Why Am I Training for a Marathon?

I’m at a critical point as I transition from a weight loss to a fitness journey. Now is an easy time just to let go; It’s essential that I have ambitious goals to keep me charging forward.

A year and a half ago, I decided to change my life.

I accepted myself where I was at, all 316 pounds of me, and took responsibility for managing the feelings of shame that got me to that place.

Since that day, I’ve shown up for myself every day. I have set boundaries with my inner critic, toxic behaviors, and bad habits. I have met myself with love and a disciplined commitment to be the highest version of myself.

That commitment to myself paid off — for a long time, the weight flew off.

As 140 pounds melted away, the scale was an easy metric of success and an unconscious dopamine hit.

My weight loss was motivation in itself.

However, once my weight loss slowed and the scale stopped moving, I began to feel tension every time I weighed in. My daily weigh-in went from a source of motivation to a source of stress.

It was time for a new metric of success.

I love running. Over the summer of 2023, I had built a weekly habit of running three to five miles two to three times a week.

In September of 2023, I decided to enter the Jackson Hole Quarter Marathon. It went well, and I knew running races was my thing right away—I wanted to run a marathon.

Much like losing 140 pounds was a challenging feat, so would training for a marathon.

Losing 140 pounds required that I consistently show up for myself every day. The vision of the healthy version of me was but a pointer, the mountains in the distance. Falling in love with showing up for myself every day is what propelled my weight loss journey — not the goal of losing 100+ pounds.

Shortly after my first race — and in the wake of my now-ending weight loss journey — I signed up for my next race, the Boise Half Marathon. Training to run for 13.1 miles became my new compass. It required me to continue to show up for myself every day.

The day after completing the Boise Half in November 2023, I signed up for the Boise Marathon in May 2024.

What is motivating me to keep signing up for these races?

I realized I’m at a critical point in my life as I transition from a weight loss journey to a lifelong fitness journey.

Now that I have achieved my primary weight loss goal, it is an easy time just to let go, so now more than ever, it’s essential that I have significant and ambitious goals to keep me charging forward. Objectives that support cultivating the love of showing up for myself every day.

Training for a marathon is my new mountain in the distance. However, the marathon is just a pointer — it directs my daily actions. The why of my daily activities is the feeling I get each time I complete a run or workout.

When I run, I cultivate a feeling of love for myself, creating consistency.

The biggest thing I learned on my weight loss journey that I’m carrying forward into my fitness journey and training for a marathon is to:

Attach to the effort, not the results.

What causes most people to fail at achieving their goals and to quit doing what they know is good for them?

They have attached themselves to achieving the result.

After a few days, the feeling of motivation from setting the goal fades, and the result is nothing more than a mountain in the distance; the positive emotions of achieving the result are nowhere in sight.

OR

They achieve the result, and the good feelings from attaining the goal fade shortly afterward.

They aren’t feeling good anymore, so they stop doing the things they need to do (or did) to achieve the result.

The truth is that we set goals because we want to feel good.

The mistake most people make is that they delay letting themselves feel good until they achieve the results of their goal.

See my article on the Myth of Happiness for more about letting go of what you are clinging to as a dependency of your happiness.

The key to success is to feel good on the path to the result.

This is how you create consistency and achieve your goals.

The way to feel good on the path to the result is to attach yourself to the EFFORT of achieving the outcome.

How do you attach to the effort?

1. Make the effort the metric of success.

Step one is to stop worrying about the results and make showing up every day the metric of success. I’m not talking about making your performance in the daily actions the metric either (though they can be a metric, too) — Make showing up the metric.

Celebrate showing up. Post on social media, share with your friends or keep a tracker.

2. Make the feeling you get from the effort your why.

Think about the feeling you will get accomplishing your goal and then work to create that feeling while working towards your goal. This is how you find joy in the effort.

When showing up becomes the metric of success, and you find joy in the effort, the results become inevitable.

You don’t need to worry about the results because it’s all about the journey, and the results are just a moment on that journey.