Self-leadership. Insights from my first ultra-marathon training.

I started my training seven months ago. Now, I have exactly two weeks to go.

As you know me, I am a lifelong learner and l really enjoy personal development and never put aside my physical and spiritual development because I believe those are part of the growth.

One evening, when my friend asked me if I am keen to do the Margaret River Ultra Marathon, I said, “YES.”

I didn’t know this one small yes will change how I think about business and leadership and also change the way I look at our performance.

Ok, let’s start from the beginning. I never run more than 14 km. I never even ran a marathon or half marathon. Last year, my partner asked me if I wanted to try the HBF marathon and I said NO. A big and clear NO. I honestly couldn’t even imagine I could ever do it.

I didn’t like running that much and didn’t feel fit enough.

A year later, after focusing on nutrition and eating most of the time very healthy, I also stopped doing heavyweights and added a little bit more running to my routine. I felt much better. I don’t want to say weights are bad, I just really didn’t like the feeling after weight training and felt clumsier and heavier. 

I also had to pivot and my business had to drastically change during the pandemic. After  10 months of struggling with restructuring, delivery, services and offer changes; my business started to exponentially grow. I was happy. It looked like all areas of my life were getting better and I felt so pumped that I said “YES” to the ultra marathon.

Key Learning: 

What is the most important part of your success is your mindset. When you have a positive mindset or we can say above the line thinking you are more than likely to be open to new opportunities. You are prepared to risk more, give more and take on new challenges, which are necessary behaviours in business. You trust yourself and therefore you trust others even more. Your self-esteem, self-control and confidence grow. Your willingness and resilience grow. Your fear decreases. You stop being focused on problems. You are more tuned into collaboration, solutions and opportunities.

I would like to share, without going too much into the story, a few key learnings from seven months of training. I found this learning as a confirmation of the success principles I teach. I was able to apply all of them to my training and planning.

1. Start with knowing your outcome. If you set up a clear goal, vision, standards and values around your goal you will know what structures and processes you need and how to achieve it. You will know what to do if your goal is clear, this is the #1 realisation. Therefore, in business or leadership, you must first understand what is the outcome you want. If it’s a great culture, how would you like to have it and what does that look like exactly? What behaviours, attitudes, values, and standards do you need to demonstrate and how do you want to feel in your work environment. What experience do you want to have?
2. Structure and process - understand what you need to consider to achieve your outcome. From the perspective of running, I had to consider a few categories. Mindset, nutrition, stretching, training plan, pain management, stress management, education, equipment, measuring and process. I learned how to stay hydrated during the long run, how to eat and what to eat while running. I had to figure out what to wear and trust me, every detail matters in this long-distance run, even socks are so so important because you are in constant pain while running for hours on hills or sand. In leadership or business, we need to consider a few categories as well. Start to think about categories, processes and structures you need to consider to achieve a great high-performance culture or great business results.
3. Have a plan. This is a really important part for me, probably the most important one. To wake up and know what training I have to follow and what food I need to eat today. This is actually really helpful not only for ultra marathons but also in the business itself. I feel like I am easily managing myself, not wasting time thinking about what I should do, or when and how I should do it. There is no time to procrastinate and there is no time to waste. It is all set, every day is very clear. I love to have a plan in business. Not only to have a clear goal but to have a clear implementation plan for each category. Have a clear benchmarked process for each category to be able to measure and evaluate.
4. Action and Self-awareness and/or sensory acuity. Understand where you are at; what works and what doesn't. What can be improved or what must be changed? Now is the time to implement the structure and processes but we still don’t know the result. Well, I ran with a lot of food and couldn't keep up. I tried carbs and salts in powder and that worked well for me. I tried to keep up with the running plan but last month I was tired and had to stop for a few days. I learned to listen to my body. Now I have recovered and can run again. Understanding how things should be done, when and with whom is really important for moving forward. To understand what works for you. Understand what it means when you are aligned with your values, passion and vision and you take action based on that.
5. Mindset and its influence on physiology or performance. This is a tricky one. Mindset is last in my article but it is the first in the hierarchy of importance. My mind tricked me so many times especially when you are running for hours and hours and it becomes really boring. I found, that when I was focusing on my pain, issues and struggles I couldn't run and I performed really poorly. Sometimes it went so bad that I couldn’t move my legs. It all starts in your mind. I changed my thoughts. I was thinking about winners and how they would train if they were with me right now. What they would say and how they would behave right now. They won't be whining like I did when I struggled. I changed my thoughts to my vision and saw myself on the stage winning the cup and my performance went up. I focused on my business mission and ideas. I focused on solutions and opportunities. Sometimes I wrote a book in my head while I was running long distances. Those thoughts about future success, ideas, opportunities and future wins inspired me so much that I was able to run and perform better.

Think about what is possible, not what is impossible.

Everything starts with a thought!

Alex