People train hard for marathons because of public commitment and deadlines, not because they've built lasting habits. Once the race ends and external pressure vanishes, they stop running. The motivation was never internal.
You've probably seen this before, and maybe you've even lived it yourself. Someone signs up for a marathon. Suddenly they're training like a mad person, training like never before. Sometimes actually they go from completely sedentary to running most days, often for a period of months, and they totally pull it off. They finish the marathon, which by the way is an epic achievement. But then what happens? Usually they stop. Training tends to fall off a cliff and the motivation just seems to vanish. Now, why is that? I think that they were being pulled forward by external accountability. The fear of failing publicly, the fixed deadline, the pressure, and often the charity donations. But underneath all of that, they didn't build the internal capability to train consistently without those crutches. And that's why as soon as the external accountability disappeared, so did the ability to put in that kind of training weeks they had previously been doing.
