Be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods

This advice works for a lot of things in life: how you think about your career, change management initiatives, project planning; and definitely for marathon training.

Last month I ran the Tokyo Marathon. This was four months after I ran the New York City Marathon, and less than a year after I ran the London Marathon. 3 marathons in less than 12 months is a lot both physically and mentally.

Coming off running the NYC Marathon (which is an absolute party and I highly recommend running or cheering to be a part of the fun), I had zero motivation to train for another marathon. I was balancing a new role, winter weather, and a decline in my mother’s health.? The last thing I wanted to do was jump back into a 12-week marathon training plan.

As the weeks went by and my motivation fluctuated, I went and saw my physical therapist (an essential resource for avid runners like myself) and asked her “What’s the minimum amount of fitness I need to be marathon-ready”.? With that, we had a new slogan for my Tokyo training block: “Minimum to Marathon”.

With marathon training, you can’t just “catch up” on lost weeks of training as that’ll put you at risk for an injury; unlike in the workplace where you can work extra hours and weekends to make up the workload. So, I had a deadline (race day) and I had to come up with a new plan for how I could train to build enough fitness to be able to complete the race. The Tokyo Marathon has a few extra elements to make things a little interesting. Most races have a finish time deadline, and you can usually look at the overall timing (the race starts at 9am, and finishes at 4pm so I have 7 hours to finish); well Tokyo has added 9 checkpoints throughout the race but it’s not evenly divided across the course time. For example, checkpoint #1 was at 4.9km and runners needed to pass it by 10:25am. Checkpoint #2 was 11.1km and the deadline was 11:10am; and so on

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At the deadline, race volunteers held up a rope and runners could not cross. Volunteers would rip off the runner’s timing chip and direct them to a bus that would take them to the finish.

So, a little extra stress as I had to do some fun math to figure out my training to pass the checkpoints with a buffer. For weeks I was concerned with checkpoint #2; every other checkpoint I knew I could make but for some reason the math on the second one made me nervous.? I had sketched out different plans based on hypothetical start times as I wasn’t sure exactly when my wave would cross the starting line.

Working with my p/t, I came up with a training plan (accumulative fitness!) and a race plan (structured intervals) that respected my current level of fitness and would accomplish the goal of finishing the marathon.

On race day I kept to my plan and was able to pass all the checkpoints successfully. It took a lot of discipline to stay focused on my plan, and not get caught up in everyone all around me. This can be said of career aspirations as well; it's easy to get caught up in how you see others making moves and wonder what you should be doing. It's humbling, but important to stay true to yourself.

In the workplace, it’s easy to write out a structured project plan, but often there isn't any flexibility built in for new information, or to incorporate other stakeholders. It's so important to maintain flexibility and continue to ask yourself “What’s the goal”; and be open to creative ways to get there.

By remaining open to innovative approaches, we can navigate challenges and achieve success in unexpected ways.