2024: What Running Taught Me

Where to begin?

Well, I guess right at the beginning makes the most sense.

After finishing 2023 by ending my streak and beginning to get back to 100% after my kidney stone, I had my eyes set on a half marathon that I had looked at for several years – the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas 1/2 Marathon. Not only was it a race that I hadn’t done before, but it also gave me a target to aim my training towards. It had been almost 6 years since my PB in the half marathon, and after a couple of months of good training…the wait for a new PB would continue. I still ran a race that I was proud of, but I finished well short of my original goal time.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this would turn out to be the theme of my running year.

Good, sometimes great training.

But when the races came, the results weren’t necessarily indicative of the training and/or the expectations.

In another word – frustrating.

A similar pattern followed for the other goal races – a half marathon at the beginning of May and the Chicago Marathon in October. But before each of those goal races, I had a half marathon which was used as a training run in the middle of the training plan. While I don’t normally like running races without actually racing them, it was part of the plan that was given to me by my coach, which I was committed to, so I went along with it.

At the end of the past few years, I’ve always had something to fall back on. Even if I didn’t reach my time goals for races during the year, I still had my running streak. So, even if I came up short of my half or full marathon goals, I had still made it through the year by keeping my running streak intact.

This year, I didn’t have that.

When I started this year not running every day, as I had for each of the last 6 new years, all of my focus had shifted. From running every day to now solely focusing on quality training towards hopefully achieving my goals for the year.

I don’t need to go into detail about my races for the year. If you want a refresher, you can see them here and here.

This doesn’t mean that I think the whole year was a loss or a failure in terms of my running – I don’t.

Actually, I learned a good amount this year.

I learned that I like interval workouts and I will definitely include those more in my training in the future.

I learned that I don’t like running on a track. It’s too monotonous and not enjoyable.

I learned (again) that good training doesn’t always translate to good races.

I learned that maybe it’s time to take a break from running marathons.

I learned that I enjoy training more than the races themselves.

And I learned that I don’t like fully structured training.

Now, as many of you may know, I worked with a coach for the first time this year. With my running streak ending near the end of last year, and looking for some added motivation to kick start my training again, I decided to start working with a coach. And I was excited about trying something different and taking a different approach to my training.

But even though I enjoyed most of the training, it just never seemed to fully click at the end of the day.

I’m not saying any of this to discount the work that coaches do to help their runners, or the help that they provide. I just didn’t feel like the fully structured plan, even when I wasn’t in an official training block for a race, suited me.

Over the years, I seem to have been most successful when my running was dictated mostly by how I felt that day or during that time in my training. This put less pressure on what I felt I ‘needed’ to do that day.

I don’t have a problem with coaches or runners who use coaches, and I would even recommend giving it a shot if you are thinking about it. Actually, I know a few coaches, some of whom I consider good friends.

You can read into any of this however you want to and make your own determinations as to why I didn’t do as well as I hoped to in my goal races this year. I don’t think any of this is new information to anyone that I’ve talked to during the year about my running.

The biggest thing that I learned this year, though, was that I missed running every day.

At times, it actually felt like a part of me was missing. Because it kind of was!

I spent almost six full years running every day and during that time rarely gave much thought to a ‘good run’ or a ‘bad run’, but only to the idea that I was going to run the next day and, hopefully, it would be a good one. And on top of that, all of my best times and races came during that running streak.

I was also reminded that I like running with good friends from all over, which I did on a couple of occasions in England in the summer and in one of my half marathons in March. And I hope that is something that will continue into the new year.

All in all, I still ran over 250 days and over 1,700 miles during the year, but in this case it wasn’t really about the numbers.

It was about the feeling that I missed of running every day.

So, now it’s time to try to get that feeling back!

As you might know, I have already started a new running streak and have reached 80 days as we get to the end of this year.

Hopefully, I will have similar or even more success than I did on my first running streak.

In addition to the new running streak, there are a few things that I will be aiming for in the new year, most of which I will share in a post soon. I’ll still be racing – shorter distances up to a half marathon to start and then maybe something completely different.

If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance that you played a part in my running story in 2024, and for that, I can only say thanks and that I hope I played even a small part in yours also!

If you enjoyed this blog post or following along this year, please share it with any running friends or family that might be interested. And let me know in the comments if there are any other things you want me to cover in future blog posts!