‘I trained so hard for this’: 22-year-old runner leaves friend in the middle of a marathon after friend refuses to keep running

"What if I signed up for a marathon?" is a thought we all have had at least once in our lives, but most of us don't really follow through after that.

We know who we are, we know what we are capable of, and running a marathon is usually not something people just wake up one day and do. It takes months, if not years, of preparation and training, and most of all, it takes a lot of motivation. Having that initial thought is great, but you have to really want it to actually make it happen.

The two friends below represent the two sides of that coin. One has a lot of experience with hiking and has been training for an Ultra Marathon for close to a year. The other decided to sign up for the marathon two months before, without any preparation, and with a bad knee. While the first friend was taking her training very seriously, the second one assumed she would manage and saw the race as an opportunity to do something fun with her friend. It was clear the two were not on the same page, but neither was willing to change a thing.

Unsurprisingly, on the day of the marathon, the two friends began the race together until one of them started to get really tired. You can already guess which of the two it was. After a while, the first friend, the one who actually prepared for the marathon, decided she could not wait for her friend to recover any longer and took off without her. She finished the race and reconnected with her friend later, but by then, the friend was already upset with her for being left behind. 

The first friend thinks it's unfair to be expected to throw all her training away for someone who didn't even take it seriously, while the second friend claimed the marathon was supposed to be a shared experience and she shouldn't have ditched her halfway through. 

Scroll down to decide who you agree with.