I was in the shower earlier today and I checked out my the big toenail on my right foot. It’s almost completely healed now- the cracks and bruises and internal bleeding are almost all gone, and there’s just a bit of irregularity and roughness in the top 2/5ths or so.

My toenail was damaged as a consequence of my 21km run/jog/walk/crawl that I completed on May 28, 2011. The toenail didn’t hurt at all. The rest of my body, though, felt like it had just been through a traumatic car accident. I couldn’t walk. My skin was itching like mad, and I later found out that this was caused by the pressure my circulatory system was putting on my nervous system. Think about it- that’s kind of crazy. It sounds dramatic and badass, but on hindsight I was overloading my systems- exceeding the Minimum Effective Dose and damaging myself in the process.

I didn’t take a picture of my toenail- but it took almost a year to go through many phases. First it seemed totally fine. Then it started turning black. Then part of it peeled off. Then a huge chunk of it came off, with lots of dried blood. There were all sorts of amusing stages. It didn’t really hurt or make things particularly uncomfortable, but I thought it was an interesting souvenir to carry with me for practically a year.

On hindsight, it was a physically traumatic experience with no inherent value.

Of course, the amazing, awesome thing about life is that things with no inherent value can still lead us to great value, if we choose to see how they can be leveraged- which is what I’m trying to do here.

I told myself that crossing the 21km mark would be immensely momentous- that it would change my life somehow, that it would make me a better person.

Let me be completely honest- it didn’t.

I thought this meant that I’d be able to complete 2.4km runs in the future with no sweat, maximum effort. Strangely, no! I still get tired. I still feel like giving up. 

Grand gestures don’t count for anything. It’s the habits we build that truly matter.

And completing one ridiculous, momentous task pales in comparison to nurturing a great system that you can depend on. Magic happens bottom-up, not top-down.

My body didn’t really learn anything from the traumatic experience. What I put my body through in that one night was the equivalent of being an overbearing parent or teacher to a child. I yelled and screamed at it and forced it to do what I wanted it to do, rather than working with it. It responded angrily, shutting down for weeks afterwards. My relationship with my body broke down and I wasted an opportunity to get stronger, fitter. I deluded into thinking that I was making some sort of progress, earning an arbitrary milestone that matters none.

Here’s the deal- showing up and getting past that line, that’s not where the magic happens. The magic happens in the preparation. In committing to practice.

If you take an undeserving music hobbyist and put them up at Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden, it won’t mean anything.  To him, or to anybody else. He’ll probably walk away thinking, “That was it?” And this is what happens to lots of local bands that end up playing Baybeats and nothing else, too. We set an arbitrary benchmark, an expectation that somehow if we crossed this hurdle or that one, happiness and fulfillment would be the consequence. It isn’t. The pleasure is in the striving. In putting in the hours.

It was an interesting shared experience with my girlfriend, and it’s a great story. I suppose you could spend your life collecting stories. But if we’re talking strategy here- don’t bother making unnecessary mistakes that you don’t have to make. Work your way up. There is no shortcut.

What I learnt:

1. There are better things you can do with your life than run a half-marathon without training.
2. The sudden windfall is not only unlikely, it’ll probably hurt and shortchange you somehow. The lottery win does nothing. The journey is within.
3. Baby steps. You can’t build an empire overnight. Stop trying.
4. Build favourable, mutually beneficial relationships everywhere. Especially with yourself. Don’t push any player in any relationship beyond what is sustainable. Especially within yourself.
5. Stick to the M.E.D.