Foundation Building: 1,000 Miles Later

When is the last time you thought about your home’s foundation? Probably not recently, but if it disappeared, I guarantee you would notice. In the process of building a foundation, it’s hard to see how it is required to finish a project, but when the structure is built, it keeps everything standing.

This week I got to see real results from 6 months of foundation building. The result was officially hitting 1,000 miles of training mileage. It kind of happened without me even realizing it. One day I just refreshed my training dashboard, and it showed a 4-digit number. I didn’t get there in 6 days or 6 weeks; it took a consistent 6 months to hit that milestone. That’s the type of consistency that foundation building takes.

I’ve thought about my 100-mile race every single day since March 22nd. It’s hard not to remember what I’m working towards when my legs are sore, and I’m ravenously hungry at the end of the week from all the training. That top-of-mind thinking leads to planning my mornings around my runs, and planning is what made it possible for me to get all those miles in. Almost every weekday I lace my shoes while it’s still dark, and I check the miles off one by one.

Some of those runs are tough, and I’m definitely not thinking about foundation building during them. Last Saturday I went out for what turned into a 23-mile long run. It was a grind in the heat, and about two-thirds of the way through I wasn’t thinking about the Arkansas Traveler or what this run meant for that goal. I was just running. I just kept showing up for the next mile in front of me.

And when you do that for 6 months, the miles stack up quietly. The early mornings add up. The foundation gets laid, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

At times the work feels repetitive, but that’s what foundation laying takes. I’ve built the foundation, but the goal was never finishing the foundation; it just prepares me to accomplish the big goal - 100 miles.

No lasting endeavor was accomplished without a good foundation. Whether it’s a physical feat, building a company, inventing something new, leaving a legacy for your family, or anything meaningful, it takes resilience and consistency to build the foundation that makes these achievements possible. I always knew that, but there are some things that mean a little more when they have been battle-tested through the heat, discomfort, fatigue, and monotony of running 1,000 miles.

Whatever you’re running toward, run with purpose.

Leo