You only need small and simple changes to have big results.
Hamilton marathon
As I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, I found myself transformed in my bed into a marathoner.
The journey from zero to one, while assaultive on my body and mind, had opened a door of belief within me. I saw myself now in a new light. The memories of aches and pains faded into the rear-view mirror, and I now looked forward to the future with a little more optimism.
Thought I had not forgotten the challenge I had set myself. This was the Hundred City Run, after all. I was under no illusion that if I was to get through 99 more of these then something had to change.
Luckily, I already had a tool to help me; a simple acronym that I had held close to my heart since I was at school.
"KISS"
Have you ever had those moments where everything just felt so complicated? There’s always something you’re missing, something you’re not doing, a gap in your knowledge holding you back? The black hole of the internet claims it holds all answers, yet stepping into it spaghettis your mind and body much like the astronomical ones would far, far away.
Weeks before my final high school exams, I woke at 3am in a sweat thinking of chemistry. Covalent bonds and chemical equations swirled around my brain like an ABBA music video, forming a messy kaleidoscope of complicated nonsense. The volume of study that I still had left to cover in the ever-shrinking time to the my assessments haunted me with an unreasonable guilt for sleeping instead of studying.
In an attempt to alleviate my anxiety, I crawled out of bed and read a chapter from my textbook in a groggy stupor. I retained nothing and the next day was made even harder from my resulting exhaustion. The anxiety persisted. There was too mush to learn in too little time. I was doomed. But I couldn't keep waking in the night like this. I needed a way to get through it all, especially as the demands of chemistry were matched by the needs of my other subjects. Eventually, in my battle against my curriculum I turned to my parents, hoping they had the magic wand to fix it all.
"Keep it simple, Stupid."
I gaped. My parents had just called me stupid. I supposed I deserved it.
But a glint in their eyes and a knowing smile between them suggested there was more to these words than it seemed. Indeed there was. In reality, they did not think I was stupid... but that I had to become stupid. I had to think of the simple stuff, pushing Agnetha and Anni-Frid aside and just focus on the words of the song. For my chemistry, that meant forgetting the need to learn everything and just focussing my attention on the basics. Understand the small, simple foundations. It was impossible to learn everything perfectly, so I had to keep it simple and be stupid.
I tried it. As I returned to study each day, I reluctantly told myself not to try learn it all. Instead I focussed on the basics of each chapter, limiting myself to getting those right and setting aside the more complexity. Bit-by-bit my confidence increased. The knowledge built, slowly and steadily, by the daily impact of smaller but more focussed changes. When I finally approached my exams I truly saw that the time I had seen as my enemy had truly become my ally.
I passed, and the rest, they say, is history.
Keeping It Simple for a Marathon
Now here I was, with another long journey ahead, the weight of the challenge closing in around me. So, casting back to my days with chemistry, I thought of KISS and picked a few very simple changes for improvement before the second run. Keeping it small and simple, I broke it down to four areas:
Running
Continue running a few times per week (no changes here), but next time I will stop about 3 days out to give some time to let the legs rest, recover, and repair before tackling the full distance.
Strength
Attend the gym at least three-times per week. Keep it simple, stupid, and let the gym tell me what exercises to do.
Stretching
Try it every day. Keep it simple, stupid, and find a basic video online. Just copy what they are doing.
Nutrition
Less chocolate. Less fast food. More fruits and vegetables. Make a morning smoothie with healthy stuff in it.
I applied these small changes consistently for about three weeks, tracking as much as I could on a daily basis. Then, barely a month since my first marathon, I was at Toronto’s Union Station with a train ticket, dressed like a dork in my running gear, ready to give it all a go again in Hamilton.
The Marathon
Hamilton sits just an eighty-minute train ride from Toronto. As the next closest single-municipal city, it offered itself to me as the best location for a second marathon attempt and a second chapter of the Hundred City Run.
I had always wished to visit, but bad excuses had kept me away. Hamilton was one of Canada’s industrial centres for iron and steel, so I was met with a skyline of tall exhaust vents and grey-box buildings. The nerves butterflied in my stomach for the whole ride to West Harbour station. It was all new territory. Before I had any chance to process it all, though, the train was quickly pulling into the station and in minutes found myself staring down the main road ahead.
I remembered the first time I tried this. It had been a painful experience. I had no clue if any of the changes I implemented would have any impact at all. If not, I had another six hours of misery ahead.
I took a breath.
Keep it simple, stupid...
There was nothing left to do now but run.
For the first 10 kilometres there was little to look at other than large roads, factories, cooling towers and trucks. I kept my head down and focused on the pace until I had something less polluting to look at. I felt okay, but I knew what this section felt like felt like. This was the easy bit. If there were to be problems, they would all start later.
By the 11th kilometre, I found the path down onto the Hamilton-Burlington lakeshore walk. Here, the concrete was replaced by softer, nicer gravel. The cool air hit me off Lake Ontario and I felt it refreshing me on the noticeably hotter day. This was a chance to take stock of how I was feeling. A month ago, this was when I had started arguing with my body, bantering with my knees and hip, and now…
…I felt okay.
Keep it simple, stupid...
I allowed a small smile to appear on my face. So far, so good. I pushed forward down towards Burlington in the distance with vigour, eyeing my turnaround point. As I approached the next city on the water, I observed the lives of other around me. The morning families were out in full force now, pushing prams and guiding children along the water and playgrounds. I was suddenly having to dodge toddlers as they attempted to flee their parents on a beautiful spring weekend.
At the 28-kilometre mark I approached the moment of truth. Deep in this third quarter of the run, I had been humbled on my first attempt in Toronto and had to walk all the way home at this point. I saw the kilometres tick over on my watch, and watched them tick over one-by-one.
28…
29…
30…
Still I jogged, albeit slowly. I felt optimistic, almost happy, smiling that I was making far more progress than I had before...
Until I didn't, and the misery all started again.
In marathons, runners talk about “the Wall”. In an instant your energy sinks, your muscles seize, and everything dramatically gets ten times more difficult. It is the point where your body runs out of glycogen and has nothing left for fuel. I had heard stories of this beast. Like the Loch Ness Monster, the Sasquatch and France, it barely seemed like a real thing... but here it was. I hit the Wall. I was a helpless antelope to the predator that had stalked me from the long grass. My pace dropped to a shuffle. My feet dragged with each step. I laboured on, slowly, slowly, slowly, counting down each kilometre to the end.
37…
38…
39…
The last few moments were slow and painful, yet still I refused to walk. As I crossed the 42.2-kilometre mark I felt all the emotions of the first run, sweating, sore and sorry.
But when I looked down at my watch I gasped at the result. In spite of my trembling legs, I sat down in front of a yellow lighthouse to rest and stared out across the lake with a smile.
Reflection
In the Hundred City Run, the finish times of each run mean little. This journey is one of slow forward motion, taking steps towards a target in the distance no matter the time it takes. Yet for this one instance the time is an important factor in the lesson I learned, so I'll reveal that this second marathon was completed in 4 hours and 15 minutes. Almost 2 hours quicker than the first.
It was frankly unbelievable. The small, simple changes had worked.
It did not take a professional training program to change. It did not require me to overhaul my life. There was no celebrity trainer. No long-winded subscription by a social media personality. Just KISS, and KISS alone.
So think about the small, simple change you might be able to make in your day. You don't need to change your life. Just start simple. Start small. Perhaps that means waking up a little earlier. Perhaps that means taking a small walk in the afternoon. Perhaps that’s setting aside time to write, or read, just a little each day. It’s okay if you miss a day here or there, as long as you just get back to it and try again. Whatever those changes are, keep it small, keep it fun…
…and keep it simple, stupid!
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