40 Things About Running That I Wish I Knew When I Started (Part 3)

The last 10 things plus three bonus ones

WHAT IF THE BEST WAY TO PLAN YOUR FUTURE IS BY EXAMINING WHAT YOU HATED IN THE PAST?

If you’d rather watch or listen to this on your next run or workout, you can go here.

2024 is ending, and 2025 is about to start. I don’t care for New Year's resolutions, so in the past, I would fear and use stoicism to guide me into the following calendar year. Now, I do something more manageable and arguably more violent — I conduct “retrospective lookbacks.” This is where I audit my calendar for the previous year and note all meetings, appointments, and general things I did. The goal is to identify what I disliked/drained me and what I enjoyed/gave me energy.

Flipping through my calendar like this isn’t just some self-help burning sage and rubbing crystals stuff — it’s a cheat code. Every annoying meeting and every moment that actually felt good? They’re all receipts for how to do less of what sucked and more of what works.

I started this list “40 Things About Running…” list two years ago and thought it was a great idea to list 40 items. Surely, it wouldn’t take that long. I then began to write the first draft and quickly realized I was in over my head. I thought breaking it up into three parts released a month apart would be more than manageable. Negative. Here we are two years later, and I’m finally running down the home straight about the cross the finish line…

Which also makes me want to probably never do this again. 🫠

With that said, here are the last ten things (numbers 30 through 40) plus four bonus ones because I’m now actually almost 43 years old, and it took that long. You’re welcome. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Remember — This is meant to be a very casual letter to myself back when I started running over 25 years ago. Please excuse grammatical errors and general sloppy structure.

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For numbers 1-29, feel free to read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

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30. NEVER GOING HARDER THAN 87% (VOLUME OR INTENSITY) IS THE BEST THING I COULD HAVE DONE
    

    Why? Simple - to give yourself a bit of insurance. Life always be lifing, and if you’re constantly redlining day in and day out, life will throw something at you, and you won’t have anything extra to give. Also, none of us are pro. Going 87% for 30 years is way cooler than going 105% for 30 days, burning out, and never running again.

    
    I used to say never go harder than 90%, but then I saw Jakeb Ingebrigsten say 87%, and I stole it.

31. NEVER GO MORE THAN 98% IN A RACE
    

    I’m not a pro, and I’m sure you aren’t either. This is a contentious one, and I’m sure some, if not half, of the runners out there will disagree. For most races, I have a tiny bit left in the tank for “oh 💩 insurance.” My main objective is to do this (insert whatever this is) for as long as possible and as hard as possible throughout my life while maintaining balance.
    
    That means obeying one of the key 1% better laws: “Don’t get injured,” aka don’t die. If you race so hard that you burn yourself out and metaphorically “die,” you possibly will have messed up the next few weeks or months of your training and your living because you went too hard in your race.
    
    This is not a pass to slack, though, and to run your best time in a race, you will have needed to put together many variables, not just one.

32. RUNNING GIVES ME SO MANY STORIES AND METAPHORS TO USE IN WORK AND LIFE
    
    It’s like the infinite well of stories. I’m constantly bombarding people close to me and clients on business strategy calls with run sayings and isms like:
    
    — “It’s like a 5k race… can’t go out too fast ,or we’ll blow up.”
    — “It’s like aerobic base, takes a while but doesn’t go away,”
    — Or everyone’s fav, “[Insert thing] is like a marathon…”
    

33. IT TAKES YEARS TO BECOME A SMART RUNNER
    

    

    
    I have been saying for the last few years, “Since 2012, I’ve been researching, experimenting, and talking to experts,” when actually, it’s been since 1996 (I was 14 years old) that I first decided to start running three miles (five km) three times a week so I could be a better basketball player.
    
    That’s almost 30 years of experience, mainly with my fitness/health/body, but also researching and working with others. I think I finally “got it”. I might be able to last another 30-40 years if I play my cards right.

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34. GENETICS PLAY A BIG PART IN HOW FAST YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO WORK AT IT
    
    I won’t belabor the whole “is running a skill or is it effort” debate, as I already did that here. But… the more research and general observation I start to do around running faster, the more I’m convinced these elite runners are not trying any harder than the age-group back-of-the-pack runners.
    
    Their bodies can use oxygen at such an efficient rate, and they are such economical beasts that use 50% less energy per step than us mortal amateur runners. They do work hard, but they were given an advantage talent advantage. That’s the beauty of humans; we all have different talents, and that makes life fun.
    
    It’s ok to be better at something than most and suck at something else more than others. Now, do you double down on your strengths or work on your weaknesses? That’s the question that I still don’t have an answer for (possibly later).

35. PERFORMING BETTER AS I AGE IS ONE OF THE BEST REASONS TO KEEP RUNNING — IT’S A NEVER-ENDING GOAL
    

    The age-graded/adjusted times that Park Runs use are great. It’s an algorithm that lets you compare your now self to your past self or younger others. I wish Strava, Garmin, and all the other tech companies did that with your stats in real time. It would allow you to have some nice data and metrics on how you are performing as you age. Instead of just accepting the decline (and seeing it play out), you can go… “Oh wow, I’m still slightly faster than I was 20 years ago… age-graded”.
    
    But in my silly, ambitious ways, I’m trying to be just as fast as my 20-year-old self by sprinting 200 and 400m as fast as possible. I will report back on that because right now, my body is not happy with this new challenge.

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36. THE VIRTUOUS RUN CYCLE

    

    Staying an injury-free and healthy runner means you can run more, which means you can strength train, which makes you feel amazing, and then you get faster.
    
    You get it. Rinse and repeat.

37. THE VICIOUS RUN CYCLE

    

    Invert the virtuous cycle and get the vicious cycle: Get injured/sick/burned out, then you run less, and you don’t strength train, then you feel like sh*t, and you ultimately get unfit and get slower.
    
    You get it. Rinse and repeat.

38. OFF-SEASON IS MY FAV SEASON, BUT THEN I CRAVE THE REAL SEASON
    
    I love running, and here in Sydney, Australia, the run season is in the winter, which means dark, cold morning runs. Not my fav, but I embrace the suck. The off-season is summer, which is my favorite. I then get 6-8 weeks into the off-season while cross-training my heart away, and I slowly start to miss my structured run training from the winter. It happens every year like clockwork, and I embrace it. Everything is in a constant state of flux.

39. YOU SHOULD FIT YOUR RUNNING TO YOUR LIFE AND NOT YOUR LIFE TO YOUR RUNNING
    
    Not word salad, I promise.
    
    This is another contentious topic that everyone will have an opinion on. I think you live more life than you do run. Even if you wanted to “run all the time” and you were super fit and could handle high volume, you still could only average 1-2 hours most days.
    
    Compared to the other 13-14 productive lucid waking hours, that’s less than 13% of your whole day. Unless you’re a pro, running should always work around your life. Please beware of the obsessive-compulsive tendencies to overdo it on the run side of your life, like chasing perfectly round weekly volume numbers.
    

40. STAYING HEALTHY AND FIT IS LIKE YOU'RE KEEPING YOUR HAIR LOOKING NICE

    

    
    It’s continually growing, and it’s a never-ending grind to keep it neat, trimmed, and proper (if you value that sorta thing). And it’s constantly changing, esp as you age. As David Goggins said, “The work is never finished.” You might crush it one day, but the next day, you wake up, you check Strava, and if you don’t work out that day, your fitness will go down.

41. RUNNING A MARATHON IS COOL, BUT IT IS NOT HEALTHY
    
    I’m all about pissing off some runners - so this is yet another one of those, “hrmm, Daren, I don’t know about that.” But hear me out.
    
    You can be healthy and not fit, but you can’t be fit and not healthy and live a perfectly fine life. Albeit this nonfit but super healthy life is most likely boring without any running or stressors to stimulate you.
    
    If you are fit and not healthy, your body will break down slowly, and you will pay for it in the future.
    
    Example: Marathon training destroys me. I can’t show up properly for work and family life, and I’m constantly hungry and fatigued. I end up gaining weight and getting poor sleep, and minor aches and pains turn into bigger issues.

    
    The solution? Balance. I always strive for 50% healthy and 50% fit most of the year. I can sacrifice some health for more fitness, but it’s in small bursts around key races.

42. TIME ALWAYS PASSES
    
    Especially when you break it down into periods, blocks, weeks, etc. 2x 26 week, blocks will go by in a flash, just like life. If you cycle your training, it rarely gets old.

    Most runners I coach think 9-10 weeks is enough for a half marathon, and I’m always like, “I’d rather get 20-25 weeks”. They think I’m crazy, and then when we are 6 weeks out, and they aren’t hitting their time trial times, they go, “Oh yeah, Daren… I get why you wanted 20 weeks”.

43. CONSISTENCY ISN’T 7 OUT OF 10 EFFORT/PROGRESS FOR YEARS ON END; IT’S UP AND DOWN

    

    Gains happen when you zoom out and stop living interval to interval. If you can stick with running consistently and injury-free for one, five, or even ten years, you will turn into a beast of a runner. I’ve seen too many runners not really have a progressive and consistent process that’s leading to something, so they sit stagnate at the same times, never getting faster or better. And unfortunately, never reach their genetic potential.

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    For numbers 1-29, feel free to read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
    If you’d rather watch or listen to this on your next run or workout, you can go here.