Coming to UD as a first-semester freshman, Kate Reim was one of the first people I connected with. Not only is she a fellow New Jerseyan with a gorgeous personality perfectly suited for both her education major and plight to be the most amazing person ever, but she also has a kick-ass workout routine that stunned (and intimidated) me from the get-go. While I’m laughing at Brooklyn Nine-Nine on a low-intensity exercise bike, Kate is running miles upon miles at paces I couldn’t even sustain from Caesar Rodney Dining Hall to Perkins Student Center (for non-students, this is really far… I workout…). Over spring break, Kate ran her first marathon – over 26 miles! – on Long Island and absolutely killed it in 4 hours, 30 minutes, and 20 seconds. If you’re asking yourself questions like “How is this possible?” “How did she work her way to achieving such goals?” or “How is she not in the hospital right now dying from some sort of total body failure??” Don’t worry, I have the answers. This week, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Kate and talking about her superhuman abilities. She was gracious enough to answer my pressing questions.
Her Campus: What inspired you to start to train for a marathon?
Kate: It started out in the summer going into college. I wanted to get fit because I wanted to feel more confident. So it started with running because that was my favorite form of exercise, and then after doing it every single day, I decided to run a little bit farther and a little bit farther, and then after I’d completed a half marathon, I decided I would train for a full.
HC: What were your thoughts while you were running the marathon?
K: So, actually, mile 4 was the hardest for me because I had a little bit of an anxiety attack, just because I was so intimidated by what I was about to do, knowing that I was going to have to run for so long. Prior to the race, I had only ever run 20 miles, so adding a full hour of running farther than I’d ever gone was really scary to me. So, at mile 4, I kind of started freaking out, and I thought I wasn’t going to finish, but then by mile 6, I knew I was fine.
HC: Besides running, what other training did you do to prepare for the marathon?
K: When I would do half marathons, I didn’t really do any cross-training, I didn’t really incorporate any strength training other than my core. And so when I was working like 16 miles, 18 miles, and eventually, 20 miles, I made sure that I was resting at least two days after my long runs and making sure that I was doing the bike and the elliptical just to kind of switch things up.
HC: How do you think that affected your running?
K: I don’t know if it, like, muscle-wise changed much, but mentally it helped me because running, doing the same thing for so many hours, you kind of get fed up with it. So just having some sort of variety in my routine, I think, gave me the endurance to keep training.
HC: Did you ever get fed up with it during the marathon?
K: Oh, during the marathon, the whole time I was like, “this sucks,” like it’s not fun. Hour three to four is not enjoyable, but I kind of just tried to zone out and just focus on the end goal.
HC: How did you feel when you finished?
K: It was so good. I was going to cry, but I felt embarrassed because my dad was there, and I just felt embarrassed. But I was so happy.
HC: Do you think you are going to do another full marathon in the future?
K: Yeah, I think I want to do one next fall. I don’t know how training in the summer will be because I trained for this marathon in the winter and I didn’t think that was going to be ideal, but actually, it wasn’t that bad. So, I’m thinking maybe training again from May to September and looking for one in September.
HC: Overall, how do you think training for a marathon has impacted you, either mentally or physically?
K: It totally changed me, way more than I thought that it would change me. Definitely, like, my sense of … I don’t know what the word is … but, like, consistency. If you stick with something every single day and you really commit to it, like from the first day of my training to me actually running the marathon was only six months. And it’s crazy. As people, we think we’ll never be able to do something, but if you actually work at something every single day, you can actually accomplish so much in not that long of a time.