“Just do it.” -Nike Slogan

Two questions I get asked often are: How do you get and stay motivated? How do you find time to do everything you do?

Marathon training is a perfect case study when it comes to motivation and time management! I spent over 75 hours of training for this marathon, while I was helping lead a youth ministry and plant a church, played hockey, got engaged, and worked a full-time job.

To make this happen took a lot of motivation and time management. Motivation and time management are two critical ingredients to success, not only in marathon training, but in life.I thought I’d share what I learned about both throughout my time training:

Motivation – They key to getting and staying motivated is vision. If I wouldn’t have had a vision of crossing the finish line this weekend 6 months ago, I would have quit, but every day I work up, I would remind myself that in 6 months I’d be running the marathon and that I had to train if I wanted to achieve my goal.

Vision will get a keep you motivated over the long haul. However, action will get you and keep you motivated in the short-term. A lot of days, I don’t want to wake up and go outside in the cold and in the dark and run for an hour. The only thing that gets me motivated on those mornings is action. Lacing up my shoes, putting in my earphones, turning on my Garmin watch, pushing play on my iPhone, and start running. Once I start running, the motivation comes almost instantly.

Whatever your goal is, most likely the best thing you can do to get and stay motivated on a daily basis is to, as Nike says, “Just do it.”

Time Management – How do you make time to train in the midst of a crazy schedule?

You have to schedule it! I try to schedule everything I do, including sleep. Most of my workouts and runs occur every day between 6 a.m. – 7:30 a.m. It’s an appointment on my calendar. More often than not, if I don’t schedule it, it doesn’t happen.

Whether your building a marriage, trying to grow personally, build a career, grow spiritually, lose weight, make money, etc., you will always need to be motivated and you’ll always need to manage your time wisely.

What keeps you motivated? How do you manage your time?

Thoughts?

“We know that Sunday is just a victory lap, because we run.”

Lesson #2: Value the Process over the Event

This lesson proves true in every area of life. In 20 weeks of training for the marathon I:

Ran for over 75 hours

Ran over 500 miles

Burned over 75,000 calories

That is no including the cross training I did. Now think about that, 75 hours of running and over 500 miles logged all for one event, a 26.2 mile run, that will take me no longer than 4 hours. That is a lot of work for a four-hour event. Does that sound insane for you? If so, then why do so many people do it?

Because there is no experience like crossing the finish line after everything you’ve put into this event. The event always makes the process worth it, but the event can’t happen without the process.

Joe Frazier said, “All the training you’ve done on all of those early mornings, shows up in the ring the night the lights go on.”

Training for a marathon helps you to appreciate the process of doing anything great. It helps you appreciate the process of building a great reputation, a great marriage, a great career, a great family, putting on a great event, making a huge impact . . .you name it.

Everyone wants to do something great, have a great marriage, have a great family, etc., but few people want to go through the process required to get there.

If we’re ever going to do anything significant in life, we are going to need to learn value the process more than we value the event.

Training for a marathon has taught me this time and time again. Whether it’s running a marathon or putting on a great event, you have to learn to enjoy the journey and love the process!

Thoughts?

“The marathon is a charismatic event. It has everything. It has drama. It has competition. It has camaraderie. It has heroism. Every jogger can’t dream of being an Olympic champion, but he can dream of finishing a marathon.” -Fred Lebow

On Sunday, I will be running the Philadelphia Marathon. It will be my 4th marathon. If you would like to follow my progress during the marathon, you can track me here. This will be my first marathon where I have a goal other than just finishing the marathon. My goal is to run it in under 4 hours.

Because of that, I did a lot of things differently than I have in training for my other marathons. I learned a lot of lessons. I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you on what I learned about training for a marathon:

• Training Alone vs. Training with a Group – This was the first marathon I have trained for by myself. Training by yourself requires a lot of self-discipline, you don’t have anyone pushing you, you need to be highly motivated and able to push yourself. Training with a group was a lot more fun and I made a lot more memories from when I trained with people than I made training by myself. The only downside to training with people is if they do not have the same goal as you. If I had my choice, I would choose to run with a group, but I would make sure the group had very similar goals to what I had so we can really push each other.

• To Get Faster You have to Train Faster – I really pushed myself to run faster than I have run before. In other marathons I have run, I ran to finish. This time, I meant business! I recognized that the only way I’ll get better and faster, is to train that way.

• Nutrition Matters . . . A lot! – In the previous 3 marathons I ran, I would often say, “I ran 12-20 miles today . . .  I can eat whatever I want.” And I did! I never lost any weight for the first 3 marathons, I lost a lot of weight this time around and it is because I changed the way I ate. Nutrition matters for performance, endurance, and ultimately your level of physical fitness.
  

• Cross Training – In my previous 3 marathons, all I did was run 3 days a week. This time I crossed trained with P90X and played hockey as well. I focused a lot of stretching and flexibility as well. I noticed a huge difference in the way my body performed as a result of doing weight training on top of just running.

• Do Your Research for a Training Plan – Read a lot of books and articles on training plans. Ask experienced marathon runners what they have done. There are a lot of training plans out there, it is important that you choose the right one for you. I’m already thinking ahead to my 5th marathon . . . if I had to do it again, I’d pick a different plan and seek out a marathon coach to help me.

• Get a Garmin Watch – I’ll be posting about my watch in this series of posts, but the previous 3 marathons I used my iPhone to track my runs. Too often, with the iPhone, I ran out of batteries and would lose signal in some places. With the Garmin watch, I never ran out of batteries and I could run anywhere I wanted! I loved it!

• Running and Personal Growth – One of my favorite things about running is the ability to listen to sermons while I run! I logged over 70 hours in training for this marathon, a lot of that time I spent listening to things that would help me grow personally! If you’re a runner, use your time running wisely! 

These are just some of the things I’ve learned while training for this marathon. What are some things you have learned about running a marathon?