Do Hard Things: Couch to 50K

"Got your bloodwork back. Numbers are not good. Something has got to change."

That was the call from my doctor in the spring of 2024. Not a diagnosis, not an emergency. Just a flat statement of fact from someone with no reason to soften it. I was over 200 pounds. I'd had a version of that conversation with myself plenty of times and always found a reason why later was better than now.

This time later wasn't an option I was willing to argue for.

I hung up and changed my diet that week. Running came a few weeks after that.

Two days ago I finished my first ultramarathon. 50 kilometres, six hours, on the trails outside Hamilton. Today I am an ultramarathon runner. Typing that sentence still feels strange, and I want to write down how I got here while it's still fresh, because the honest version has less to do with willpower than people assume.

Couch to Something

I didn't start with a training plan or a race in mind. I started with a free Couch to 5K program, run by a local running community called the Travelling Circus Running Group. The name undersells what it actually is. It's a loose, welcoming group of people who show up to run together and don't ask why you're new.

The early weeks were rough in a way that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't been there. I couldn't run more than a few hundred metres without stopping to catch my breath. Every session felt like proof that I didn't belong there yet. I did it anyway, on the theory that the only way through that feeling was to keep showing up until it stopped being true.

It stopped being true slowly. Not in one dramatic run, but somewhere in the accumulation of a lot of unremarkable ones. That's the part nobody tells you about hard things: the turn doesn't feel like a turn while it's happening. It just feels like doing the uncomfortable rep one more time, on a day when quitting would have been completely reasonable.

That pattern held for the diet, for the training, and for the client work I do for a living. The account nobody wants to own, the process that's clearly broken, the number on the scale that isn't moving fast enough. None of it turns around in one move. It turns around because you keep showing up to the unremarkable rep after the one that didn't work.

Nobody Runs Alone

What actually got me from Couch to 5K to an ultramarathon wasn't discipline alone. It was the people.

Running groups have a way of making an individual goal into a shared one without anyone announcing that's what's happening. You show up for your own reasons and end up carrying other people's goals alongside your own, and they end up carrying yours. Kim, who I see out running regularly, has spent this year pushing toward her first 100 kilometre finish. Watching someone chase a distance that far past your own comfort zone resets what you think is possible for yourself.

That's true in professional life too, and I don't think it's a coincidence. The best turnarounds I've been part of at work weren't solo efforts. They were built on a team that believed the outcome was possible before the person doing the hardest part of the work fully believed it themselves. A team supporting you is not a nice-to-have on the way to a hard goal. It's usually the actual mechanism.

The Last Two Loops

Saturday's race was Tally in the Valley, put on by Happy Trails Racing on trails in the Dundas Valley outside Hamilton. The format was a six hour timed race, with laps of about 7 kilometres each. My goal going in was straightforward: 50 kilometres, however long it took inside the six hour window.

The first five loops went about how I expected. Then the last two loops arrived, and they were a different kind of hard than anything in training. My legs were done making suggestions and had moved on to demands. That stretch is where an ultramarathon actually happens, well after the part that looks like running from the outside.

What carried me through wasn't a mental trick or a pacing strategy. It was the field. Every runner out there, mid-pack or chasing a personal best, six hour racer or someone four laps into a 24 hour effort, was cheering everyone else on. We all knew roughly what the person next to us was chasing, and none of it mattered when it came to the encouragement. We were all in it together regardless of individual goals.

I crossed the line at 5:41. Seven laps got me to 49 kilometres, so I added one more to round it out to an even 50. 12th overall, 7th of 31 men, 4th of 11 in my age group. Better than I expected walking in, and not close to the reason I did it.

Everybody Was Chasing Something

The board at the finish line sorted finishers by distance: Gong Show, 24 Hours, 100 Milers. Look at that board long enough and you stop thinking about your own 50K as the hard part of the day.

Rebecca and Bruno both ran 50 kilometres to mark their 50th year of life. Sonya spent the day as Rebecca's rock and, somewhere in the middle of supporting someone else's goal, became an ultramarathoner herself. Paola finished a full marathon distance. Kim closed out the day at 77 kilometres, further into her first 100K attempt than she's ever been. Coach Sheila and her friend Holly ran the best cheer and aid station support I've ever seen, and a group of fellow admins showed up to work the course because that's what the community does on race day.

Some of those people were chasing 50 kilometres. Some were chasing 100. A few, on the far end of that board, were chasing 100 miles, which is a distance I can respect from a safe distance for now. None of that changed how anyone showed up for anyone else. The distance you're chasing is personal. The people who show up for you generally aren't chasing the same thing you are, and they show up anyway.

Do Hard Things

Two years ago the hard thing was getting off the couch. Saturday the hard thing was the last two loops of a trail I'd already run five times. In between, the hard thing was usually just showing up to something uncomfortable on a day when not showing up would have been easy to justify. It's the same idea I explored in Type 2 Fun: the experiences worth having rarely feel good while they're happening, and that's exactly the point.

None of it happened without people. The doctor who said the number out loud instead of letting it slide. The multiple running groups I run with: The Travelling Circus, Lululeman Burlington Running Crew, The Burly Trail Runners, Waterdown Running Crew - none asked why I was new. My family, who put up with the early mornings and the gear drying throughout the house. The Travelling Circus crew who let me use their tent as a home base between loops on Saturday and who cheered for every single finisher on that board, not just the ones they came for.

If there's a lesson in this worth carrying past a race recap, it's that one. Whatever the hard thing is for you right now, at work or anywhere else, you probably don't need more willpower. You need a team that believes in the finish before you fully do, and the willingness to do the unremarkable rep again tomorrow.

Find your people. Start anyway. The rest tends to follow.