Run for it!

This question really got to one of the key underlying reasons I chose to do the marathon (apart from raising funds for Pain Concern and raising awareness of the Flippin’ Pain campaign). The answer was “yes”, I was going to do the training – because you have to practise what you preach.

If I encountered someone with persistent pain and they were getting fed up with being on a biomedical conveyer belt of scans, medications and surgeries, and wanted to approach their pain differently, take a more biopsychosocial approach, what would I recommend? I guess I would recommend the same things that I did in preparation for the marathon.

No quick fix for pain

First, resist the temptation of a quick fix for persistent pain – it rarely ends up as the correct path. In my case that would mean not doing the training and just assuming the race will be fine.

But it would not have been fine; there is no way I would have finished without putting in lots of training.

Get yourself a guide

Second, get yourself a good guide! This might be a person but it can also be good information from trusted sources – for people with pain that can be Live Well with Pain or Flippin’ Pain. For a guy about to run the London Marathon, it was the London Marathon website itself which was full of great information.

Good idea: get the gear

Third, get the right gear. If you are in pain and you want to adopt a certain positive behaviour like physical activity for example, then you should get yourself the right equipment, like a nice comfortable pair of trainers – so for Christmas I asked for running gear including a running torch as I knew there would be lots of training in the dark and without the right gear it would have been near impossible to train adequately.

Support network

Fourth, get your support network in place. People with pain benefit so much from the right support from family, friends and health professionals who know what they are going through and know how to help.

In my case without my wife taking on lots more of the parental duties allowing me to go out more and train,
I could never have done the training needed for the marathon. Similarly, without my colleagues on the Flippin’ pain campaign helping me with advertising on social media I would never have achieved my funding target (we raised over £2,300).

Change your lifestyle

Fifth, if you’ve got pain, making some positive lifestyle changes can really help – improving what you eat, getting more sleep and being more active. In the same way preparing for a marathon is not just about getting more active, but it is about eating better and sleeping better to help you rest and recover well between sessions.

One more vital ingredient

Finally, it is about pacing. For people with pain pacing is a vital ingredient to slowly but surely increasing their ability to do things and engage in the meaningful activities they want to do. For marathon running it is no different. In the training it’s all about slowly but steadily increasing the distances you run and, on the day, keeping a steady pace that will make sure you last the course – much like managing persistent pain, marathon running is (you guessed it!) a ‘marathon not a sprint!’

Editor’s note

Cormac successfully completed the marathon in five hours and eight minutes (a mere three hours and six minutes, he points out, behind the fastest male runner!). And if you’d like to follow his lead and do something similar, Pain Concern still have some charity spaces to fill for next year’s event (Sunday 12th April 2026). If you are interested in taking part yourself, or know someone who may be, please get in touch at fundraising@painconcern.org.uk