of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, which puts it alongside Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Tokyo.

That is a serious thing to have earned, and I’m not sure we’ve properly registered how good it is.

Dave certainly has. It’s precisely why he and others from around the world are coming to Australia. Sydney is a stamp in the book now, and there are people all over the world rearranging their lives to collect it.

What’s always struck me about the marathon is the lessons we can take from its epic journey.

Listening to Dave was a lesson in wisdom and humility. Here’s what he told me.

1. Stick to the program and be prepared.

He uses a simple app to guide him through an 18-week training program. A session mapped out for every day, a voice in his ear telling him what to do; helping him prepare for the challenge.

“Follow it, don’t improvise, and you will get there.” Dave said.

There’s nothing romantic about that. It’s kilometres in the dark before work, in the rain, on the mornings when your bed is winning the argument. No crowd. No medal. Nobody watching.

But, as it is with everything worthwhile, I have never met a successful person who arrived at a big moment underprepared and without some guidance.

2. Don’t pretend to be superhuman.

In April, a Kenyan named Sabastian Sawe ran the marathon in one hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds; the first man in history to break two hours in a legitimate, record-eligible race. He wasn’t alone. Yomif Kejelcha came home 11 seconds behind him, also under two hours — on debut! Jacob Kiplimo ran 2:00:28 for third and broke the old world record himself.

Think about those numbers, because they’re absurd. Two minutes and 50 seconds per kilometre for 42 kilometres. At that pace, Sawe would be standing on City Beach Oval about 34 minutes after leaving the Terrace.

But as Dave says: “Don’t chase a sub-three hour time. Don’t overtrain. Don’t turn up on day one of training trying to prove something to a version of yourself that retired a decade ago. Just do what you must to reach the finish line, and let your ability carry you through the slow process.”

Ego can be a shocking coach. I’ve watched good people wreck themselves because they couldn’t accept where they were, only where they thought they should be. There’s a difference between ambition and delusion, and that difference is honesty and humility.

3. Eat and drink consistently before the pain kicks in.

“Hydrate early. Stay fuelled up. Get it in ‘before’ you need it, because it’s no good deciding you need food and water when you’ve already hit the limit and you’re cooked. By then your body won’t take it on and the damage is done.”

Dave’s advice has stayed with me since our conversation because it’s precisely how it works in life as well.

You don’t build a friendship on the day you need a friend. You don’t repair a marriage during a crisis. You don’t find your faith when you’re lying in the ambulance. Resilience isn’t summoned at the point of collapse. It’s deposited long before that.

Most of us do the opposite, we wait until we’re desperate, then reach for something, and find the cupboard bare. Learn from the marathon experience.

4. Will it hurt?

“One hundred per cent.” There was no hedging, no softening it. The pain is coming either way. Preparation doesn’t remove it. It just means you’re still upright and ready when it arrives.

Then he told me about the last kilometre.

“If you don’t well up” he said, “you’re not human.”

Ninety-five times he’s put himself through the pain and he still describes that final stretch like a man describing something holy. The crowd screaming, willing you through that final stretch. And then the sentence forming in your chest that you get to keep for the rest of your life: “I’ve done it.”

Those words alone — as I have heard so many times from those who have mastered the distance — are the whole reason for the pain. Not the medal. Not the time. Not the accolades. Just the relief and pride of “I’ve done it”.

Sebastian Sawe’s 1:59:30 is a miracle of human performance it’s impossible not to be moved by it. But it isn’t why the rest of them test themselves.

It’s the last kilometre after hitting ‘the wall’. It’s the crowd. It’s finding out what you have in you, when all your doubts say you don’t.

On Sunday morning, somewhere in the middle of that enormous field pouring off the Harbour Bridge, there’ll be a driver from Manchester on marathon number 96. Nobody watching will have any idea. He’ll finish, he’ll well up, he’ll fly home, and on Tuesday he’ll pick up some bloke from the airport who has no idea either.

Go well mate.

And for what it’s worth, the next time you’re in a cab, sitting next to a stranger on a plane, or sipping a coffee in the café, you never know what you could learn.

In a month I have met a pastor from Ghana and a marathon man from Manchester who taught me that the good stuff rarely arrives from where you’re expecting it. It often turns up sideways, from a stranger, while you’re looking out the window at nothing. All it costs you is a question.

Two drivers. Two long roads. And between them, more to chew on this year than any conference could have taught me.