110 - Going the distance with the things
Building the systems that get you to your goals
I’m still buzzing from the high of completing my first half marathon last week.
If you’d told me this time last year that I’d be someone who signs up for races — and actually runs them — I would’ve laughed. In fact, when I signed up for the half marathon (exactly four weeks before race day), I didn’t tell anyone for the first couple of weeks because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it.
I first started running over a decade ago. Back then, I was a medical student on a tiny Caribbean island, which was the perfect backdrop for running. I was new to fitness, and I liked that running didn’t require any special equipment or skill. There was nothing serious or structured about my running. I tracked my runs on the Nike app, but I never paid attention to my pace or distance. I just ran.
Eventually, I leaned more into strength training, and running became something I did when I needed to clear my head. When the pandemic hit — and my head needed more clearing than ever — I started running again. Around that time, my friend Dami and I talked about running a half marathon, and so I added “Run a half marathon” to my list. But then the panini took over, and we never revisited the idea.
The panorama ended, and I stopped running again. According to my Nike run app, I logged exactly ZERO miles in the year 2023. So when a colleague suggested signing up for a local 10K last year, I was sceptical. I hadn’t run in so long that when I started training, it felt like my first time. I used the Couch to 5K app and struggled to run for even three minutes at a time. But I stuck to the schedule and ran three times a week, just as the app suggested.
Three months later, I surprised myself by finishing the 10K. It reminded me of that half marathon goal I’d quietly shelved. I told Dami about it, and she said, “If you can run 10K, you can run a half marathon.”
The doubt was still there, so I didn’t sign up right away. What I did do was keep running. I cut back to once a week, with no focus on pace, just aiming to show up and make each run count, gradually pushing myself to go a tiny bit further each time.
When I eventually signed up for this race, I went back to running three times a week. Four weeks isn’t a long time to train, so I still wasn’t sure my legs would carry me through 21 kilometres.
But they did.
Looking back, what really got me through the preparation wasn’t some grand show of willpower or strength; it was a collection of quiet, steady and mostly unwitnessed small things.
As usual, there are several morals to this story, and I’d like to share some of them.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
This is my favourite quote from Atomic Habits, and I’ve come up with my own translation:
Focus on the small things and do them consistently.
When I started preparing for my first race last year, I paid no attention to pace or time. My main goal was not to die. To help with this, I didn’t aim to run continuously, so I took walking breaks whenever I felt winded, and that kinda became my running style. It wasn’t until my sister asked how long it takes me to run 5K that I even considered running the whole thing without my cute walking breaks. This was less than three weeks before the half marathon in question.
While I still wasn’t focused on my pace/time, I used my weekly runs to focus on other things like staying aware of my breathing, maintaining good form, taking note of the runs that felt hard and easy and what factors made the difference.
The small act of lacing up my running shoes every Sunday helped me claim my identity as a runner because, honestly, as someone who used to think runners must be a little crazy (I kinda still do), it feels a little wild to be calling myself a runner.
Signing up for a half marathon with only 4 weeks to go is crazy work, but in truth, while I may not have been running for long, I have had years of life + fitness experience. I’ve gotten used to creating and following a schedule, showing up on the hard days and proving to myself that I can do hard things, and these are the things that carried me through the 21km to that finish line.
Write it down.
There’s a quiet kind of magic in writing things down. It feels like a silent commitment, and it serves as a gentle reminder. I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I live for a crossed-off list item. Crossing things off my list is one of the small-but-mighty pleasures of my life.
Run a half marathon has been slipping further and further down my list for the past five years — but it was always still there. I’d catch sight of it now and then, even during the years I wasn’t running at all, and it would quietly remind me that I’d once made this promise to myself.
Being able to finally cross it off? That felt really, really good.
I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed running this 21k, and I think I get it now, why runners run. There is a strange and beautiful joy in watching yourself do something hard. Something about pushing yourself, pumping your hands and feet to propel you further and further and while some parts can be painful, the overall feeling is one of quiet satisfaction and great pride. For me, at least.
It is also a huge source of confidence because crossing that finish line reminded me that there is pretty much nothing I set my mind to do that I can not accomplish. But I do have to start, with what I already have.
Recently I read
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: Haruki Murakami. I came across this book via another newsletter that I am subscribed to, and it is one of those instances of a book coming to you at the right time. Plus, I love reading books about my various hobbies and interests, so of course I picked it up.
This book is a memoir of sorts by the writer Haruki Murakami about his love for running and how his running career impacts his writing career and vice versa. He started writing it while preparing for the NYC Marathon in 2005, and it reads like a very self-aware and insightful running log. He’s run over 20 full marathons and has completed a few Triathlons as well. I am genuinely in awe of such people and think of them as almost superhuman, so I was keen to find out how Haruki became superhuman. But of course, he’s just a regular person who decided he was going to do something and just kept showing up and doing the thing. And gradually, he’s shaped his life around this thing that he enjoys and keeps him going. An almost annoyingly simple formula that seems to work time and again.
I also felt really cool to have something in common with THE Haruki Murakami. Can’t wait to have a few published books to my name so we can have even more in common.
It is safe to say that summer is officially here! We are expecting a “heatwave” this weekend and I have absolutely no complaints, zero. My bank account is unable to accommodate too many shenanigans at the moment, so I might need to get creative with my summer plans but nonetheless, I am super excited.
I hope life/Summer is treating you well. Here’s urging you to focus more on doing the small things that build the systems you need to get you to your goals.
Chioma.
Amazing write up!