Running Lessons with Karen Hansen

As Karen Hansen gets ready for her fifth marathon—she’s running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., this fall—it’s almost like looping back to her start line, in a good way. For starters, Marine Corps was her first marathon back in 2015. That was the 40th anniversary of the race, and she says that because this is the 50th year, she “kind of had to do it.” More importantly, she’s learned so much about herself as a runner in the decade between her first marathon and her fifth.

For example? She knows she’s not putting pressure on herself for a time goal this fall. “I’ve discovered I run best when I’m having fun,” she says. “I need to prioritize fun and the journey, to just see what comes out of it.”

Different Motivations

As she explains, prioritizing fun and the journey is the motivation she needs—even if she didn’t always know that about herself. After focusing on just finishing the race the first time she ran a marathon, she told herself she wanted to take 30 minutes off her time for her second. She came close but didn’t hit it completely. What was worse was that focusing on the time left her feeling burnt out.

Then came her third marathon and she told herself she was going to break four hours. She managed four hours and four minutes, and she was happy with that. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, man, I was so close.’ And then the more I thought about it, I realized the day was perfect, I nailed everything, and being three minutes and 59 seconds faster would not have made that feel better,” she says.

Training Surprises

Getting into running, specifically marathons, wasn’t something she ever set out to do. Back when she started, it was because her boyfriend was training for a marathon, and though she thought it sounded reckless, she wanted to be a good partner who could empathize and understand what he was going through. Her first time running a mile (something she hadn’t done since phys ed class in school) didn’t go well, but soon she was managing her training better than she expected. Her boyfriend would tell her they were going out and running a 3-mile route together, and it wasn’t until they got home that he would surprise her by revealing it was actually 5 miles. “Then we ended up running Marine Corps together,” she says.

Even as she works with a trainer for her upcoming marathon this fall, she continues to surprise herself. “I saw my schedule for last week and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this can’t be right,’ but then I went and did it, and when I looked back, I thought, ‘Okay, cool,’” she says.

Start Small

While she meets these intimidating challenges as part of her training plan every week, she acknowledges that going big doesn’t work for everyone. For beginners, sometimes starting small is the best thing they can do. She’s even used Couch to 5K programs when coming back from time off training. “It’s about building the consistent habit of getting out there regularly,” she notes. As she puts it, going out and running 6 miles and taking two weeks off afterwards doesn’t help as much as doing a little bit every day.

She’s also found that a local running club helps, even though she identifies as an introvert. “What I love about the running community is once you learn the language, it almost feels like a secret club—it’s a very accessible one, because all the information is out there. If you want to talk about fartleks and repeats, you have an immediate connection with another runner,” she says.

Above all, she also encourages others to pay attention to her own lesson and figure out what motivates them. She knows it’s not hitting a particular time for her, but it might be for someone else. Another runner might be all about distance. “It doesn’t have to be the same thing that motivates other people,” she emphasizes.