A friend asked me for running advice a few weeks back and I completely blanked.

Dailyish

I’d just done my longest runs ever - 21 km in 2 hours 17 mins. A few days before that, my fastest: 10.1 kmph for a full hour. Nothing record-worthy by any real standard. But mine.

But when he asked how I got there, I realized I had almost nothing to tell her. One thing, maybe: “Do Couch to 5K. It’s a great program!” Personally, I love Just Run - simple. Offline. Fantastic!

After that? Just a bunch of mental stuff I’d stumbled into. Not much of technique. Not training plans. At least not so far, not at this level. Just keep showing up when you don’t feel like it.

Which is weird because I thought I’d have more. Tips about form or breathing or shoes or something. But no. Turns out the whole thing is mental.

The right expectations

Starting with this: it takes 12 weeks to get to 5K if you’ve never run before. That’s 3 months. Things will happen slower than you imagine. Way slower. Be prepared for this and don;t try to rush it. But it will happen if you just keep showing up.

You’ll want to quit around week 4. Everyone does. That’s when it stops feeling new and starts feeling hard. Your body hasn’t adapted yet. You’re still doing that thing where you check your watch every 30 seconds wondering if the interval is done. It’s not fun. In fact, try to keep the phone in the pocket or use one of those arm-bands thingies. Don’t look at your phone / watch. You’ll do better.

But then somewhere around week 7 or 8, something shifts. You stop thinking about it so much. Your body figures out what it’s doing. The effort drops - not to zero, but to sustainable. Like that graph about habit formation where the effort needed spikes hard at first and then suddenly falls off a cliff.

When you graduate past 5k - and you will - the same principles still apply. It’s okay to stop during your run. Need a break at 5.5k on your 6k day? Take it. Click some photos. Walk for a few minutes. Then keep going. Just like during Couch-to-5K, remember? You don’t have to run the whole distance in one unbroken stretch. Breaks are fine.

Speed? Forget about it. Go as slow as you feel like that day. Focus on covering the distance at your pace. With breaks. Do this consistently.

About consistency: dailyish is fine. 4-days a week is consistent. 3 days on a rough week - still okay. Less than that isn’t really consistent, but you know what? That’s okay too. Pick it up next week. No Drama.

I spent months beating myself up about missing run-days. Then I realized I was running 3-4 times a week and calling myself inconsistent. Which is insane! Dailyish is consistent.

Here’s something else I found: maintaining constant effort matters more than constant pace, especially past 5K.

Running uphill? Slow down. Keep the effort steady. Hot day? Slow down. Keep the effort steady. When you’re back on flat ground or in shade, pick it up again if you feel like it. The point is constant effort, not constant speed.

There’s this weird trick for practicing this: put a small sip of water in your mouth before you start. Don’t swallow it. Then try to have some left by the time you finish. This forces you to keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose. And for that to work - you have to maintain a slow, steady effort. I suppose, it’s more of a constant physical reminder to self than anything else.

Sounds stupid. Probably is. But works.

Beyond running

I keep thinking about how this applies to other things. Not in a metaphorical way - but really in a literal, mechanical way.

You can’t sprint toward long-term goals. Whether it’s writing or building something or learning a new skill. Same pattern. You need the stamina version, not the sprint version.

And if you ask someone who’s good at that thing on how to start, they’ll probably give you something straightforward. Some version of Couch to 5K for their domain. A clear 1-2-3 plan you can follow without thinking too hard.

But a lot of it will still be the mental game. Being patient while knowing that it takes time. Being okay with breaks - taken or forced. Slowing down on tough stretches but keeping the effort constant. And mostly: showing up dailyish.

We know how it works with physical training; accepting that it takes ~12 weeks to build to 5K. That progress is slow. That you need breaks. That consistency matters more than intensity.

But then we approach everything else like it should happen faster. Like we should be able to learn a language in 90 days or build a business overnight. We treat creative work like a sprint when it’s obviously a marathon.

And when it doesn’t work - when we burn out or quit or just never start - we think we’re the problem. Not the approach.

Maybe we’re just running too fast. Maybe we need permission to go slower, take more breaks, keep showing up dailyish, and trust that the effort compounds even when we can’t see it yet.

I don’t know. I’m still figuring this out. But I can run 21 km now and I definitely couldn’t 4 months back.

And the only thing that changed was I stopped trying to do it all at once.