On Saturday, Oct. 14, senior Oskar Ruser, alongside about 2,000 others, competed in the Hartford Marathon. Although Oskar runs for KO’s cross country and track teams, he has never run a race this intimidating before.
“The training was rough,” Oskar said, “and if it weren’t for a couple of those long weekends we had, I’d be dead.” With cross country meets on Saturdays and his long runs on Sundays, those couple of Mondays off from school were Oskar’s only break from running.
Luckily, he had already done some long-run training last winter, so he was somewhat prepared to go into it. “The most I got up to last winter was probably an 18-mile run,” Oskar said, “so it wasn’t like I was just jumping into anything.”
Oskar says that he actually signed up for the marathon in April but had completely forgotten about it, so by the time he remembered, he only had about five weeks of real training under his belt. Oskar said that he relied on history Department Chair David Baker, an avid marathon runner. “The biggest help I received actually came from Mr. Baker,” Oskar said. He would email his training schedules and run times to Mr. Baker, who would give him advice and helpful tips to make the training process more beneficial. “He does his ultras and whatnot so he has a lot of experience, which was really helpful for me, who had never done anything like this before,” Oskar said.
When it came time for the actual race, Oskar had no idea what to expect. “At the pace I wanted to go at, I wanted to shoot for a sub-four-hour marathon,” he said. Although he started off a bit slower than he would have liked, Oskar started picking up the pace around the halfway mark. “At halfway, I was like, ‘I can do better than this,’ and I realized that I had been holding myself back,” Oskar said. He picked it up to about an eight-minute mile pace until the 20-mile mark, where he brought it up again to around a seven-minute mile pace. “By the end, I was running around a six-minute mile pace which was tough but doable,” Oskar said.
All-in-all, Oskar ended up running his marathon in three hours and 43 minutes, surpassing his goal of finishing the race in under four hours. After the race, however, he felt pretty rough physically. “I don’t know how to describe it, but the best I can do is say it was extreme soreness,” Oskar said. He came off the finish line with shaking legs and knees, but in the following couple of days, his muscles recovered somewhat quickly. “It was just my right knee along with my joints that were kind of messed up,” he said.
One thing that resonated with him, not only in the weeks leading up to the marathon but also during the marathon itself, was the genuine support from everyone around him. “I had teachers like Mr. Martino and Ms. Deeter emailing me the day before wishing me good luck,” Oskar said, “and all of my friends and family were really supportive of my race.” People were not only wishing him good luck in the days before but also checking up on him and his recovery in the days following. “I think that was definitely the best part of the whole thing,” Oskar said. After having completed his first-ever marathon, Oskar can’t wait to see where his running journey will take him next!
