What Marathon Running Taught Me

I ran my first marathon in September this year, in beautiful Tauranga. It was one of the big-ticket items on my bucket list and with a milestone birthday approaching, it felt like the right time for the challenge.

I’m not a natural athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I was what you would call an “inside kid” growing up – preferring to bury my nose in a book or get into trouble, rather than play sport or get active. Exercise and the outdoors are reasonably new passions to have entered my life, since joining the ranks of other 20-something millennials concerned about my own mortality.

Training for the marathon was one of the most valuable and rewarding experiences of my life. I learned a lot about myself and what I’m capable of, and it coincided beautifully with the work I’m doing in strategy, change and resilience.

Oprah Winfrey has reportedly said that marathon running is the perfect metaphor for life, and I’m not one to argue with Oprah. On that note, here are my top 17 lessons on strategy, change and resilience.

Lesson 1 – Your Goals Should Scare You A Little

Anyone who’s had a conversation with an MBA scholar between 1985 and 2005 will be familiar with the acronym BHAG. For those that aren’t, I mean a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Choose a goal that makes you feel uncomfortable and uncertain of its possibility.

I started running about 5 years ago, nothing serious, and was thrilled to progress from 5 through to 10km. Before setting my marathon goal in late 2017, I’d run two half marathons (slowly!) – one in 2014, and the other in late 2015. A marathon though, felt impossible. It felt even more impossible when I put myself out of training for 2 months, only 2 weeks after setting my goal, thanks to a horrific ankle sprain!

If your goal feels like a done thing from the outset, it’s probably not big enough. Or, in the words of J. Cole ‘If you ain't aim too high, then you aim too low”

Lesson 2 – Sacrifice Short Term Wins for Long Term Progress

I read an interesting piece about Olympic athletes and the impact of a four-year training schedule recently. It turns out that one of the most challenging things about a four-year training goal is managing interim performance goals. Elite athletes will use events like world championship as a ‘B’ event – where they don’t perform to their absolute best, but instead stay on track to meet their longer-term goal.

For the amateur marathoner, the lesson in this is that you can’t, and shouldn’t, run your longest or fastest on every run. Oftentimes, potential short-term victories need to be compromised in pursuit of the larger goal. Playing the long game is important – in running, in business, and in life.

Lesson 3 – Celebrate the Journey

While playing the long game is important, this doesn’t mean toning down the celebrations for important milestones. Short term wins are important indicators – they’re victories in their own right, and they need celebrating. It’s easy to get caught in the trap of seeing milestones as paling in significance to the larger goal, but this serves no-one.

You should be proud at every point in the journey – because these demonstrate growth, and lots of small victories create a foundation for big wins. I vividly remember how I felt the first time I ran 25k, 30k, and 36k. My first 10k under 60 minutes. My first k under 5 minutes. These were personal bests, whether I was training for a marathon or not, and I celebrated those accordingly!

Lesson 4 - Comparison is the Thief of Joy

Don’t spend one second worrying about anybody else’s progress, and spend even less time feeling like shit in comparison. The only person you should be racing is Yesterday You. Old You. Slower You. Comparison is a surefire way to feel inferior, so don’t bother with it.

I’m not advocating a lack of situational awareness. You want to see what the usual process is? Learn lessons from other people’s struggles? Be inspired and have someone else to look up to? Brilliant. But when comparison leads to a negative judgment on your own accomplishments, trouble starts.

My Instagram feed is full of running people doing running stuff. It’s easy to look at these bronzed, 6-pack, model types running fast as hell and use that as fuel to bring my own achievements down. But there’s no power in that – I think they’re amazing, and I think I’m amazing too. End of story.

Lesson 5 – You Win or You Learn

A workshop attendee quoted this one at me recently and I love it. Failure is a learning opportunity and a loud and powerful signal. It’s an excellent sign you need to do something differently – and you can choose to view it this way, or get discouraged and put the long-term goals down.

“Failure is an event, not a characteristic”

When I found myself dehydrated after a long run and out of training for a week I felt like a real dick. However, the lesson I learned has more than made up for that week of shame and I would not take dehydration and recovery as seriously as I do now without it! Failure is an event, not a characteristic – treat it like one.

Which leads me to my next point…

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