What Marathon Training Taught Me About Money
I've been running competitively and helping people with their finances for years. The more time I spend doing both, the more I realize they run on the exact same principle, and it's not the one you'd expect.
Outside the office, I run competitively. I came to Green Bay and ran cross country in college, and now I run semi-professionally at the marathon distance. Today, I want to talk about what running has actually taught me about money.
It's Not About Talent, It's About Showing Up
When people find out I run marathons, they often assume it's about a big dramatic event on race day. It's really not. Race day is maybe two and a half hours. The actual work that goes into a marathon is thousands of hours of running before the event even starts.
Those thousands of miles get put in on ordinary mornings where nothing exciting happens. You just show up and put in the miles, whether you feel like it or not.
Money works the exact same way. Rarely do people build wealth off of one brilliant decision. Typically it's the boring stuff, repeated for years: the automatic contribution that happens whether the market's up or down, the budget you stick to even when it's not fun.
You Can't Skip the Base Building
In distance running, there's something called your base. This is the mileage you put in before you get into the fancy stuff. It's long, slow, and genuinely unglamorous. This mileage doesn't feel like progress, but skip it and you're setting yourself up for injury or burnout before the big day arrives.
I see the financial version of this constantly. People want to jump straight into the exciting stuff: picking individual stocks, chasing the next big investment idea, without ever really building the foundation. That foundation includes simple things like an emergency fund, consistent saving habits, and a plan you'll actually stick to. It's not exciting content, but it's truly what separates people who build wealth from those who don't.
Bad Days Don't Mean Your Plan Is Broken
Every runner has bad training days. Legs feel heavy, the pace feels impossible, nothing goes right. The temptation is to think something's fundamentally wrong. Usually, it's just a bad day, and the right move is to keep the routine and move on.
Markets have bad days, bad weeks, and sometimes bad years too. I talk to people who see a rough quarter and want to blow up their whole strategy. Almost always, the plan isn't broken; it's just a hard stretch. Reacting emotionally in that moment tends to do more damage than the downturn itself.
Know Your Own Pace
One thing that took me years to learn as a runner is to stop comparing myself to other people. Everyone has their own race strategy and training plan, and you can't compare yourself to them. I have friends who thrive on a completely different training approach than I do, and that's totally fine.
It's the same with financial plans. What works for your neighbor, your coworker, or some random person online may not be the right plan for you. Your timeline, your risk tolerance, and your goals are what should set your own pace.
The Bottom Line
Honestly, I think this is a big reason I got into this line of work: running and money deal with a lot of the same principles. Discipline over intensity, consistency over perfection, and trusting the process on the days it doesn't feel like it's working.