The 3 Most Important Life Lessons I Learned Running for 100 Days Straight.
November 7th, 2018.
I can remember it as if it was yesterday (along with the numbness in my legs lol). I had just completed a 15.33 mile trail run in the South Mountain Reservation. Not only was it the longest run of my life at that time but it almost marked the completion of a goal I had set some several months earlier, to run for 100 Days Straight.
For runners there are a lot of life lessons you can learn while on the road. For those of us that are trail runners this is especially true. In all honest there are probably about 2-3 life lessons I learned and continue to learn every time I go out for a run. But when I look back at those 100 Days of running there was one big question I was constantly asked by others and even asked myself: How was I able to complete such an ambitious goal? Every time I revisit this question I keep coming back to three things, lessons, that I had consistently applied everyday that I ran.
I. What you do today is more important than what you think about doing tomorrow.
“Do something every day.” That is what I told myself. On July 30th, 2018 I woke up at 6am and decided to go for a run. I cannot tell you what it was about that morning in July that made me run again. I just decided to run. Then I got up and ran the next day. Then the next. Around the fourth or fifth day of running I decided to give myself a challenge. That I would run for 100 days straight. But what is important to understand about my goal isn’t what I set to do but what I decided not to do.
I’m pretty sure we have all made big resolutions and promises to accomplish something great. We start of strong but then, somewhere along the line, we fall off. So, in order for me to accomplish this goal I had to ask myself two questions: “what do I control?” and “what is out of my control?” What I realized is that in running for 100 Days I could not control daily goals set on time and distance. Too many factors, life and physical, that could impact them and thus create a negativity that could dampen my moral to accomplish the goal. What I could control, though is running every day and that’s what I decided. So from the end of July through November I ran. There were days I ran 5 miles, others I ran 1 mile. Truth be told there were even some days where all I did was run up and down my block but it didn’t matter. What mattered was running everyday.
II. Do Something Everyday
It wasn’t until September that I began to see the impact of that incremental approach. By then, I had lost 15 pounds, my running time dropped significantly and conversely my running mileage increased significantly. Ultimately I completed the 100 Days with a 15 mile run through the South Mountain Reservation. Completing the last 3/4 of a mile with an 834 ft climb. It was an amazing accomplishment but I will tell you honestly I did not plan for any of that to happen. None of it was part of my initial goal nor vision. All I wanted to do was run for 100 days.
III. Its the small things you do today and not what you continuously think about doing tomorrow that will help you accomplish your goal.
What I learned from this experience was that the reason our big goals sometimes fail is because we place too much of our time and energy thinking about the next day or the big vision rather than the now. Because we don’t focus on the small things it increases the probability for us to fail at the big things. Thus our energy and motivation leaves when we see our vision is slipping from us. But through this excursion I found that when we focus on doing something every day, aka the “now,” you find that those small things build on each other until they become the “big" thing, otherwise known as the “tipping point.” Ironically, the big thing(s) are often victories and accomplishments that are greater than anything we had fathomed.
At least it was for me. Don’t get me wrong. It is perfectly fine, in fact important, to set a goal and have a big vision to go after. But whatever it is you want to accomplish just understand that its the small things you do today and not what you continuously think about doing tomorrow that will help you accomplish your goal. Who knows? Maybe in focusing on the small things, you too will accomplish things that you also never thought you were capable of.