Planning, Executing, Adapting
I don’t think you can just roll out of bed and run a marathon, and if you can, bless. Do it. You’re badass, and I should just shut up.
But to do anything worth doing, you have to look into the future you want and say, “Here’s how I am going to get there.”
Anyone can download a marathon training plan for free (thanks to Hal Higdon - I used that at one point years ago). Building the plan is the first step. Great, you’ve got the miles you need to run, but what’s your plan for your plan? When are you going to run those miles? What things that you usually do with your time are you going to push aside for those miles? How are you going to fuel your body to run those miles? And how are you going to recover from those miles?
Planning seems easy. Everyone thinks they’re good at planning. But a plan goes much deeper than the steps along the way. Each step has its own set of plans nested in it. And the more you can understand each step, the better your chance.
Mike Tyson said, “Everyone’s got a plan until you get punched in the face. Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze.”
And I guarantee you’ll get punched in the face—not just in your running plan, but in your life, work, and relationships. You’ll get left hooks, jabs, and uppercuts. You’ll be beaten and bloody. This is all a metaphor, of course.
But if you put in the work and get your mind right, you can follow a plan and adapt to getting smacked around.
I tripped early in my training plan, which came down on my forearms and threw my back out of whack. Pro tip from a runner: You need your spine to run.
I needed a break from running, but I also needed to keep running to make my marathon happen. So I could give up. I could say my plan is screwed. I could try to force myself to run, hurting my back. Or I could adapt. I took two weeks off running, used heat packs on my back daily, and pedaled on a stationary bike to keep my cardio up. (Side note: I hate stationary bikes; why is this a thing people do to themselves) I picked up my running after two weeks and was good to go.
A mentor, Will Hines, used to talk about improv, and I took something he said, and I repeated and twisted it so many times that it’s either exactly what he said or nothing like what he said. But it was something like, “In every improv scene, something will go wrong at the top. But the difference between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs get thrown off, let things fall apart, and never recover. And professionals just fix problems and keep going.”
Running taught me to just fix it and just keep going.
Part of a four-part series on running as life.