My first half marathon was the Lululemon #SeaWheeze half marathon in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, Aug. 10, 2013. After learning a lot from my first long distance run, I made a repeat performance last weekend, Aug. 23, 2014. (photo courtesy of SeaWheeze)

Signing-up to run a half marathon sounded exciting, fun and like a great way to lose weight. I was right on all three counts.

Here are my Top 5 lessons from my first half marathon, the Lululemon #SeaWheeze half marathon in lovely Vancouver, Canada in 2013, and my repeat performance at the event this past weekend:

1.    Prepare well. — Study, consistent training, the right gear, and early travel arrangements (if the run is not in your home town)  are required.  That said, if you are injury-free, fit, prepared with the right gear and training for your personal best run, it still won’t be easy, but you will have what you need to succeed.

2.    At a certain fitness level, a half marathon is just a mind game. —  I used to think that marathons were only about the physical training — turns out, just like successful dieting, once you’ve trained successfully for (at least!) 2 months, and mastered running shorter runs regularly, achieving the end goal is all in your head.

3.    You might not lose weight.  – Fast walking burns more calories than running. Have you ever met (or are you) one of the many people who run marathons, but still can’t seem to lose weight? That’s (partially) why. To my surprise, if you are not careful, half marathon training can actually work against weight loss!  Some of us have to add interval training to training runs, cross train and adhere to a low-calorie diet to move towards/achieve our weight loss goals.

The advantages of running “a half” are:

• A euphoric high and sense of accomplishment.
• Bragging rights & a medal. 
• One way to achieve better cardio fitness.
• Assuming you’ve been training with 5k training runs,  about 1,000 extra calories burned (not even half a pound).
• Efficiency. Your training workouts takes less time than walking, and it gets your heart beating at the optimal 140 beats per minute rate needed for fat-burning.

The disadvantages of running “a half” (if you are trying to lose weight) are:

• Greater risk of injury (especially if you are overweight). 
• Feeling like you have earned dessert/should be able to celebrate with food.
• You may feel much hungrier even a week after the event. Google “hungry after marathon” and you’ll see a LOT of runners postings about how much they are hungry and overeating, even a week after a marathon. I counted every calorie and gained weight  eating 1800 calories on the day of the marathon and the day after!  — how frustrating! I would love to hear from the medical community about what would cause this.

Hard Lesson Learned: 

You may not lose weight by running a half marathon.

Any weight lost may come only from initial increases in activity and metabolism from training, but probably not from the big event.

The Bottom Line: 

You should do a half marathon to experience the sense of accomplishment, euphoria, the fun, energy and excitement of the event – but for weight loss, you may need to couple your half-marathon training with a lower-calorie diet and cross training exercises to achieve your weight loss goals.

4. Serious running is not always social (unless you trained together). If you have been training hard, and your friend hasn’t, and your running partner starts to walk, that will tempt you to slow down or walk with them.  If friend(s) at the run are faster than you, you may blow out your energy (or worse) trying to keep up, and have to stop, or at very least be too winded to chat! After all the work you put into this, you deserve to accomplish it. Just do it at your own pace. Your friends will understand. (And it’s great to celebrate together afterwards, no matter who finishes first!).

5. Life is a marathon. There are many similarities between creating success in life and running a half marathon successfully.  The research, planning, training, discipline and performance during the run build skills and confidence that can be applied to achieving almost any goal you set in life.

In the end, you will feel stronger and proud of yourself for achieving something that is difficult. That euphoric feeling of success and the learnings from what it took to get there are what you should be running for — not to (necessarily) lose weight, or earn extra portions and dessert.  Save that slice of dessert, or better yet, some cash as your reward (see our next DietBet, starting Jan. 17, here: http://www.dietbetter.com/games/58451), for AFTER you’ve achieved your weight loss goal!