A runner reflects on finishing a marathon two days earlier, connecting the experience to habit formation and long-term goals. He cites the 10% savings rule from The Richest Man in Babylon as an analogy for consistent effort, and contrasts short-term impulses with human planning. Grant shares race disappointments and rookie mistakes.
Chapters
This is what it looks like when you ran a marathon 2 days ago in a different time zone and you stayed up too late last night. I don't want to run this morning, but I got to because I cannot get off track. I have a toenail fatality from the race. It is a glorious morning. I mean, it is really great outside. It's starting to get cloudy though. I'm sure we're going to have some rain today. You know, and I was thinking this morning as I was running about how you have to be able to at least believe there's a finish line before you can ever run a race. I mean, Grant and I just finished her— Grant's first marathon, my seventh. And there was a time where we were just lucky to do a mile, and then, you know, we couldn't even begin to comprehend the distance of 26 miles plus. We couldn't comprehend that, and so we didn't register for a marathon at the beginning. We We really felt like we were going out of our way when we went and registered for 5Ks. And now, you know, we've done that because— and we did it when we finished the half marathon, then we said, okay, I believe, you know, with a little work and with a little effort, we're gonna be able to finish a marathon. And that's the way things work. You shouldn't set goals that you can't see. I mean, they should be As Dennis Waitley used to say, just out of sight, but not just out of reach, but not out of sight. And so I was listening to The Richest Man in Babylon this morning, and this reminded me of another thing, because I've listened to this audiobook hundreds of times probably, and the basics are very simple. The rules never change. Actually, the rules change, the laws don't change. I think it's okay to break a rule or two, but you don't want to break any laws because laws are, you you know, they're there in stone, they don't change. And so one of the things it says is you ought to save 10% of everything you earn. That's one of the quickest ways to build wealth. And I know that, and I've done it a lot of times, but I've never followed through. And it's kind of like the, the training for a marathon. We, for 5 years, had, you know, done some of the things, but we didn't do it consistently. We didn't build it into a habit. It wasn't something that we just did without thinking about it. And that's really where you have to become if you want to accomplish big things. You have to change your habits in a direction to where they'll deliver what you're looking for. And they have to become habits. They just can't be something you say, okay, I'm thinking about this today. You don't think about being on a diet every single day, or pretty soon you're off the diet because it's, it's, it's painful to you. And it's just those thoughts have really kind of run through my brain today. Then another thought that came into my mind as I was running and listening. The men, women, men, women, man, whatever you want to call it. I don't want to offend anybody for God's sake. But you know, we have a couple of distinct advantages over other animals, but in the end we're animals too. And so we ought to take a look at animals and see how they behave if we want to know how our natural state to behave would be. And so you take a look at animals and virtually every single animal has a tendency to satisfy its need, its immediate need, and then rest. And so if we're like that, then if you satisfy an immediate need, you're probably going to find yourself resting. And that is detrimental to your success because your immediate need is only temporary. You have to have those long-term needs satisfied as well. And I think this is why we struggle so much when we try to help people, is that we satisfy their immediate need, and they— because they can't see the future, because they have been in such a desperate situation, they can't see the possibility of being out of that desperate situation. So we haven't shown them the way. All we've done is satisfy their immediate need. That's where we're falling short. And helping people that really do need help. Back on track with routine. Just can't tell you how important routine has been to me and just having a system in place where I just go and do what I'm supposed to do and then bit by bit I get better and better. Bit by bit I get stronger and stronger. Bit by bit I get closer to the goals that I'm setting. I'm gonna use routine in the other aspects of my life. I'm gonna start getting better at that. I've really seen the difference here with working out and with the marathon and actually getting to that place. I'm still kind of in awe of the fact that we ran that marathon. It was such a difficult day. And just, just really in awe with the fact that all it took was just putting in place a plan, a goal, a routine, and following it, and we were able to get anywhere we wanted to go. And really kind of impresses me. Alright, so now you've had 2 days for it to sink in that you're a marathoner, that you're a finisher.
Yeah.
So you've got to have a different perspective than you had, like, the first day when you finished, you were, you're actually, I think you're kind of disappointed and upset because the race was more, it was different than you expected it. Then the second day you were kind of in euphoria.
Yeah.
Then, and that's kind of the way it works. So today, now you've got perspective and What's your overall thought?
My overall thought is, is I love it. I want to do it again. Um, it was hard and it was mostly mental, but, uh, I went out too fast. I knew that for a fact. I made a lot of rookie mistakes. Um, I was, I was, I was kind of counting, counting on the fact that there would be Gatorade and there wasn't a lot of it. There wasn't a lot of Gatorade, so that kind of mentally disappointed me. And then at mile 20 where they had it go out and then come in, well mile 18 to about mile 22 was an out-and-back, and that just kind of just—
very disappointing.
Disappointing. But other than that, I went, got to the hotel, and then just kind of just crashed. And I just—
it's amazing.
I love it.
I feel like a different person. Question for you before I run in here: have M&M's ever tasted so good?
We had M&M's on the course and they were so awesome. I loved it.
Our business calls for a lot of driving, and so we see a lot of folks, but I got to tell you, I just don't understand. It is amazing to me how many people tailgate now, and it's not, I mean, it's not even just a little bit, it's a lot. I'm on a road here that's 45 miles an hour, 2-lane road, and I would say the average distance between cars is less than a car length. They're just zipping along at 45, 50 miles an hour right behind each other, right on people's rear ends. I don't understand what happened to, you know, just being courteous. It's tough to deal with. We have ourselves a major league rainstorm here, a little lightning going on. It's, uh, it's refreshing. It's got the air smelling clean and just like washing everything outside. It's really fun. Can't stay out here too long though, the lightning will get me, not to mention the thunder. Now the rain's really coming down hard, coming down sideways. Feel good about today. I got back on track, I got back with my routine, I got the thunderstorm going. Just about everything you could want. Just a good day to wrap up and start anew. Looking forward to the Atlanta Marathon in a couple of weeks. And I got my run in this morning, got back on routine food-wise, and just settling into a nice couple of weeks where I know that we're gonna do great things. Looking forward to every bit of it. I better not say that, that's probably wrong.
