You’ve heard the joke: How do you know if someone ran a marathon? They’ll tell you.

How do you know if they’re running another one? They’ll tell you again.

Hi, it’s me. Telling you I’m running another one. Again. Chicago in October. This time with my daughter, who will turn 21 a few days before we cross the finish line together. (Assuming we stay healthy and uninjured and all the other assumptions that aren’t so much assumptions as they are hopes and prayers and miles logged.)

This year, I’m committed to learning a new life lesson from each of the 16 weeks of training. We’re five weeks in, so here goes:

Don’t trust the first mile. If it’s easier than you expected, your body is fooling you. If it’s harder than you expected, your body is acclimating. Sometimes it takes a while for oxygen and blood and willpower to get to the right places.

The first mile, of course, is a metaphor. Could be the first day of a new job, or the first day without a job. Could be the first week of a breakup, or the first month of a marriage. The first month in a new city. The first night without your kid at home. The first holiday with your new in-laws. The first year of a loss you’re certain you’ll never recover from.

Pain is funny that way. So is comfort. They warn your to pay attention, but sometimes they also invite you to keep going and see what happens. Either way, you probably won’t know after the first mile. (Day, week, month, year.)

Crosstrain. Lots of people warned me in 2023 that running isn’t sufficient training for a marathon. You need to strength-train. You need to do yoga. You need to designate rest days. I listened? Kind of? But mostly I just ran a bunch. Seemed more efficient and, honestly, kind of logical. It was neither. I kept hurting my back.

It’s tempting, I think, to find something you want to achieve and then laser focus on it. To the detriment, often, of other important stuff around you. If you really want to excel, you need a support system. And support systems, whether they’re glutes or your people, don’t build and sustain themselves.

Surround yourself with brave people. My daughter and I joined a training group that meets every weekend — the same training group I joined in 2023. You spend hours upon hours with these folks and I noticed last time that they tended to be, almost to a person, fascinating and gritty and brave in ways that made me want to rise to their level. This year is no different.

One week our pacer was an acupuncturist who heals veterans and hikes for weeks on end with all of her belongings on her back. Last weekend we ran with a blind runner who’s already completed the Chicago marathon four times.

In 2023, I started the marathon course behind a man whose shirt said, “8 years ago my dad died of a brain tumor. Last year, my wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I fear no marathon.” I saved his photo on my phone. I look at it a lot. Sometimes my courage well runs a little dry. I like surrounding myself with people I can borrow from.

Think about the space you’re taking up. Few things teach you spatial awareness as quickly or harrowingly as sharing a narrow path with runners, bikers, walkers, strollers, dogs and the occasional abandoned electric scooter. Our pacers teach us careful path etiquette (two-by-two, tight to the right) and encourage us to be thoughtful stewards of our shared space.

It helps prevent collisions and mayhem, but it also trains you to think of yourself as one small part of a larger ecosystem. And not a part that deserves more space, more grace, more accommodating. Actually, more like a part that could and probably would be occupied by someone else if you weren’t there. So you start to feel grateful. And careful. And a little reverential, even. All the things you feel about a spot you’re not completely sure you deserve and definitely don’t want to lose.

Look for reasons to be grateful. Speaking of gratitude, I find it a really useful way to pass the time. Bored, exhausted, burned out by this current mile? (And remember: Mile is a metaphor.) Look around for a reason to feel grateful. Like the fact that your body is letting you do this particular thing. Or the fact that other people are doing it with you. Or the fact that volunteers are handing out water. Or the fact that someone invented sunscreen. Or the fact that you’re outside, and not on a treadmill because of wildfire smoke/torrential downpours/excessive heat. Or the fact that you’re alive.

Gratitude changes the subject. Your brain wants to complain some more, and gratitude doesn’t want to hear it. Gratitude has a better idea. A more interesting idea. An idea that will change how you experience this mile (day/week/month/year) and also this one wild and precious life (hat tip, Mary Oliver). For as long as you get to dwell and grow and learn and hurt and love and live in it.

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