I ran a marathon, here's a comic

Jun 03, 2025

A couple of months ago, Like The Wind Magazine commissioned me to make a comic about training for my first marathon.

It was for their print collaboration with Tracksmith, and was handed out for free at the Tracksmith stores during the London and Boston marathon weeks.

I adore LtW’s focus on analog/print media and feel just unbelievably giddy to be able to contribute to these beautiful publications, while also getting to be a NERD ABOUT RUNNING.

Here’s the profile that LtW ran of me last year!

A real human being, and a real runner

Zoe Si

December 16, 2024

“Illustrating a profile of myself in a running magazine” was definitely not on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are.

Read full story

So, the clear elephant in the room here is that a month ago I ran the marathon and it went pretty well actually!!!

your success is complete if you have even ONE race photo where you look halfway decent

I thought it would be fun to go through this comic frame by frame and expand a little on what brought me to these specific images!

1/6:

To train for the marathon, I acquired a hydration vest (a horrible sweaty girdle that I suck water out of) but managed to stay away from all of the other shiny gear, if only because the breadth and specificity is literally too overwhelming, but it’s fun to draw!

2/6:

The fact that copious amounts of nutritious food were NECESSARY for training, and the fact that it could be delicious, varied, hearty food and not just portion controlled dry chicken breast and brown rice, was one of my favourite parts about the last 8 weeks of training, where i was running a half marathon or more almost every weekend. Since my teens, I have had a weird/bad relationship to food and exercise (cemented by Kate Moss stan accounts on tumblr in the early aughts) and i actually feel like this experience has permanently rewired its place in my life.

I learned from last year’s disastrous half marathon, and i actually ate a lot of food and slept a lot of hours before this year’s race. It helped!!

3/6:

I would not have been able to do this without the guidance of my physiotherapist. Making informed fitness decisions and seeing concrete outcomes of the exercises over time, making a point of using hotel gyms or DIY-ing exercise equipment while on the road, has been IMMENSELY EMPOWERING!!! hence, the altar, hence, the flower basket i ALMOST sent to him post-marathon.

4/6:

I stayed away from gear until a few weeks out from the race when my anxiety took hold and I replaced all of my doom-scrolling with obsessive online shopping for a COOL OUTFIT for race day. I settled on these lululemon shorts (which do not constrict, while also managing fit 6 gels into the front pockets) and this Tracksmith top (this was admittedly a vanity purchase because their stuff just looks SO COOL but luckily it was also extremely comfortable for race day!)

At the race expo, i also bought these Mizuno shorts which have this MAGICAL COMBINATION of being comfy/non-restrictive, with INCREDIBLE, FUNCTIONAL WAISTBAND STORAGE that fits my enormous phone (no bouncing!) and countless knick-knacks and snacks! I have never before been able to find shorts with adequate phone/snack storage that aren’t spandex, and spandex ALWAYS rides up and is horrible in the heat, so I’ve always had to resort to a waist pack or vest to hold my things. My goal while running is always to wear as few things as possible so these shorts are my LITERAL DREAM.

5/6:

I trained for this race entirely on my own because I was travelling too much in the beginning of the year to commit to a running group with any regularity. I did some of my longest runs in different cities, or in sub-optimal conditions: I ran a half marathon in New York City, I ran my then-longest-ever training run of 23km in Saratoga Springs (at 7am the morning before I started my residency at Yaddo), I ran a frozen 5km in Montreal, I did a long run in an atmospheric river by the ocean, I ran 15km on a treadmill during an ice storm.

There was a time, not too long ago it seems, when making the choice to leave my house to go for a run was an act of rebellion, and one of the few choices available to me. Running has always meant freedom from fear and limitation. The world becomes a place to discover instead of something to be hidden from. I get to see and feel all of it and take none of it for granted. That i have gotten to make all of these choices, to run in all of these places, even simply see the shifting landscape outside my front door, is and continues to be an unimaginable blessing. I never want it to stop feeling this wonder.

6/6:

in 2023 I happened to be in Paris during the marathon

And it’s crazy to me that this is something i can now just… do!! i could just do it!! But first I will likely do another one close to home in the fall. I don’t have any grand goals of running all of the “majors” — right now i’m just so happy that I am physically capable of doing this thing I love, at distances that allow me to be a permanent tourist and explorer in my own home, or wherever i go.