How endurance training changed my life
Achieving macro goals by completing micro goals
I started training for my first marathon in 2019. Since then I’ve been doing marathons, Ironman races, and an ultra-marathon. The events are cool and all, but the real magic is in the daily things you do before the races. Here are some changes I’ve experienced.
Health
This is a broad categorization, so I’ll break it down into sub-categories.
Food & alcohol
When you’re working out every day, and the workouts might last for hours, you want to feel as good as possible. That means having a lot of energy, feeling good, etc. In other words, eating good food. I’m not going to say what that is, as it’s different for everyone. For me, I know that eating a fast-food burger isn’t giving me the energy I need. I also have some foods that my stomach can’t tolerate, so I need to avoid eating that before long workouts.
This is something that takes some time to figure out. When you have a two-hour run and you need to go to the restroom 10 minutes into the run, and your stomach is hurting, you will most likely remember to not eat the same thing before the next long run.
The same goes for alcohol. You don’t want to drink too much the evening before a workout, because that will feel horrible.
You will also think about eating things that fuel you properly before a workout, and foods that help you recover after a workout. Macros and types of food. You might also leave out alcohol because you know that you will recover better without it.
Sleep
You realize you need sleep to recover and to feel energized. Not just the number of hours you’re in bed, but the actual amount and quality of sleep. You’re optimizing things around sleep, like no caffeine in the afternoon, room temperature, evening routines, etc.
Balance
By working out a lot, you start to understand the meaning of rest. So you start to figure out the balance between the two. You realize that the same balance is needed in other aspects of your life, like work.
If you work a lot or are busy with other things, you get a balance from doing something completely different. You then start to see how important that is, and it will make you more efficient in the other things you’re doing.
Overall, you will be a more balanced person. If you go for long runs, bike rides, or whatever (I know weight training does this for me as well), you will get out all your inner frustration and anger during that workout. Afterward, you will be calm and relaxed. If someone cuts you off when you’re driving, you won’t get angry and start screaming at them. You just faced the big issues in your life during the workout, so you realize that a small thing like someone cutting you off isn’t a big thing nor is it worth you getting angry.
You might be doing all these things for the training process or for a specific race. But guess what, these things improve your “real life” just as much. These might be things you would want to do anyways, without the training, but haven’t been able to do. I quit smoking when I started training for my first marathon. It was something I knew was bad for me, and wanted to quit anyways. But addictions might be difficult to tackle, and the easiest way is to replace them with something else. For me, being able to run “better” was big enough of a motivation, so I was able to quit.
Achieving goals
There are 3 main reasons I like to set these endurance race events for myself:
1. I think they are cool things I want to be able to say I’ve done.
2. The health benefits, both daily and long-term.
3. To remind me that I can do whatever I set out to do, as long as I make a plan, put in the work, and stay consistent. Starting a business and being successful (everyone has their own interpretation of what that is) takes time, let’s say it might take 5 years. Training for a race might take 6 months. During those 5 years, you might feel lost and distracted, like you’re not making progress. When training and completing a race in 6 months, you get that reminder that you are making progress as long as you’re putting in the work. A motivation boost to keep going.
Since starting my endurance race journey, I’ve taken on a bunch of other things where I apply the same strategy as I do with endurance training. The one that’s most relevant right now is learning Spanish. For one year, I’ve been studying every day. Part of my plan was also to take in-class courses, which I did — but just one (because of the pandemic, it was over zoom and I didn’t really get much out of it). As I’m writing this, I’m spending one month in Spain, where one of the reasons is to put what I’ve studied into practice. I would lie if I said I can speak Spanish, but I’ve seen improvement. And I know it will take time, but I’m not in a hurry. I will just stay consistent.
As it comes to consistency, we all have days where we can’t put in the same effort. We might have other obligations, no time, no motivation, no energy, etc. But still, do something. We might feel like we don’t have the motivation or energy to work out, but at least go to the gym and do whatever you can. As soon as you skip it once, it’s easier to skip it the next time. And the more times you skip, the harder it will be to get back to it.
It will be easier to stay consistent when you write things down. When I set out to do a race, I write out every single workout until race day. It’s easy to do. In that moment, they are just numbers. But those numbers keep me commited and consistent. If there’s a day when I don’t really feel like doing a workout, I just look at the schedule and do that workout.
Guess what would happen on a day like that, if I hadn’t written out the workout in advance? If I had to figure out what type of workout, the length and intensity I needed to do, on that day when I really don’t feel like working out? Either I would skip the workout altogether, or would do a really short and ineffective one. I’ve done that, many times.
I know that endurance sports aren’t for everyone. It’s just an example of what it took for me to get into this mindset. However, there are a few reasons why I like it being some kind of sport or workout:
- We need to exercise. Increased daily energy as well as long-term health benefits.
- It adds another level of difficulty, as humans by default hate to exercise. In endurance sports, your body will hurt. You will want to quit. That makes it more difficult to keep going. That builds character.
- As mentioned, usually these are shorter “sprints”. Training for a marathon might take 6 months, while e.g. building your dream relationship will take a lifetime (yes, the same approach is needed for relatonships. The day you stop putting in the work, the relationship is dead). By completing these shorter sprints, you keep reminding to yourself that you can do anything you set out to do as long as you have a plan and stay consistent.
