What I Learnt - Running 365 days in a row

I recently completed 1 year- 365 (now 500, still going!) (now 1000!) days - of running every day.?

It’s been a remarkable experience and I wanted to share, or rather document, some of my thoughts on the topic of running over the years.?

I pretend to know a lot about running, but I actually know very little. Here I’ve written a little bit about running. It’s a lot of a little, so be warned.???

Running has brought so much richness to my life from relationships, to work, to mental health. It only seems right I take some non-running time to put running up on a podium and give her a little shout-out.?

I've broken it into 7 things I've learnt below and as with most things in life, starting is probably the most difficult part and it’s where my story begins.?

Why did I start running? – The raw, honest, non-GMO’d answer.

I was 13 years old. Coming of age. Rudderless. Consumed by insignificant things. One day my kind and patient mother was giving me a lift home from school. Being the privileged young man that I was, I was complaining to her about something.

My complaint for today was that I felt I was getting fat. It probably came out something like, “Ma, I’m getting fat and I don’t feel comfortable,” in a way that made it clear that this was a mom problem, not a Matt problem.?

Accepting her ownership of this problem she suggested I run around one block of the neighbourhood. About 400m. As we neared home, and in true motherly fashion, she stopped the car a distance from the house and dared me to jump out and run around the block home.

Knowing very well that I was falling into a reverse psychology trap, but with no ability to accept defeat, I did just that, jumped out of the car and ran barefoot around the block home. It was probably a total of two minutes of running, most of it dodging dog waste landmines on my neighbour’s lawn with my privileged feet too sore to run on the tarred road.??

It’s crazy to think that this all started with a 2 minute run. That was the first run I remember choosing to go on without being forced to by some demented physical education teacher at school.??

Two minutes. That’s all it took! So seemingly difficult to start, but embarrassingly simple in hindsight.?

By the time I got home my mother was already in the back of the house and hearing me come inside she beckoned, “Two blocks tomorrow! … only if you can.”?

Agggg, she knew what she was doing, and I knew she knew what she was doing, but it was working.?

That evening I got out a notebook and scribbled “Matt’s running logbook” on the cover, opened it up and inputted my first entry “1 block, ~2 minutes”.

The next day I did two blocks. The day after, three. I think I got up to about 15 blocks before I stopped counting the blocks and it just turned into a run.

The rest is history I suppose. But like all great journeys, and this is an ongoing one, the real adventures are what come after you start.?

In the two decades since then I’ve run everything from 100 metres to 100 miles. I’ve run trail, track, tar. I’ve got faster, slower, injured, obsessed and disinterested at times, but through it all, it has always been this little gemstone I’ve kept in my back pocket. Something to lean on when times are tough, or something to keep me humble when times are good.

It almost sometime feels like a little secret treasure. No need to tell anyone about it, no need to share it, a safe place to go, run out your thoughts, let off some steam, power yourself up. Running became my solace.

All in all I would consider myself a perfectly mediocre runner, with a confidence greater than my competence. Mediocre is perhaps relative, but there really is nothing special to see here. All I feel I have uncovered is what hard work and consistency can achieve. What I have been able to achieve though, is a whole lot more than I thought I was capable of. That’s the key I think.

So in some ways today I am taking that little treasure out of my back pocket and sharing some of the things running continues to teach me, from day one, until today and hopefully, if I’m lucky, long into the future.?

[1/7] Consistency is King.

I only truly learnt the value of consistency over the last year during my 365-day streak. That’s the beauty about getting to know something deeply. Every time you feel like you’ve completely understood it you uncover another layer and realise just how little you really know.

In running, the more I think I know, the more I realise I still have so much to learn. Part of the reason for writing this will be the joy of looking back at it in the years to come. How will these lessons age, like a good red wine, or like a sun-beaten dry-biltong-looking runner unable to walk down the stairs.

The idea of starting a running streak came to me through meeting a hardy group of Johannesburg runners who go by the name of the Tyrone Harriers.

The characters of the runners themselves mirror the city in which they run. To live in Joburg you must have your wits about you. If you don’t, the city will chew you up, and spit you out, but if you do, the very sinew of the city will wind its way into your heart, making it beat raw and wild like the feral creature the city is.

They leave at 5:30am every morning. If you arrive at 5:31 they’re already gone. Come freezing-rain, thunder, or sewerage-infused ice, they’re there.

There are no morning WhatsApp group messages asking to rain-check. Don’t bother. In fact, don’t you even dare ask.

There’s no never-leave-a-man-behind policy. They will, and must. You were told how far and fast the run would be beforehand.

This is not a run through nature, but rather through the cement belly, straight up a hill with no oxygen in the air and into the poorly lit streets of a hungover city rising to life.

But my goodness, when that sun comes up, and red cracks appear through those 1960’s apartment blocks, man, it’s truly spectacular! There is nowhere else you’d rather be, and no other group of outliers you’d rather be with.

It was on one of my first runs with this group that I found myself running next to a man named Paul Theron, a cornerstone of the Tyrone Harries, and whom I heard was on a running streak. Fanboying I asked “Paul, I hear you’re on a running streak, how many days are you on?” While powering up the hill, giving me nothing more than a sideways glance, he shot back, “Pffft, Matt, I don’t count the days, I count the years. I’m on 7.”?

Impressed and intrigued I followed up by asking him what he now knows that he didn’t know before starting his running streak. And it was his reply that got me, he said, “It’s easier to do something every day than most days” … BOOM.

What a fascinating thought, ‘It’s easier to do something every day than most days.’?

In my mind I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to fact check that.’ I’ve been fact checking that for the last 365 days and counting and I can confidently say, yes, it is true. It is easier to do something every day than most days.

Consistency is likely the most impactful thing running has taught me. Consistency is king. Keep at it, every day, keep at it, don’t slack off, don’t make excuses, keep putting the time in.

Consistency is different from hard work. Hard work sucks, it hurts, it’s not every day, and it hovers on the edge of unsustainable. Consistency is a different type of work, this is the “make-your-bed-every-day”, “be-on-time-for-meetings” and “treat-everyone-fairly” type of work.?

It takes no level of intellect or education to arrive on time, be prepared, or to not take your cell phone to bed with you. Those are easy things to do, but we just don’t do them.

In the same way, it takes no secret skill to go for a run every day. All you need to do is one mile.?

Not every day will be breaking a sweat. In fact most days are mediocre or rather, non-eventful, but by doing it every day, you are making progress even on the bad days. You are building a foundation, becoming more efficient, and giving your body and mind the strength needed for those difficult days. It's not a box-checking exercise, but an exercise in discipline and rigour.??

Consistency is King, so what’s next?

[2/7] Speedwork is King

Nah, I’m joking. There’s only one king. It’s Consistency. But a close second is speedwork. This is what I talk about when I talk about hard work. Speedwork sucks, but if you want to get faster, there is no cheating it, you must work hard.

You know hard work when you see it. You avoid it, you loathe it and often we just ignore it. Speedwork here encapsulates anything where you are pushing yourself to your limit, trying to get to that line of your capabilities and inch a little further. This could be doing fast laps around the track, hill sprints or a runs at max effort.?

There is really nothing more that needs to be said here. Want to get better? Work hard. It is as simple as that, but I’ll add a few anecdotes .

Running, like many things in life - work and relationships included - has the potential to find itself in a form of stagnation, with a lack of growth. The graph of these things seem to always tend towards ‘comfort’. There’s nothing wrong with comfort, but if it is growth you’re after, it only happens outside of comfort.

My brother Ben once said; “If you’re doing speedwork right, it’ll never get easier.”

Go and do hill sprints for half an hour every week on a Tuesday. Do it for 20 years, and on that 20-year anniversary it’s going to suck just as much as the first one (shout out to the Tuesday Hills crew). Those hills will never get easier. You may get faster, and you may improve your relationship with the pain, get less surprised by it, but it will never get easier. If it’s getting easier, you're doing it wrong.

There is something quite magical about those rare moments in the pain cave.

Moving max-speed around the track where you feel the oxygen draining from your arms, your eyes go blotchy, your mouth is full of cotton and your throat sucks in freezing air feeling like you’ve just eaten a handful of mints. You cross the line, crippled directly onto your back, heart blasting out of your chest, ears ringing, but knowing you left nothing out there. Put every ounce of you as a human into that effort.

Or in the midday heat, 32km into the marathon after spending hours on the road. One moment you’re a king, next moment you’re not sure you’re going to finish. You lose your head, lose your rhythm, your body is screaming at you to stop, sit down, you’re never doing this running thing again. But somehow you do, a walk turns into a shuffle, you finish, you forget.

Speed work prepares you to be stoic. It mentally prepares you for the pain cave, and helps you get faster. It makes me think of the quote; ‘Easy decisions, hard life. Hard decisions easy life’, maybe better said, “Easy training, unexpectedly hard race. Hard training expectedly hard race.”?

[3/7] Finding your limits makes you strong.

In 2015. I decided to enter my first 100km run called the Cederberg Traverse just outside Cape Town. I hadn’t yet run a marathon, which was needed for qualification, so after adding some creative licence to my entry form, I managed to get a spot in the race.?

A couple months later, mid-Spring, I found myself on a roadtrip with my dad on the way to the start line.

The race is organised by an original Cape Town crazy, and trail-running trail-blazer, Trevor Ball.

His races aren’t known for their predictability, you won’t be built up with too much confidence leading up to race day. Rather his races are known for their erratic distances, brightly coloured emails, pot-plants instead of medals and men in gorilla suits ready to jump out and scare you from the most unpredictable places. (Below is my brother Mike having such an experience.)

The race starts at 5am. Standing there on the start line I was completely unaware that the next 20 hours were going to somehow be some of the most gruelling and ecstatic hours of my life.

Like a baby, drifting from traumatic tears to wide smiles in seconds, I went through a day of my lowest-lows and the highest-highs, only a couple hours apart.

By 9am I was 20km in and largely running alone mid-pack. It felt way too hot to only be 9am, and I was already struggling to keep food and water down. I had told my dad I’d be at the 65km mark by lunch, this was the only checkpoint spectators could join. I already sensed I was going to be late.?

The next eight hours were torture. I rolled into the checkpoint that evening ready to give up. There hadn’t been an ounce of shade and the heat was making my ears ring. I had run out of water and still wasn’t able to eat, and this was only two-thirds through the race. Not a hell was I going another step further. I was out.?

I expected to come into the checkpoint seeing my saviour dad full of sympathy, ready to grab me and put me in the car, but instead I got a “I’ve been waiting 5 hours for you!” I tried to explain that this had been the most traumatic day of my life, but he didn’t seem too phased by this. Coming to terms with the fact that I was not pulling out, I jumped into a rock pool, ate the best bacon and egg roll of my life, and somehow, left the checkpoint on my two feet.?

Head torches soon came on and I spotted a runner up ahead that I was gaining on, giving a little bit of extra bounce to my step. I caught him at the top of the mountain and quickly realised he was delirious, wandering around the path, not too sure where he was or where he was going. Emptiness behind the eyes. Realising this was a dangerous part of the mountain to be alone in such a state, and enjoying that I had some company through the night, I slowed down to help him refuel, recover and get back on track.?

That was a beautiful couple of hours. My new running friend Brett had started to feel better. I was feeling better and it wasn’t far now. The night was cooling, the stars were showing off and we had millions of fire-fly’s come to spectate, it was pure peace.?

We started to run briskly again then at around midnight, but at the 95km mark we dropped into a cold valley and my body went into complete shock. I didn’t really know what was happening. I was shaking, freezing and cramping. Brett, feeling much better now, took the lead and was doing everything he could to get me through these last 5km.?

But to no avail. Half an hour later, which in ultra-running terms means one kilometre, I was under a bush, lying on my back, crying. Had my dad been there in his car, I would have without doubt gotten into it and quit. 97km done. 3km to go. If it was possible, that would have been the end of my race.?

Unfortunately he wasn’t there, and then Brett played a clever trick. He went ahead into the distance and shone his touch encouraging me to get to him. As I began approaching, he’d move further ahead again.?

I learnt something very important about myself here. When Brett was running alongside me he kept asking how I was doing. My response was always negative, telling him how terrible I was feeling. However, the second I had no one to complain to, no one giving me the chance to verbally announce how I was feeling, I seemed to be able to keep moving.??

We did this all the way to the finish line where, at 2am, I finally did embrace my dad with a big hug. I drank half a beer, threw it up, went to bed. The happiest most miserable I’d ever been.??

(These a pic capturing this moment, placeholder for when, if ever, I find it)

Ultra-running, or any level of physical or mental endurance has the amazing ability to make you strong. It recalibrates what you consider difficult, it makes you feel a humbled, internal power. “If that didn’t kill me, I’m probably much stronger than I think I am” you start to believe.

Well, until you finally do fail that is.??

[4/7] Failure is Key

I wouldn’t say I had really failed at much in life. I thought that only happened to other people and it never was going to happen to me. Not true, you do then fail, things happen. You fail, fail at work, fail at relationships and life doesn’t really go to plan.

In running however, I didn’t feel like I had ever failed. I had never had the dreaded DNF - Did Not Finish, next to my name. I had a couple of close calls, like a freezing cold Ultra-Trail Cape Town (UTCT) in 2016, another 100km run where I finished with 4 minutes to spare. I think for a while I was the slowest successful finisher, but finish I did!?

I didn’t believe I’d ever get a DNF. That of course all changed with 13 peaks. 13 peaks isn’t a race, but a self-paced, self-organised challenge. It was created, almost by accident, by two of Cape Town trail greats Ryan Sandes and Kane Reilly.?

As you might guess, the route requires you to tag 13 iconic Cape Town peaks in a specific order. You choose everything else, the route, the day, the company.?

You’ll be tackling more than 100km of technical trail and 6,000m of elevation. The goal was to do it in less than 24hrs, it’s a brutal challenge.?(below is the original picture drawn by Ryan Sandes that started the idea)

I set out with friend Matt de Haast to attempt this. Nothing was going to plan from the start. As you might be guessing, I pulled out at nine peaks, 67km in. Unable to go any further. We’d already run through the night and now it was getting hot and I hadn’t been able to keep down any food from the start.????

I knew I was slowing Matt down, but I was also gutted to be letting him down. We both knew he had to leave me. There wasn’t much of a discussion. I told him to head off alone and that was that.?

As he disappeared into the distance I took a long slow walk to the car, giving me plenty of time to come to terms with the fact this would be my first DNF. I just couldn’t go on, my head was like an iron gate not letting me past. Unable to let me comprehend finishing this race.?

In that walk I thought about people I was letting down, Matt, the support crew, and ultimately myself. What would people think of me if I had a DNF, what would I think of me? Was this finally my limit? What would I tell myself in a couple of hours when I would have inevitably forgotten the depth of this darkness and question why I stopped.?

I had a long conversation with myself on that walk, but before getting to the car I clearly remember saying: “Right Matt, this makes you stronger, you are going to finish this race one day. Today breaks you or shapes you, you get to decide”

That was it. I got to the car, met my support crew whom Matt had already brought up to speed. They looked at me for answers, unsure what to say. I didn’t have answers, but I didn’t complain, blame, or moan either. It’s a fact, I wasn’t finishing this today, but I’d be back.?

That all sounded positive and a couple months later I attempted it again. And to my utter disbelief it was déjà vu. I pulled out this time at 40km, after getting nausea and having to lie down under a tree.?

If you ask my brother Tim about this, he’ll say he travelled an hour with his two daughters to support. He watched me run up the road for 5 minutes and then watched me throw up for two hours. He’ll say it wasn’t a great spectacle. He’ll probably bring it up for the rest of my life too.?

Back-to-back DNFs. A lot of doubt starts creeping in. “Once you give up once, is it easier to give up the second time?” I remember asking myself. And yes, the answer is yes. Giving up gets easier and that scared me. The thought of attempting this monster again was just too much to imagine, so I just swept it under the carpet.?

A few months later, two Johannesburg running friends Mart and Charles decided they were going to give it a go. I’d had enough time to forget how much I hated it, and we sat on a sunny morning in Joburg drinking coffees and planning dates and flights down to Cape Town for our attempt.?

We got there and of course it was the most dismal weather that Cape Town has on offer. That horizontal rain that Capetonians love to chatter about, but this was our date, immovable. It wasn’t without trial and tribulation, but we managed to get through it that day. Third time lucky.??

I think I learnt more in the two failed attempts than I did in the successful one. Learnt about how powerful your perspective of yourself is. You define failure and success, and sometimes, we don’t even know we’re boxing ourselves in like that.?

[5/7] Flipping the Chessboard.?

I use the term ‘Flipping the Chessboard’ as I think it best describes what I learnt through this experience. I can’t pinpoint where I first heard this expression, but it was in the context of our business. “How can we flip the chessboard here, play a totally different game, look at the problem completely anew from a different perspective. What if the problem isn’t the problem?”?

A simple example might be a problem of dealing with customer support over the phone. The focus starts on how to improve phone support. Hire more people to answer calls, have better documentation etc. The flipping the chessboard question might ask, ‘Do we even need phone support? What happens if we just remove the phone completely? By removing the phone the problem is now a different one. How do we prevent customers needing to phone, do we want customers that need phone support, how would we support them over email instead, etc.’??

So how does this apply to running??

When I was still at university I did a VO2Max test. If you’re not familiar with the test, you get strapped up to a device that measures the amount of oxygen you’re inhaling and the fatigue your body is experiencing as you run faster and faster on a treadmill. It measures an objective efficiency that tells you how capable you naturally are as an athlete (That’s an over simplification). Your VO2Max can change over time, but it’s largely a measure that goes down to genetics, something you are born with.?

I did this test and the instructor gave me a printout. On the printout there were a bunch of times for each distance that was expected to be the fastest my body could scientifically run.?

It said the fastest I was capable of running a 5km in was 16:47. This was annoying, but comprehensible given my PR at the time was around 18:00. I held onto this piece of paper and made it my goal to beat that time.?

But I just couldn’t. It haunted me. It was like this asymptote and for ten years I got progressively closer, but less progression each time, 17:30, 17:17, 17:10, 17:03, 16:58, 16:53.?

I started coming to terms with the science of this, and my mind seemed to accept that I couldn’t go any faster.?

Then one day I joined a running group in Boston, the famous Boston Athletics Association. I wasn’t close to their speed so I found myself tagging along for some lonely, arse-handing sessions.??

The one day I arrived and the set was 3x3km at half-marathon pace. I joined the guys as they went out at blistering pace. It was way too fast, but I was desperate to have some company for once, and enjoyed feeling like Eluid Kipchoge with his triangle formation.?

It turns out their half-marathon pace took me through 3km in 9:23. As we neared the end of the first set I realised two things. Firstly, this was the end of my session, no way I was doing another one, and secondly if I could just hold on for two more km’s by myself I was going to get a big PR.

And I did. Through gritting my teeth, closing my eyes and flaring my arms I managed to somehow get a 55 second PR of 15:58.?

I collapsed to the pavement trying to prevent my chest from exploding as my Garmin vibrated with excitement about my new PR!?

What had just happened here? I couldn’t quite believe it. I even did a warm down to check the GPS was correct.?

It was like a massive mindset shift. The one day I couldn’t run sub 16:47, and the next day it just has become repeatedly possible.?

It’s almost like there was a wedge of unconscious self-manifested self-talk in my mind that needed to be taken out. I was putting myself in a box. With that simple change in perspective and the knowledge that I was in fact capable it no longer seems impossible.??

Flip the chessboard. Try and do something you don't normally give yourself permission to do. It usually means something scary and out of depth.

[6/7] Gratitude?

Many an afternoon run has been an escape from a stressful day. With my mind consumed by some difficulty at work or in my personal life, there is no better escape for me than to put on the shoes and burn some energy on a run.?

I’ll head into the city streets with my head down not taking in much around me. The goal of the run is to take my mind off the problem, often with little success, and mostly feeling annoyed or sorry for myself.?

However, time and time again I have been on such a run and have been sharply brought back to reality by having to side-step someone in a vastly less fortunate situation than my own. It could be a homeless person digging through a dustbin; the lifeless eyes of the jobless on the park bench; or someone wrapped in a blanket crawling up under a bridge, getting ready to make it their home for the night.?This usually happens more when running in Johannesburg or Nairobi and less in a place like London, there are still differences, just less vastly contrasting.

Exercise is the last thing on these peoples mind, they’re thinking about their next meal. And then sometimes despite all that despair you might get a cheerful hello, or pass two such men having a deep belly-laugh together.?

I have so much more in my life than those people within arm’s reach. Yet here I am, so wrapped up in my now seemingly meaningless problems. Counting the things that I don’t have and not even able to be happy for what I do have.?

Quickly it grounds me, reminds me how much I have in my life. A healthy body to exercise, a job I enjoy which can feed and house me. Friends, family, privilege and it was all down to complete luck.?

The last thing I want to share about running is something that has had an unexpectedly powerful impact on me. It is the power of a logbook.?

[7/7] Logbook

Yes, we can use Strava, Garmin or any other of the arrays of apps, to keep track of our exercise, but years ago I decided to start keeping a spreadsheet of my runs.?

It started off as a daily log of the run and soon expanded to other exercises.? Then further it became a retrospective on how the run felt, how many hours of sleep I'd had that night, how many units of alcohol or coffee I’d had that day, and even how I was feeling mentally.?

It is a quick 1 to 10, sometimes with short explanation on why. I even now have a log of all the days I’ve been sick and exactly all the medicine I’ve taken.

It might sound like a lot, but it honestly takes me less than a minute every day. There are two things that are really interesting to me here. Firstly, the mere act of inputting this data is important, it forces me to stop, think and reflect. Secondly, it gives me a far more macro perspective on how I am doing.?

In running you get good days and bad days. There's nothing wrong with the bad days, but if they turn into weeks, months or even years, it’s important to get that macro perspective.

You get to know yourself more objectively. Maybe you’re not feeling great, but if you’ve not been getting enough sleep, then that’s probably not helping. Fix that first before you try to run a PR or beat yourself up for having some bad days at work.

Thanks for entertaining me if you’ve read this far. Perhaps you’ve also got a unique relationship with running or sport. Either a gem in your back pocket, or out there for the world to see. I hope you treasure it dearly, it won’t last forever.?

Here’s an excerpt from a poem by Douglas Malloch:

“Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees; The further sky, the greater length; The more the storm, the more the strength. By sun and cold, by rain and snow, In trees and men good timbers grow.”