Running makes every other bit of hard work seem easy 

How I found that out

He was seeking refuge from his war-torn country, and made Perth, Australia his new home. 2 years before that he was running coach for the Croatian Olympic team. When he spoke, we listened through his thick European accent. When he told us to do weird antelope strides, we did weird antelope strides while trying not to laugh, but deep down we knew the training was doing something good for us.

It was 1996, and it was my first summer I had ever joined an athletics club, after deciding to get “competitive” with running. The Croatian running coach was part of that club. I was motivated, intensely. I had come 2nd in the national Orienteering championships in 1994 as a junior, and the next year I had slid down the ranks, due to being unfit. I had lost my kid fitness! In 1996 I wanted it back.

My dad who had been running since the 70’s told me I had to “train”. What the heck was that?? Training sounded like bullshit. But after a week of following a running schedule that Dad had drafted up, I was hooked. Triathlons were just starting to get big, I was feasting on triathlon TV coverage and running magazines constantly! I had a former Olympic coach. I was learning about intervals. Times were awesome — 1920’s Wall St had nothing on me! Then I went above the training program and ran more than I should’ve. Bad idea.

The former Croatian-olympic-running-coach-driven-out-of-his-country-to-seek-peace was my first running coach, and the first person to teach me the value of interval training. He was the right mix of patient but stern, and incredibly knowledgable.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish his program. Because in a year of firsts, I also got my first running injury — ahh shin splints, how I yearn for thee. “Dad what do you mean you can get injured? I can finally be bothered enough to train and this happens!?”.

I could probably track my old coach down on the internets if I dug hard…or made a phonecall (what’s that?) to Karrinyup AC. That was the first time I learnt how to deal with an injury. Since then, learning how to “listen to my body” has been a constant evolution, to deal with the frequent amount of injuries I’ve had.

Having your ambitions constrained by your body is something that’s exclusive to sport. The biggest comparison of this constraint in the business world is a lack of funding, but that also exists in sport too.

Running can overwhelmingly give you the encouragement that you need to apply yourself in any other area of your life. What I mean by that is, once you’ve felt that constraint of your body destroying your ambitions, anything that doesn’t involve the body as a constraint seems…well, free.

Engineers, sales people, designers, coffee makers, whoever is building something, what are you waiting for? You don’t get an injury from typing code, or resizing font, or making coffee. You’re so lucky! There is nothing apart from a lack of ambition to hold back. And conquering a lack of ambition is easy. Try running sometime, it’ll teach you that.