running

1,000 days of running is when you run every day for 1,000 days. It is exactly what it says on the tin.

For me 1,000 days of running means this. I will

• Run every day
• at least 5km, or
• 30 minutes

There’s no limitation on how fast I have to run and this means that I can still go out in a wheelchair if I break my leg, have a fever or whatever. I don’t get days off, exemptions for work or family crises, or because I feel lazy. 1,000 days of running means 1,000 continuous days of running.

If you are curious as to how I am doing you can check my progress on Strava.

Where am I going to run?

Most days I plan to go trail running in the jungles of Kuala Lumpur and central malaysia. Snakes, leeches and mosquitoes are constant hazards. I tend to get more injuries from headbutting trees when I trip and skinning my shins on brambles though.

I don’t like running on roads so a typical day will be 45 minutes of narrow woodland paths with stupidly steep hills. At the weekends the hills are steeper and the distances longer.

Why am I doing this?

I was reading Grant Cardone’s book about over doing things and I realised I needed to shake things up a bit. My business wasn’t doing well at the time and I needed to take some extraordinary action.

As importantly I wasn’t running much. I love running in the jungle. The cool stillness as the brown path slips away by my feet is responsible for much of my best thinking time. As I slip into a state of flow many thoughts, ideas and experiences come together in new ways. Often these combinations are what transforms customer businesses.

To me it’s a bit of a black box. My mind is a total mystery. The process is however pretty well known. Give someone a lot of data, a level of mastery in his field and set them to some repetitive activity that requires the conscious brain to focus. The result is that the subconscious brain is able to work very effectively on the problems in front of it.

As I said. Good for my clients, my life and me.

I’d done a 30 days of running back in 2018. It had been an amazing experience as I hit the trails every day for a month. I’d suffered. For the first week I’d really enjoyed running fast. Then the impact of overtraining and the lack of rest days caught up with me. The last couple of weeks were a grind and a struggle.

So when I read Grant’s book more running was at the forefront of my mind

Do 30 days of running again?

Be there, done that.

100 Days of running?

Boring. It’s just more of the same. Nothing special

I should point out that I’ve done several Ironman races, more marathons than I can count, half a dozen trail marathons and several ultras. None of these were exciting enough to get me going with a good dose of vava voom!

1,000 days of running?

This was a stupidly large number. I rolled it around in my mind, sucking slowly at the idea. The more I played with it the more intense thew flavour became.

If I could do it it would solve many problems in my life.

I am notorious for my burst approach to work. Working at something continuously for 1,000 days could provide a safety rope that I could hang onto during the bursts and the downtimes that follow them.

It would also help me fight off the middle aged spread and the slow flabification of my muscles.

Can I do it?

I have no idea. It scares me. It scares me a lot that I am telling people about it. Almost certainly there will be excruciatingly embarrassing moments if I fail. I made it past Day 2 so they won’t be THAT embarrassing

I don’t really care what others think, though the bragging rights will be awesome. I care because I have committed to an outrageous goal. A lot of my life has been spent committing to outrageous goals. Too many of them I haven’t managed to achieve to the level that I want to .

I care because I value running over almost everything else in my life. If I can’t do what I love most, out of my own free will, how then do I value my life?

I said to someone on LinkedIn that “I see it as a form of salvation”.

In some was it is. Each day as I run I use the pain and effort as a tool to burn away the stress and sorrow of every day life. For a while I recover the simplicity and joy of my childhood again. The burdens of the world are taken away

For me it’s a hugely important psychic and emotional challenge. My body, mind and soul will transform as I run. I wonder who I will become (is it a physical challenge? I’m not sure)

Do You have any Advice?

Do you have any advice? How would you approach 1,000 days of running? What do you think will be the biggest challenges? How should I solve them?

• Entrepreneurship is Like Running through the Jungle
• Why don’t Endurance Athletes get Tired?
• Exploring the Malaysian Jungle
• Leaving it All Behind: Living in the Jungle with Nothing
• Startups and Finding Decent Problems to Solve