Mary McCarthy

Around that marathon period of my life, because I basically came out of competitive running from the age of eight, primary school, secondary school, university, came to London and was like, what does running mean to someone who's not in an athletics club and competitive space?

And I found a new circle of friends and they all signed up to do Valencia Marathon.

And I was like, a marathon is a crazy thing to do.

Because I'd been running for so long, but I'd been running, like, 3K on track or, like, cross-country.

And, like, we weren't even really allowed to road race growing up because it was, like, deemed bad on your bones.

So I'd never... I'd done, like, one 10K race.

And they were like, we're doing Valencia Marathon.

I was like...

That's a crazy thing to do.

And I was like signed up to the ballot, got in and I was like, should I do it?

And they were all like, yeah.

And I trained with like a group of friends to do my first marathon.

And then I just kind of like, I guess I just fell into running the marathon because everyone that I was friends with at the time was like training for it.

And it was just like the next thing that our like social group was doing.

My dad ran.

So my dad was doing like... So I grew up swimming and then my dad was a runner.

Grew up swimming.

Yeah, you're going to notice a little hand movement.

With hands.

My dad did a half marathon and was like...