The 11 Laws of Running:

Running Isn’t Only About “Workouts”: It’s About Systems.

If you’ve ever felt like:

• you’re doing “everything right” but not improving

• your fitness comes and goes

• you keep hitting the same, damn wall

…it’s not because you’re not working hard enough.

It’s because you’re trying to solve a systems problem with isolated effort. Bear with me folks. This is going to be a deep one you’ll more than likely need to re-read. So bookmark this one. Or bookmark the bite-sized Instagram post if this one feels too overwhelming.

What I’ve learned over the decade + of running and racing is not created in just:

• one workout

• one week

• one training cycle

It’s a living, adapting system where everything connects like a quilt (fun fact: my senior project was to sew a quilt to which I QUICKLY learned sewing is not my dream job lol)
your training, your recovery, your stress, your patience.

Once you understand that…everything changes. Annnnnd if you really take your time to absorb this post I promise you these principles can be deeply transformation for your entire way of living.

Below you’ll find the 11 principles and 11 tools you can immediately use today.

So buckle up buttercup. Let’s dive in together.

1. Today’s Problems Come From Yesterday’s Solutions (ouch)

Your body is always playing catch-up.

That workout you forced while tired…
That skipped recovery day…
That mileage jump…

They don’t hit immediately.
They show up later.

Tool:
Start tracking patterns in 2–3 week blocks, not just daily emotions and reactions.

2. The Harder You Push, The More Your Body Pushes Back

There’s a tipping point where effort stops working.

More miles. More intensity. More pushing.
Eventually turns into:

• fatigue

• plateau

• resistance

Tool:
Ask: “What can I recover from?” not just “What can I complete?”

3. It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

Fitness has a delay.

You might feel:

• slower

• heavier

• off

right before a breakthrough (and damn if I haven’t found this to be so accurate in my faith journey recently!).

Most runners quit here.

Tool:
Hold steady when things feel flat. Don’t panic!! adjust.

4. The “Easy Way” Out Leads Back In

Skipping:

• strength

• mobility

• rest

feels harmless…until it isn’t. shortcuts rarely get you where you need to go in life. and if the event you do get there faster you also dig a deeper hole faster as well. congratulations.

It always circles back. (same with those “quick fix” debt solutions… meh. I have a story for this one I learned the hard way)

Tool:
Treat recovery as training. full stop. Recovery is not optional.

Talk to us and let us help you Reflect, rewire, rebuild.

5. The Cure Can Be Worse Than the Problem

Feeling slow? Add speed. (NO. Have your blood work checked out. Are you running low on iron? Nutrition? Have your “easy paces” been pushing too hard?)
Feeling tired? Push harder. (NO. take a damn day off. And this is your permission to call it your “damnit day”)

Runners spiral at the first sign of a perceived problem.

Hey, is it a problem or could it be an invitation to learn a bit more about your body and what it needs most?

Tool:
Fix root causes, not symptoms.

6. Faster Is Slower

The body builds endurance at sustainable levels.

Too much too soon = shutdown.

Tool:
Run easy enough to repeat it tomorrow.

7. Cause and Effect Are Not (always) Close Together

You cannot judge your fitness by today. For better or worse! You’re one off 10 miler at 6:50 pace does NOT indicate you can run a 6:50 pace for the marathon. Similarly, you’re once "off” slow AF tempo run doesn’t mean you cannot qualify for the Boston Marathon this year.

What you feel now is delayed feedback.

Tool:
Zoom out. Look at trends, not once off moments.

8. Small Changes Create Big Results

The biggest breakthroughs raaaaaarely look dramatic.

They look like:

• consistent easy runs (adding 10-30 minutes of truly recovery effort to 2-3 runs to stack vs once big random 10 miler)

• better sleep (eliminating 20 minutes of “screen" time before bed")

• slightly improved fueling (examples: adding just 30 grams more carbs intra run, adding 16 more oz of water to your day)

Tool:
Find your “1% lever” and repeat it daily.

9. You Can Have It All…But Not All At Once :)

You cannot build:

• speed

• endurance

• strength all at once …

…all at peak levels simultaneously. this is the temptation to level up but this is also where you get to practice patience and watch how that will dramatically pay off in “once day” ;)

Tool:
Train in phases. Respect timing.

10. You Can’t Divide the System: cutting an elephant in half will NOT result in two smaller elephants. gross yet but listen:

Your running is influenced by the sum of your whole human experience:

• stress

• hormones

• sleep

• life

Ignoring this is why “plans fail”. Not because it’s a bad plan but because you REFUSE to acknowledge the fullness of your very human nature in this game we call life.

Tool:
Adjust training based on life, not in spite of it.

11. There Is No Blame: Only Feedback

Your body isn’t broken. Your coach isn’t the enemy. The world isn’t to blame. Not your sister, your boss, your faster best friend, the social media influencer who has more creatine than the elephant, not your pet chicken or pet goat. once you can tap OUT of that mindset THEN you can shift. Mastery over mind. (I strongly recommend the book, The Untethered Soul, for this level of “detachment'“)
It’s responding.

Every plateau, injury, or fatigue signal is information. On your running journey and in life.

Tool:
Replace frustration with curiosity:
“What is my body trying to tell me?”

Final Thought: This Is Why Coaching Matters

You are inside your own system (probably inside your own brain swimming round and round… we all do it. No judgement. It's human nature. we all need outside perspective on occasion.)

Which makes it incredibly hard to:

• see patterns

• connect cause and effect

• adjust without overreacting

This is where coaching changes everything.

Not because you need someone to tell you what to do…

…but because you need someone who can see the system clearly while you’re living inside it. That’s one reason I as a coach enjoy using TrainingPeaks. It has the most compressive look with their ATP (annual training plan) tab where I can see the whole vision and map it out! It’s clean, clear and data driven. And then the intuitive side of me gets to navigate your personal, human-touch needs.

If You’re Ready to Train Smarter

If this hit…if you saw yourself in even one of these laws…

That’s your signal to GO.

Running isn’t about doing more. If that’s your thought process perhaps it's time to take a deeper look at your core values.
It’s about becoming more curious, more ready to learn, more willingness to try and understand your body better.

And once you do that, things really start to open up and flow. After all, we are all just floating around on some cosmic rock in a vast universe we truly know nothing about. The more you learn the more you realize… you know nothing. Embrace having a curious mindset for life and the world suddenly opens up.