Development as a Marathon

Piece 1: The Rookie Race (Marine Corps Marathon, October 2001)

We’ve talked a lot about leadership lately, about culture, vision, and the hard work it

takes to build lasting programs. For the next few weeks, I want to take a different

direction.

Over the past twenty-four years, I’ve run seven marathons. Looking back, I learned

more about myself, both as a person and a leader, through training and racing than I

ever expected. Marathons often serve as a metaphor for anything in life that takes real

effort, long-term commitment, and sometimes feels out of reach. I think they’re a great

way to understand how we should approach our own growth.

So for the next several weeks, one race at a time, I want to walk through them. Less

about the running, more about what each one had to teach about how a person, a team,

or a program develops. We’ll start at the beginning.

How I ended up at the start line

I never set out to run a marathon. I had played sports my whole life and gotten by on the

fitness that comes with being on a team and showing up to PT every morning. That was

enough to feel in shape. It was not enough to do anything I had to actually train for.

Mark changed that. Mark was my boss on the brigade staff, a junior major getting

promoted while I was working for him, and he and our company executive officer, Chris,

had decided to compete in the Best Ranger Competition. They needed long runs to get

ready, and one day Mark asked me to come along.

I assumed they were going to crush me. They told me no, on long runs, we go long and

slow; you’ll be fine. The first one was seven miles. I had only run that far once before,

years earlier in high school. I felt great the whole way. That run was the first time I felt

the runner’s high, and I went on a few more long runs with them through the winter and

spring.

When I got selected for Amphibious Warfare School at Quantico, Mark told me, “If

you’re going to be in Quantico, you have to run the Marine Corps Marathon.” I thought

he was nuts. Yet, after we moved to Quantico and started the course, when the race was

about two months out, I signed up.

Every rookie mistake

Marathon training plans usually run four to six months. I had two. I pulled a plan off the

internet and started checking boxes.

Race day was in October 2001, about six weeks after September 11th. The Marine Corps

Marathon is one of the largest in the country, so there were tens of thousands of

runners, all filled with the same fervor and patriotism we all felt at the time. The start

line that year was on the hill leading up to the Iwo Jima Memorial, wall-to-wall with

people, the whole crowd chanting “USA, USA . . .” into the cool morning. I was about

two-thirds of the way up the hill when the race started.

Despite all the vibes, I made every mistake a first-time marathoner can make. I wore too

many layers, I had no real plan to fuel, and the biggest one: I lined up with my friend

Blake, and we ran the first miles way too fast. Dodging through the crowd, zigzagging,

burning through energy I was going to need later. By mile five, I told Blake to go ahead. I

already knew what I had bought myself.

The bill came due at mile eighteen.

The quiet stretch

Before the wall, though, the route took us past the Pentagon and the site where the plane had exploded just a few weeks before.

Everywhere else on that course, the underpasses, neighborhoods, the stretches by the

monuments, the crowds were chanting. USA, USA. The same fervor as the start line,

multiplied across twenty-six miles.

At the Pentagon site, the course went silent. Hats came off. People stopped to kneel.

People stopped to pray. I have never run through a quieter mile in my life.

The wall, and what came after it

From mile twenty to mile twenty-four, I was mostly walking. A little running mixed in,

but mostly walking. I had no time goal beyond “under four hours,” which was already

gone, and I just wanted to keep moving.

At mile twenty-four, I told myself: you’re not walking across the finish line of this race.

From there, I ran. Slow. But running.

Around the mile twenty-six marker, I could see the big red and yellow Marine Corps

arch ahead. I had assumed all along that the start and finish were in the same place. As I

got closer, I realized people were still running through the arch, not stopping at it. And

then it hit me: “Of course, the Marine Corps Marathon doesn’t finish flat.” The Marine

Corps Marathon finished by climbing the proverbial Mount Suribachi to the Iwo Jima

Memorial and rounding the monument. If the twenty-six don’t get ya, the .2 will.

I finished. I didn’t quit. I wasn’t prepared, and I got to the end of it anyway. I didn’t run

again for at least three months because I was too sore and too burned out. But

somewhere in the soreness, I already knew I could do better and decided I wanted to try.

What I keep coming back to

If development is a marathon, then somewhere in the early miles, every leader runs

their rookie race. The first head coaching job. The first program. The first role where the

thing is bigger than anything you’ve done before. You’re going to make rookie mistakes.There is no version of development where you don’t.

The mistakes are not the problem. The mistakes are the tuition.

The question is whether you actually take the lesson. I went out with Blake too fast that

day. Too many layers. No fueling plan. Two months of training instead of six. I paid for

every one of those choices between mile eighteen and mile twenty-four. And lying on the couch for the next three months, too sore to run, I was also reflecting and learning. I

knew, specifically, in detail, with no abstraction, what I would do differently next time.

Start slower. Train longer. Sort out the water and the fuel before I lined up.

Every race I ran after that one, every one of the next six, was built on lessons I paid for

at Marine Corps. None of the future finishes happen if I treat the first one as a failure to

be embarrassed about. They happen because I treated it as data.

Nobody avoids the rookie marathon. The leaders who develop into something durable

are the ones who, while they’re still sore from it, are already writing down what the next

race will need.

One question to sit with

What’s the rookie marathon you’ve already run, and what did it teach you that you’re

carrying into the next one?

Next week: The Fulda Marathon: Putting the rookie lessons to the test, and the value of

some experience.