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It's not a sprint

You’ve surely heard at least once in your life somebody saying “Calm down: it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon”.


People use this phrase to try and slow things down, but it misses the point.


The first misconception is that a marathon is something you do slowly. A marathon is fast; it’s just as fast as possible for that athlete in that moment.

Most people couldn’t hold an elite marathoner’s pace for even 100 meters. It’s a marathon, but it’s not slow.


It’s easy to make a point that running a marathon is tough, not just for the distance but for the speed you try to keep.


What’s maybe harder to see is that a marathon is much easier than many life challenges.


You can simply prepare for a marathon. You get to the starting line with months or years of preparation. You tried progressively longer and tougher sessions, simulating the marathon effort. That’s a privilege. Many hurdles you’ll face in life will just appear in front of you while you were thinking of something else.


A marathon has a fixed length and a fixed course that’s known in advance. Life challenges are typically faced only once, making you very unprepared.


You can run the same marathon many years in a row, each time learning something more about that specific event. In life, it’s never clear when a challenge will end. Or if it will end.


Nobody tries to make you fail at completing a marathon, apart, I guess, very rare exceptions. That’s not the case for many life endeavours.


You can quit a marathon. Nobody will blame you for it. There’s basically no risk that somebody will be harmed if you fail.


If you try to run in the wrong direction, somebody will likely tell you and help you get back on track. In life, you’d be lucky if somebody even notices. And the ones who notice may just stay quiet.


And finally the only way a marathon can disappoint you is if you have unrealistic expectations. People can disappoint you even if the expectations are modest.


So maybe next time somebody will tell you “Calm down: it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon” you’ll want to answer “You wish”.


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