This week was a great week of training for me. I learned a couple things. That it’s great to have a training plan but you also need to be able to be flexible with your plan. Plans are a guideline, not a rigid thing that you have to follow no matter what. I look at my weekly training as like having some cards that I have to draw during the week. If I’m feeling up to it, I can trade that card in to do something else if it fits into my schedule.

Why would I want to waste a day where I feel great taking the day off and why would I want to not take a day off if I’m feeling run down?

Sometimes it’s good to push through and do the workout no matter what but allowing some flexibility allows me to taper to do what works for me. Our bodies are not cookie cutter and everyone reacts differently to different stimuli. Figuring out what works for you is probably the most essential piece of training.

Monday, June 30th

Plan

• Morning run (easy) about 4 miles

• Lunch WOD: Lift pull workout (back, shoulders, biceps)

Actual

• 3.7 mile easy run.

• Lunch WOD: Chest and shoulder workout.

Tuesday, July 1st

Plan

• Run commute (6-11 miles). This is dependent on whether I take public transit up until my final stop before the office.

• Lunch WOD: Core work + easy run or row machine.

Actual

• Run commute of 7.5 miles + a lunch run of 3.5 miles.

Wednesday, July 2nd

Plan

• AM Workout: 800M repeats at the park (about 3 miles total)

• Lunch WOD: Leg Day

Actual

• AM Workout: 5.5 mile tempo run.

• Lunch WOD: Back, shoulders and biceps

Thursday, July 3rd

Plan

• AM Workout: Morning run (easy) about 4 miles

• Lunch WOD: Core work + easy run or row machine

Actual

• 1 mile run + quick upper body workout

Friday, July 4th

Plan

• Morning run then follow up with a push workout day (chest, shoulders, triceps).

Actual

• 10.5 mile run

Saturday, July 5th

Plan

• AM Long Run (10+ miles)

Actual

• 3.8 mile interval run on the treadmill

Sunday, July 6th

Plan

• Easy, easy day or fill in the gaps if you missed a workout this week.

Actual

• 5.2 mile run

Weekly mileage target: 35 miles.

Weekly mileage actual: 42 miles.

Week of July 7th Plan

Monday, July 7th

• Easy zone 2 run for about an hour.

• Leg workout at lunch

Tuesday, July 8th

• Run commute to work (11 miles)

• Corework at lunch

Wednesday, July 9th

• AM Track workout (400m repeats x10)

• Lunch WOD- chest, triceps, shoulders

Thursday, July 10th

I’m traveling this day at 8:25am so I’m going to have to wake up around 4:30am to get my AM run in.

• AM run: 6 miles

Friday, July 11th

• AM run 5 miles

Saturday, July 12th

• AM tempo run or how I’m feeling. I’ll be still out of town but I’ll see how I feel and fit it in.

Sunday, July 13th

• Treadmill run at hotel for 45 minutes + lift with whatever equipment is available.

Weekly mileage target: 41 miles

This week is going to be a challenge to keep momentum and keep the training plan in place but it’s essential for me to keep the ball rolling. When something is important to you, you’ll find time to make it happen.

My day job is in supply chain planning. I think after the years of working my day job, it has led me to this inclination of wanting to have an elaborate plan for everything.

I think this year, I realized that this may not always be the optimal way.

Three months ago, I created this spreadsheet that had my training plan mapped out for the entire year. It has charts and would measure my actual training against my plan so I can see if I am veering off.

I learned along the way, the more exact of a plan you have, the more fragile it tends to be.

Since then, I am done making my plans too specific. My future plans are going to be action based instead.

This doesn’t mean that there will not be a training plan. There will be an overarching idea of the direction I want to go but the idea is to take everything one day at a time.

This is my training plan this week. As I write this, the morning run on Monday morning has been completed, now onto the lunch WOD.

Monday

• Morning run (easy) about 4 miles

• Lunch WOD: Lift pull workout (back, shoulders, biceps)

Tuesday

• Run commute (6-11 miles). This is dependent on whether I take public transit up until my final stop before the office.

• Lunch WOD: Core work + easy run or row machine.

Wednesday

• AM Workout: 800M repeats at the park (about 3 miles total)

• Lunch WOD: Leg Day

Thursday

• AM Workout: Morning run (easy) about 4 miles

• Lunch WOD: Core work + easy run or row machine

Friday

• Morning run then follow up with a push workout day (chest, shoulders, triceps).

Saturday

• AM Long Run (10+ miles)

Sunday

• Easy, easy day or fill in the gaps if you missed a workout this week.

Weekly mileage target: 35 miles.

For those of you wondering, I am training for a race called The Rut in September. I have run distances longer than this one before but I know this race is going to be particularly hard with the altitude and the climbing. Wish me luck and if you’re training for any races, I’d love to hear about them below.

In the last couple of months, I committed to begin training for some of the world’s hardest endurance events like GoRuck Selection and running 100-mile ultra marathons.

It sounds intense but it doesn’t have to be as much as you think it will be. Two principles are important:

• Patience

• Discipline

Patience and discipline often go together. If you’re impatient, you will likely become undisciplined in whatever you do. Impatience will cause you to want to take shortcuts and expedite the process.

The truth is, there’s no way to expedite the process. Nothing teaches you about that more than doing endurance events.

The entire purpose of an endurance event is to endure. It’s not only from the event itself but it’s from the training for the event.

If you expedite the process and endure nothing throughout training, what makes you think that you’re going to succeed in the event?

You’re not going to succeed. At least not in the way that you wanted.

Patience And Discipline Make Succeeding Better

There’s not much fulfillment in succeeding in anything that comes easy to you. You’re playing a video game on easy mode. It’s fun for a moment but after a while, you need to up the level of difficulty.

This is how I feel about wanting to do races like the Western States 100 and a grueling event like GoRuck Selection.

It takes long term planning and discipline to succeed. I cannot allow myself to slack for a month or even a couple weeks. A day off is probably okay but taking a day off that’s not intentional can slip into taking a week off.

There will be periods where training will be lighter but I have to make sure that I maintain my level of fitness.

I will have to run a 100 mile ultra marathon in 2025 to qualify for the 2026 Western States and even then, I might not get in since it’s a lottery race. Every year, I will have to run a 100 mile qualifier to have the chance to get my lottery ticket.

It seems like madness to keep doing this for 5-7 years without gaining entry from the lottery but that happens to some people. They’re relentless in their discipline to make sure that they will have a shot at doing the race of their dreams.

And that’s what it’s all about, being relentless in chasing your dreams.

I am proud of my strong week of training. Upon reflection, I noticed my mindset trying to rebound back to old habits that I’m going to talk about. This is what my week of training last week looked like.

From Sunday to Saturday (Sept 1st-7th)

Sunday: 10.1-mile run

Monday: 1 mile repeats for 5 miles. The total run ended up being 6 miles.

Tuesday: Rest day

Wednesday: 2.24 miles on treadmill

Thursday: Run commute to work, lifted weights on lunch, and ran again after work. This totaled up to about 9 miles on the day running.

Friday: Ran 5.86 miles

Saturday: Ran 6.07 miles

My total mileage for the week was around 40 miles. This is my best weekly mileage total in a long time.

Do Not Let Perfection Ruin What Is Good

Even though I had an accomplished week, there’s a part of me that thinks that I could do things more efficiently and better. That may be true but the inclination is to go back to the drawing board and waste time planning instead of doing and creating.

There’s a certain point where it doesn’t matter what kind of plan you have on paper. What does matter is that you are executing and adjusting along the way.

There’s a part of me that wants to start adding in some new crazy workouts that will for sure make me better but that’s not what this is about.

What this is about is being consistent. It’s maintenance. I’m building a base so when I get into the thick of the training plan, I’ll know what it takes.

Discipline is more than pushing forward. Discipline can also be about holding yourself back.

Takeaways from This Week

There were some days when I missed out on doing my A.M. workout but made up for it in the evening. However, the evening workouts felt like their time got cut shorter than I would have liked.

If I had woken up in the morning, I may have found a little more balance in my day. Balance isn’t all about balancing relaxing with going. Balance to me is about finding the space for the things you love. I love my training but not at the expense of spending time with my dog and fiance. I love writing but not at the expense of training.

I never need to quote on quote, “relax” because the things I love to do are relaxing to me. Doing nothing in the traditional sense of relaxing makes me a little anxious. It makes me feel like I am missing a piece of my life when I do it.

Preparing For The Future

Fall is upon us and I know the weather is going to get louser. Oddly enough, I’m looking forward to it. I love training on cold rainy days because I know it’s not something that everyone will do.

Anyone who reads this, I hope you come out with these takeaways:

• Never let perfection compromise what is good.

• Finding balance may not be what you think it is. Finding balance is about finding the space for the things you love.

Are you looking for ways to be more relentless? Are you looking to unleash your life in ways you never thought possible? At Running Relentless all premium subscribers get free training plans, meal plans, and all the latest premium content.

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I’ve run 16 miles total in the last two days. Earlier this summer, my average week was probably 16 miles of running. I’m planning to easily clear 40 miles this week running and get some extra miles in rucking and strength training.

Nick Bare, the founder of the company Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) made it their slogan to “Go One More.”

But what does it mean to “Go One More.”

These were some of my thoughts on what that means and it’s not as simple as it sounds.

There’s some steps that are required before you can go one more and those steps are often mental and physical.

When running, you can’t go one more until you’ve reached a point where everything in your mind is telling you to quit.

I’ll leave it at this:

• Where are there chances for you to go one more? Where are you leaving something on the table? If you are, is it intentional?

Well as it turns out, training for something hard, is hard. Should seem like common sense but often I don’t think we think this way all the time.

I wrote an article about procrastination today and it helped me reflect on my own shortcomings. Procrastination often comes from fear. It comes from a place where we want to protect the ego. If we procrastinate something, we can rationalize to ourselves that we didn’t give that something our all. Making us feel better about our shortcomings.

It’s in the moments where we give it our all where we find out who we are. Finding out who we are is scary. Who wants to do that? Why would we want to find out if we have what it takes to achieve a goal?

Because if it’s important enough to you, you’ll be left with two choices:

1. You find out if you have what it takes.

2. You’ll die never knowing if you could have done it.

Choice one leaves you with a possibility and choice two leaves you with no possibility. This isn’t a trolly problem you’re dealing with. This is a problem that is clear and yet, we often make the emotional decision that is wrong.

I haven’t been that bad about procrastination as of late. In fact, the last few weeks, I’ve done all my lifting workouts and ran a good amount of miles. However, the friction is still there. It will always be there. You have to learn to love the friction.

Learning to love the friction is a challenge because it’s hard to convince our subconscious mind to love it.

The other day, I was doing a tough shoulder workout. My shoulders hurt and I kept pushing more. Shoulder strength is important in a GoRuck event as you’ll have to hold your ruck above your head. As I was doing my last final reps, I kept reaching deeper for more and then I started smiling and laughing.

Laughing? Smiling? I was laughing because I genuinely was learning to love the friction in that moment. Getting better at that time was a joy. The times I hate working out are the workouts that feel unproductive and monotonous.

You know, those workouts where someone just goes through the motions? Going through the motions is better than no motions at all but it doesn’t mean that I don’t hate doing it.

My Biggest Take Away From This Week:

Learning to love the friction is something that I’m going to lean into this week. While we may not physically be able to give 100% every time, we can give 100% of our focus each time. What does 100% of focus mean? I’m not entirely sure. Some days, it might feeling like going through the motions but you are giving it your best. Other days, it might be the best day ever.

Often, I don’t think we even know what 100% effort means. If I looked at myself 10 years ago, what I thought was effort isn’t even hard anymore. Effort can be subjective to the individual and if you’re trying to motivate someone else to work like you are, try to remember that.

I had a post last month about committing to consistency. Consistency is hard. It’s not glamourous. It doesn’t have the same dopamine kick after doing double the workout that you planned that day.

Consistency is consistent.

There’s no magic formula to consistency. The foundation of consistency is knowing how to prioritize. Often in life, we might set a goal to do something but we don’t want to do it unless if it takes away from something else.

Here’s the problem. No one has spare time hanging around. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day as everyone else.

You have to take a hard look at what you spend your time on to maintain consistency.

I slept in this morning and missed out on some time to write. Did I decide that I wasn’t going to write altogether today? Of course I didn’t. I had some time on my lunch break at work today to write so I decided to utilize that time block instead. If I hadn’t prepared myself yesterday and didn’t meal prep my lunch yesterday, I may not have had the time to write.

In Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile, he writes about how some things gain strength through disorder. We might all think that we are strong when times are tough but the truth is, most of us are not. If one thing changes in our day, it can create a domino effect that ruins our entire day.

Often this is an all-or-nothing mindset. An all-or-nothing mindset is the antithesis of being antifragile. It’s the thing that will cause us to crumble when things do not go our way.

An all-or-nothing mindset is when we don’t have a full hour to workout so we don’t do it at all, even though we had 20 minutes.

An all-or-nothing mindset is when we decide to forget eating healthy today because we ate a cookie earlier.

An all-or-nothing mindset is when we decide not to write a post because one little piece of it doesn’t seem right to us, so we decide to put the piece on hold.

Not only is an all-or-nothing mindset the antithesis of being antifragile, it’s an enemy of consistency.

When we are trying to be consistency at something, tell ourselves that we have to do everything or otherwise it was for nothing. The truth is, the only way to be consistent is to embrace the disorder of the things around you. Things are not always going to go right but it’s your job to make sure that things go as right as they can.

I’m training for GoRuck Selection, one of the hardest endurance events in the world. Doing this event is the definition of things not going right. The first thing the Cadre’s (who run the event) do to you is try to give you a shakedown. They’ll make you dump everything out of your bag and put it back in as quickly as possible. There’s no time to find that perfect place you can put that one little thing, you have to get it in the bag as soon as possible.

Never let perfection get in the way of goal. Perfection comes when you take a lot of imperfect steps towards it and you stumble upon it by accident.

Having a good week doesn’t mean to let your foot off the gas. I had a good week of training this week but sometimes that’s the place where we can get complacent. I was able to run 30 miles and get 3 days of rucking in. I carried an 60 pound sandbag for a mile with 20 lbs in my ruck. It’s strange how carrying something tires you out in a different way than any other form of exercise. Even though my shoulders didn’t feel great afterwards, I learned that I need to get used to carrying things further.

There’s a few things that I need to begin to integrate into my training. One of those things is going to be to use all opportunities to strengthen my mind. For example, I’m used to running with music on and training with music on. Come event time, it’s not going to be an option. I need to begin training without any music on. About midway through this week, I began doing it and honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. The first 5 minutes of a run felt like that I needed to hear something but then I fell into the trance of the sounds around me.

Hearing the sound of my feet hitting the pavement, the weight shifting around in my pack and water sloshing around was annoying at first. Then I realized that it is something that is normal. What isn’t normal is to hear music 80% of your day. Humans evolved creating music but we didn’t evolve to hear music all the time in every waking hour like we do now. Sometimes the quiet and monotonous sounds is what we need. Sometimes we need to find time to find space in our own head.

Drowning out the space in our head with a bombardment of sounds probably isn’t good for us. Sometimes my best thoughts in writing have come from when I don’t listen to music when I run. My mind will wonder into my surroundings. Even if they are similar surroundings that I have seen day in and day out. One thing that I have learned is that no surrounding is ever the same but only similar. The world is constantly changing. Even what appears to be the mundane can be slightly different on a new day.

Finding The Little Things

I decided to start taking the stairs whenever the opportunity came about. When I took a step back, I realized that if I took the stairs just half of the time, I would climb between 60-100 flights of stairs a day. I live on the 10^th floor of my building and it only takes me about 2 minutes to climb them. Sometimes, I wait 2 minutes for the elevator so there’s no lost time here.

Another piece of the puzzle that I’m fully taking on is run commuting to work. While I started doing this sometimes this spring, I was only doing it part way. I would normally take the CTA to the Metra Station downtown, ride that to the stop that was closest to my office and run from there. It’s about a 2 mile run or 4 miles for the whole day. It’s not too bad and saves me the headache from sitting in traffic for 3 hours a day.

However, what if I started running to the Metra Station from home and back? That would add another 3.5 miles or 7 miles for the whole day. Timing wise, it only adds about 20 minutes of commuting to my day.

On Thursday this week, I decided to do it and my body felt great. I didn’t feel over exhausted from the run. The goal wasn’t to run a PR pace the entire way home. The goal was to run at around a zone two, light zone three pace the entire way.

Commit To Consistency

Consistency can be hard. Even if you’ve done something for months, it feels like it can be easy to fall back into old habits. That’s happened to me. I don’t have a normal day in and day out routine and schedule. I work from home on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesday and Thursday, I run commute into my office. It’s not something that I do every day.

Even after committing to the same routine for a month and executing it, it feels like I could fall back into my old habits after slacking for one day. Similar to how one drink can cause an addict to derail, one day feels like it can throw everything off.

The key is not to beat yourself up to hard when you do have a bad day. It’s going to happen. There’s going to be days off where you’re not going to be able to keep your routine going to a perfect level. The trick is to make sure you do your best with it. Sometimes, it may seem like it’s not worth it to workout for 20 minutes when it’s the only time that you have for the entire day to work out. It may not be worth it on a physiological level. Honestly, it probably doesn’t move the needle that much. However, it does tell your mind that you are committed to the goal. It tells you that you will extract every little thing that you can to achieve your goal. That’s where the magic happens.

Commit to doing the little things right. If you do that right, then the big things will come on their own.

This week of training is going to be this:

Monday: Short 3 mile run

Tuesday: Run commute (11 miles total)- Lift weights on lunch break

Wednesday: Speed work – Core work on lunch break

Thursday: Run commute (11 miles total)- Lift weights on lunch break

Friday: Ruck workout – Ruck for about 1 hour, do sandbag workout

Saturday: Long run (2 hours)

Sunday: Long ruck (lighter weight, active recovery ruck)

This process of training has been about improving upon what my weaknesses are and learning along the way. I have an idea of where I want my training plan to go but the training plan isn’t permanently tied to me. If there are adjustments I need to make along the way, I will make them.

Here’s to week 2 of training. The goal this week is to remain consistent.

If you’re interested in following me train for one of the hardest endurance events on the planet. I will keep consistently posting here.

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This has been brewing in my mind since Memorial Day weekend where I shadowed a GoRuck Heavy event for about 6 hours.

The event gave me some nostalgia. It reminded me of all the trials and tribulations that I had doing these events five years ago. I had completed all of GoRucks events and got the honorable HCL patch that I wear on my GR1 rucksack to this day.

It still didn’t feel like enough. I had one more event to complete which was different from all the others, GoRuck Selection.

GoRuck Selection is described as this on GoRucks website:

Selection is a 48+ hour individual event and dubbed the toughest endurance event in the world. Our Cadre will enforce a standard adopted from our roots in Special Forces Assessment and Selection. Those participants who do not meet the standard at any point will be performance dropped at our discretion.

I was on a trip to Arizona this weekend and had a chance to watch something. I didn’t feel like watching a trendy documentary or anything like that. I wanted to watch a documentary about something that I could relate to. I watched The Standard which is a documentary in 2020 that GoRuck released about the event of Selection.

One of the questions that stuck in my head was about 24+ hours into the event, the Cadre’s were asking the lone man left, “why are you doing this?”

He gave some standard answer like, “to push myself and see what I’m made of.”

That’s an answer that I would give but it’s a surface level answer. It has no substance. There’s not much more for me to prove.

Am I the toughest person alive? Definitely not.

Am I tougher than vast majority of people walking around today? That’s for sure but that also depends on your definition of toughness.

To me, doing an event like this isn’t to prove myself.

What is my why? Why do I want to do this?

Is My Why About Proving Toughness?

I used to say this to people that I do ultra endurance events and GoRuck events because I want to see what I’m made of. That answer felt phony to me. It was an answer for people who do not understand what it’s like to do something they thought was impossible for themselves.

I’m not a mutant. I’m not a genetic freak who can run endless miles without tiring. I’m a normal guy and have always been. My entire life has been being a normal guy who levels himself up to see what his potential is.

Work ethic will not get you whatever you want but it will show you what you can get.

If you never work hard, you will never know where your potential could be.

If I didn’t wake up at 5:00am to lift weights in the morning from 8^th grade to my senior year of high school, there’s a chance I would not have started or been captain of the football team. Even if I did, I would have done my team a disservice for not giving my best.

I wake up every morning today, not regretting a thing that I did for that team.

Is It The Ego?

It’s not for the ego or bragging rights. I’m the type who downplays a lot of races that I’ve completed instead of brag about them. (Maybe I should brag about them more, that’s how you get more social clicks.)

If I took the ego out of the equation and did these events in a vacuum where no one would know about them except for me, I would still do it.

It’s Not The Event It’s The Journey

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. - Some stupid cliche.

Cliche’s can have some truth to them. The journey is often as important as the destination, if not more.

My first 50 mile ultra marathon, I ran it with minimal training. I signed up for the race 6 months in advance and I fell into a run of not training. I don’t think I ran more than 10 miles a week the entire time leading up to the event.

I finished the 50 mile ultra after moving at a crawling pace the last 15 miles but I finished. I was proud of finishing but I was not proud of the way I trained for the event.

I could have done better. A lot better.

Training for intense endurance events does more to you than get you in shape. It progressively sharpens you. It makes you more disciplined in other aspects of your life.

I know on days and weeks that I’m keeping up with my training, everything else in life seems to be under control. Maintaining the primary pillars in your life is important and letting one of them falter can cause the other ones to falter.

Why Am I Training For GoRuck Selection

Since I was a kid, I took things on that were tough because I thought it would make me stronger. I occasionally slept on a cot in my unfinished basement, I would sleep on the floor, I woke up early and did all sort of things like that.

Doing something hard isn’t about being hard. It’s about what you become in the process. It teaches me to become a person that can empathize with others more, it gives me confidence that I can handle whatever life throws at me and it opens my mind to what the possibilities are for myself.

A lot of us have no idea what our possibilities are because we are living at a fraction of our potential.

I will be told that I need to relax and enjoy things more often. I do have moments where I sit back and enjoy them. However, I cannot fully enjoy them until I know that I did my best.

If you’ve been consistent about something in your life before, you’ll know what I’m writing about. Think about a time you went on vacation but you’ve been working towards something that is important to you. Can you really be on vacation if you have that thought lingering in your mind that you left something on the table for months leading up to it? Did you earn your vacation?

It’s a similar principle. Sometimes you need to feel like you’ve earned something to achieve fulfillment in all other moments of your life.

I know training and giving this event a try will be something that will stick with me forever. That is why I am going to document all my trials and tribulations along the way. Cutting videos has become a small hobby of mine and I think it would be fun to see the journey along the way. Maybe it can be something for my future children to see or impact one person to make a better change in their life.

On my 18^th birthday, my father passed away after an 11 month battle with cancer. He never showed signs of letting up on his fight with it. Even if it did mentally, he never showed it externally.

Seeing what he went through for 11 months certainly changed me. The least I can do is voluntarily take on some adversity and suffer for a couple days.

Maybe that is my why?

Even if it’s not, I know one thing. If I try my best, one day, I’ll look back and not regret anything about the person I became.