Last weekend, I ran my second marathon in 2:53:38.

I was once again reminded that marathons are hard—both physically and mentally. During the suffering of miles 20-26 and the journey home after the race, I found myself reflecting on the key lessons from the experience.

Interestingly, none of them have anything to do with running.

Here are 8 powerful lessons for life from running a marathon...

The goals are the checkpoint, not the destination.

While it was a 4-minute improvement against my first marathon time of 2:57:31, on paper, it was a failure:

I had been shooting for a 2:49 time and came up a few minutes short.

Despite that miss, I'm absolutely thrilled with the result, because this was just a checkpoint, not the destination.

It's easy to view every goal you set as a finish line, but that's missing the bigger picture. Life is a long, long game, and these goals are simply checkpoints along the way.

When you embrace that checkpoint mentality, missed goals can be a blessing, rather than a curse. The learnings and insights derived from a loss are far more robust than what we take from a win. They provide real-time course correction that may propel us forward faster than we ever imagined.

Sometimes missing a goal is the best thing that ever happened to you. Remember: It's just a checkpoint, not the destination.

Using the ABC Goals System is a cheat code for life.

The entire marathon experience was a real-time case study on the value of using my ​ABC Goal System​ in your life.

Prior to the race, I established three levels of goals:

• A Goal: 2:45
• B Goal: 2:49
• C Goal: New Personal Best (Sub-2:57:31)

I started the race following an ambitious plan from my coach to shoot for that A Goal of 2:45. About 3-4 miles in, my instinct told me it wasn’t going to happen: The sharp headwind took some bite out of my legs and my heart rate was just too high at those 6:15-6:20 paces. It didn’t feel easy enough to hold for 26.2 miles. I stuck to that plan for the first 15 miles, but felt the fatigue setting in.

At that point, based on my level of fatigue, I adjusted my mindset to focus on pacing in the 6:20s to hold the line to hit my B Goal of 2:49.

Unfortunately, during mile 20, I felt my right hamstring cramp, quickly followed by my left. In that moment, I had a decision to make: I could continue to push for the B Goal but risk a debilitating cramp that would have ended the race and my chances at a new personal best, or I could pull back, run with conservative, short strides, and stay in the game.

I chose to keep myself in the game, and coasted through a rather pleasant final four miles to run a 4-minute personal best. While it wasn't my A Goal or my B Goal, I’m really proud of how the race played out—mostly with how I managed the chaos and kept myself in the game.

Sometimes the greatest successes are achieved by just staying in the game long enough!

Happiness is not a byproduct of ease.

You’ve been lied to: Happiness is not a byproduct of ease. Happiness is a byproduct of struggle.

Happiness is a byproduct of delayed gratification—of doing hard things, of embracing the suck, and coming out on the other side.

• The hard conversations you don’t avoid
• The focus work blocks you lock in for
• The workouts you attack with energy
• The healthy meals you consume
• The stillness you create

The happiest people I know are those who engage in voluntary struggle—who test their limits, who fall in love with the hard.

When you embrace delayed gratification, when you embrace hard things, you’ll find your happiness on the journey.

Life is about laying one brick at a time.

In 2002, Charlie Rose interviewed Will Smith on his television show.

During the interview, Smith tells a story from his childhood about his father asking him and his little brother to rebuild a 16x30 wall on the front of his shop.

The task was understandably daunting for the two boys, but a year and a half of daily work later, they completed the wall. Reflecting on the experience, Will Smith offered a piece of timeless wisdom:

"You don't try to build a wall...You don’t start by saying, I’m going to build the biggest, baddest wall that’s ever been built. You say, I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid...you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall."

No matter how big the task or project may seem at the start, you just have to lay one brick. The wall may be daunting, but today's brick is all that matters.

In 2024, I logged 1,531 miles across 218 runs. In the buildup block for the marathon, I ran 163 miles in June, 263 miles in July, and 296 miles in August. None of those were glamorous or spectacular, they were just bricks. Necessary bricks that needed to be stacked.

Extraordinary results are simply the macro result of tens, hundreds, or thousands of tiny daily actions. Small things become big things.

The goal of preparation is to eliminate as many unknowns as possible.

At the start of any endeavor—personal or professional—there is a long list of unknowns.

In the case of a race, you don't know:

• What the conditions will be
• What the course is like
• What your pace will feel like
• How you will react to challenges that hit
• How you will adjust when circumstances change
• How you will manage fatigue or pain

The list goes on and on...

The goal for your training and preparation is to cross off as many unknowns as possible. Make the unknowns, known.

Prepare in different conditions, examine the course, push yourself to experience those challenges in practice, adjust in real time like you would during a race.

View your training through this lens and when the lights turn on, you'll be ready for everything.

You never really know what you're capable of until the lights come on.

You can prepare in the dark for months on end, but every now and then, you need to step into the arena, under the lights, and see what you can really do.

After the race, I looked at my stats from the run and was astounded at what I saw:

My average heart rate from the nearly three hour effort was 180 beats per minute. That was at least 10 beats per minute higher than what I expected I could reasonably hold for a long effort.

I had no idea I was capable of that kind of push—I only found out because I placed myself in a situation where it was necessary.

My advice to anyone out there who has thought about doing something hard: Book the race, sign up for some event, commit to the thing that scares you. Once you've committed to a date, your motivation for the preparation will follow.

You'll be blown away by what you're capable of when the lights come on.

If your goals don't scare the sh*t out of you, you probably aren't thinking big enough.

My goals for this race were ambitious, I wanted to go sub-2:50 in my second marathon ever, and thought I had a decent chance at 2:45.

Leading up to the race, I felt a lot of nerves and fear about it. I knew how hard it was going to be during the run, how tired I would feel, how much strain I would have to endure.

But I was reminded of a lesson my parents told me when I was a kid:

If your dreams don't scare the sh*t out of you, you probably aren't thinking big enough. So, think big. When you think big and lose, you often grow more than when you think small and win.

No matter what happens, run YOUR RACE.

In every "race" of life, it's tempting to look around and compare yourself to the other racers.

It's easy to measure yourself according to what they're doing, to start running against others, to start changing your strategy in real time.

But in life and running, the only race that matters is your race. Your only competitor is yourself.

Always, always run your race.

As I approached the finish line, I saw my parents waiting for me. My mom was in tears, my dad was smiling proudly, camera in hand.

I was reminded of the most important lesson of all:

It's not about the journey or the destination, it's about the people. When you surround yourself with people you love, the journeys become more beautiful and the destinations become more brilliant.

Nothing bad has ever come from surrounding yourself with love.

Find your tribe. Cherish them.