On marathons...

Please, please, please never ever call any of my projects "marathons" unless I do. 💔

I have never called any of my projects "marathons" and I ask, beg, implore that you do not either.

The word marathon has made its way into common parlance in education. Anything is a marathon. As a runner and a writer, I oppose this trend vehemently and vociferously because of the true meaning of the word.

So what is an actual marathon? It's a distance of 42.195 km. The average marathon time is 03:48 - it's 3 hours and 48 minutes of running non-stop! I run 25-27 km a week. The longest distance I have ever run in one go is 13 km. I don't know first-hand, but I can imagine how hard it is to run an actual marathon.

I therefore do not call any of my projects marathons - intentionally so.

My projects are courses, sprints, clubs, bootcamps, and workshops. These word choices are intentional too.

That said, I can actually see myself launching an educational marathon. But what would be an educational project commensurate with running a real marathon? Writing a 42,000-word novel? Writing one IELTS answer a day for 42 weeks or writing 42 IELTS answers non-stop? What else? 🏃‍♀️