The Front Porch: Well, I'm Training for a Marathon

New News: I've decided it's time to make good on the goal 20th-century me set: run a full marathon. See, when I was 13, I had the most incredible running coach who made me believe I could do anything. He asked me what I thought the hardest accomplishment was in the running world, and I replied with a marathon. He then told me running 26.2 miles was my ultimate goal. 

I thought I'd run it before I turned 30 and became ancient like the crypt keeper. It turns out my 20s did, in fact, contain a lot of running, but also a lot of working, traveling, and socializing. When I realized 30 wasn't that old, I bumped the goal to before my 40th birthday — ten years was plenty of time to get my life together, right? Hahahaha! I got married and had babies and moved coast to coast to coast. So, here I am, 42, and it's finally time to do the thing!

Lessons in Marathon Training, Episode One

1. You have to train your stomach.

Did you know that if you want to run a marathon, you have to train your stomach? Not your abs or obliques or core — your actual food-digesting organ. How do you do that? You eat. A lot. All the time. 

Don't get me wrong, I love to eat. More importantly, I love carbs, and that is a good bit of what I'm supposed to be eating. For every one pound of bodyweight, I'm supposed to consume 2.3 grams of carbohydrates. 317.4 grams of bread, rice, fruit, pasta, potatoes, beans, and vegetables every day. 317.4 g of carbs are:

• 7.1 cups of white rice
• 1 pound box of spaghetti
• 4.6 pounds of mango
• 9 large sweet potatoes

Marathon training continues. Little did I know HOW MUCH RICE WOULD BE RECOMMENDED. #TwitterSupperClub pic.twitter.com/EwAWBArNvt

— Ashley McCully (@AshleyLMcCully) September 19, 2026

I also have to train my stomach to accept carbs while I run! If my run is going to be an hour or more, I'm supposed to have 30g of carbs (plus 4oz of water) every hour. Ladies and gentlemen, this feels excessive. I know, I know, "the body is a machine and food is fuel," but a pre-run meal followed by breakfast and then lunch, a snack, dinner, and another snack — doubling the food budget in this economy? Don't get me wrong, I support this administration and American farmers and our legal truck drivers, employers, and their employees... okay, yes, I'll keep buying and inhaling carbs.

Since I'm going to run out of new ways to prepare rice by Thursday, please leave your favorite recipes in the comments. 

2. Always have a full battery on a run.

One day a week, I like to leave the pavement and run on a softer, more natural surface, like in the woods. Here in eastern Carolina, we have a lot of places that offer sandy trails dusted in pine needles with plenty of filtered sunlight and wildlife.

This is the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like a Disney princess 🦋🦌🕊️ pic.twitter.com/sAtzg7q24N

— Ashley McCully (@AshleyLMcCully) September 22, 2026

It's easy to get lost in a run when I'm surrounded by so much natural beauty. In town, my head is on a swivel looking for distracted drivers, shady characters, cracked sidewalks, and unleashed dogs, but in the woods, I feel like I should break out into a song, Snow White-style (the OG, not the woke remake). 

Yesterday I was on a tear, feeling powerful and confident in my growing abilities, thanking God for the beautiful intricacies of my knees, when I took what I thought was a turn onto another trail. Y'all, I was moving — like, a 7:48/mile pace — and had Marky Mark in my ear, admiring the way the sunlight makes the leaves look like they're glowing when THWHIP! I ran straight through an industrial-strength spider web.

Tell me that doesn’t look like a legitimate trail entry, BECAUSE IT TOTALLY DOES 😱 pic.twitter.com/6k2L8EQmqS

— Ashley McCully (@AshleyLMcCully) September 22, 2026

This is the part where the narrator voiceover says in a deep baritone, "She left the trail and was now deep in the woods, alone, unless you count the bears." Do we have bears in this part of the country? You bet, and they're getting ready for the winter, so Chonky McChonkerson Black Bear could be anywhere, just looking for a snack. 

But back to the spiders! Pray tell, what on earth are these spiders trying to catch in these woods, bats? Why do they need fishing line for a web? This was not a dainty, delicate, Charlotte-wants-to-save-the-pig web — my 6-year-old could have climbed it like a rope ladder!

After I engaged the routine protocol of shrieking and performing world-class karate chops and kicks until I no longer felt the spider silk, I did the smart thing and grabbed a stick. Well, I had to grab a few sticks because each one I picked up disintegrated in my hand until a literal branch held firm. Waving the thing in front of my face like I was an enthusiastic extra in a Harry Potter movie, I took out a few more webs as I searched for a way back to the trail.

Life skills I learned from Harry Potter pic.twitter.com/BXeZv1d5YC

— Ashley McCully (@AshleyLMcCully) September 22, 2026

I did not know where I was and I did not have cell service because I was in the not user-friendly middle of the woods but you don't have to have bars to use the built-in compass on an iPhone! The only thing I was sure of was that the main road was north, and the water was south, so north it was. 

Why do termites need to target our homes when they have plenty of wood available to them in our forests? Yes, I stepped on many consumed logs, but there were thousands more buffets for them to choose from, and those trees are organic whereas my planks have been treated with chemicals and other nasties to, ya know, hold my roof up. Do I have undiagnosed ADHD? Perhaps, and I can't be lost too long because my alarm for another scoop of rice will go off in an hour.

When I finally saw the flash of a bright pink shirt, I ran toward it like my life depended on it and, then, once on the trail, I thanked God for delivering me from the bear that may or may not have been just around the bend. 

3. It's easy to make friends with other runners.

Fred is a guy I met yesterday in a grocery store. He was wearing a marathon t-shirt and looked friendly enough, so I asked him how many marathons he'd run: three. When I told him I was training for my first, his eyes lit up, and his smile widened — he wanted to talk to me, a perfect stranger, about it all. Where was my event? Austin. How was I training? Zenlabs marathon app. What was I eating? Rice!

Fred's willingness to shoot the breeze is not my first encounter of its kind. I've learned that anyone wearing any kind of running event shirt, whether it's a 5k or Ironman, wants to talk about it. It's basically a neon sign invitation begging you to approach, so I do. I ask how I can train for hills when I leave on a flat coastal plain. I want to know if they ever felt ready or if it was true that "the adrenaline carries you the last six miles." Did they ever get tired of eating?

Part of me wonders when I sport my Austin Marathon shirt around town if anyone will stop and talk to me about it. If anyone ever did, I'd be sure to tell them to always charge their phone battery, train their stomach, and wear their race shirt around town because they earned the right to subtly brag about their achievement.

Remember our baritone narrator? In a world divided by those who have common sense and everyone else, there is hope for a nation: fitness. Paying attention to what we eat and where it comes from, recognizing the hard-working Americans who put whole and healthy foods on our tables; enjoying the bounty of nature in our local, state, and national parks that also house creatures who are not trying to eat you, just survive; and engaging in unsolicited conversations with strangers over shared interests is the hope we need in America today. I'm Ashley McCully, and I approve this message.