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Why You Should Run a Marathon At Least Once In Your Life.

Training for a full marathon is one of the most valuable experiences you can have. It’s not just about the physical activity but the invaluable lessons you’ll learn about yourself.

Marathon training is a unique learning experience. It’s about understanding that challenges will inevitably arise no matter how well-planned your training programme is, and how you overcome them matters.

You will pick up a few injuries and strains. You’ll have days where you’re exhausted and cannot do your training run. There will be days when you feel fantastic and push yourself harder than you planned to do.

Yet one of the most valuable lessons you will learn is that no matter how hard things become, you can overcome them and remain focused on completing the 26.2 miles.

You will learn to become mentally resilient, think through problems, and do the hard things when you are not in the mood.

You will also learn that to complete a marathon, you must focus on the fundamentals — being able to run for an extended period — and nothing else matters.

You can waste a lot of time trying to find the “perfect” running shoe (it doesn’t exist), the most comfortable clothing, and the proper diet and supplements. Yet, none of that will matter if you are not consistently doing the training runs.

This is like someone continuously searching for the best productivity tools, hoping they will one day find the “perfect” set of tools. No productivity tool will do the work for you — if one existed, you would no longer have a job anyway — only you can do that.

Projects are not completed because you have the best tools. Projects are completed because you do the work to complete them.

You must manage your time exceptionally well to train and complete a marathon. Given that doing the training runs is essential, allowing meetings to overrun or letting other people distract you and stop you from going out for your run is a no.

Your training runs become non-negotiable. If you have a wedding to attend on a Saturday afternoon, you’ll get up early on Saturday morning and get your run in. You won’t use the wedding as an excuse not to run.

Interestingly, as you progress through your training, you will begin to ensure you are getting the four essentials of a good quality of life: good food — none of the nutritiously poor, highly processed stuff — a good night’s sleep, exercise (of course) and a positive mindset.

The four things that drive productivity are the same: nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mindset. A lack of either of these will result in low performance each day.

Yet, possibly the most important lesson you will learn is the importance of having a goal and a purpose for achieving that goal. This gives you energy, focus, and motivation to keep going when things get tough. It teaches you to be clear about what you want to accomplish and realistic about when you will be able to accomplish it.

If you have not done any running for a few years, you are not going to be able to complete a marathon next week. Running a marathon requires at least six months, if not a year, to complete. It will involve running in the howling wind and rain, occasionally in the snow and perhaps in the sweltering heat.

Yet because you have a purpose and a deadline (the marathon date), you still go out for your run.

Running a marathon may not be for everyone. It may be something you legitimately cannot do because of a chronic or physical illness. Yet the lessons you can learn from doing something like running a marathon teach you things you will never get from a book or a course. You learn about yourself. You learn your strengths and weaknesses and, more importantly, how to overcome those weaknesses.

Humans are designed to be lazy. This comes from our early days on this earth when food was scarce, and we needed to conserve our energy for the opportunity to catch food. Yet today, food is not likely to be scarce for those of you reading this.

If you do not challenge yourself, the powerful seduction of the soft life will overcome you; setting yourself a challenge like running a marathon will keep you alert, healthy, positive, and strong.