I’ve run over 3000 kilometers since August 2023 and finished a 105k ultra marathon with 6600 meters of climb, and I still have no injuries, not even any pains or anything nagging or nibbling.
That’s my proudest flex, and honestly, my biggest fear at the same time.
As of August 11, 2025, I’m two years into this running thing. I’ve run two half marathons, one marathon, a few 50k trails, and that big 105k ultra. This year alone, I’ve already logged 1400+ kilometers. In 2024, I ran about 1300 for the whole year. And the graph is climbing fast.
The new racing target is simple on paper:
I want to run a 50k ultratrail with limited elevation in under 5 hours. This time, I will do it solo without any paid coaching, just with my Garmin Coach in my watch, making suggestions on what to do weekly and daily.
But here’s the drama: Garmin goes hard right out of the gate.
If you tell it you can run daily, which I have done, it will try to have you run every day. It keeps pushing workouts, and the pace is faster than usual. Base runs are now around 6 minutes per km, which is pushing it a little for me.
With Vale, my running coach, it was all about movement and time on feet, not speed. Slow and steady wins the race. We just moved a lot, but we kept it light. I was probably under training, and that kept me safe.
Now I’m ramping up and focusing on speed. Faster and sharper than ever before. And a new insecurity is showing its head like a turd that can’t wait for you to hop on that gas station toilet.
I feel I’m on my own. The trust has to be in me. Or at least my ability to handle what Garmin throws at me. But I can feel that the trust isn’t there yet.
So I’m changing the rule. I’ll use Garmin as a nudge, not as a boss.
Today is a Monday. After three days of faster tempos, my legs feel sluggish. My knees are fine, my feet are strong, my HRV is green, and my sleep score is solid as always. On paper, I should go, but in my body, I can feel I shouldn’t, so I’m not. The plan is the trust Garmin, until my body votes no through subtle signals. Then I listen.
That’s the point.
1) Stay aggressive, and
2) Stay uninjured.
I need to hold both.
My brain is revigorated in the same way my legs are.
I worked in sales for the past three years and felt pretty free, but dumbed down. Now, I’m a special projects manager working directly with the founder of BreachLock, solving problems like our channel partner program, which has been failing for 2+ years on end. I’m now in a role where I have to solve hard problems and use my brain again.
Add the accountability pod side project, and I feel my ideation muscle woke up again.
That “idea muscle” was dormant for many years, and now I feel its tingling again.
Case in point:
On our summer break with the family, I hiked in the Swiss Alps and scaled my first mountaineering-style peak, around 2200 meters, T4 plus hiking level (seriously technical), with sections without a path next to steep rock faces. On that hike, I took a ton of photos. And I thought, why isn’t there a WhatsApp service where I can drop 150 photos and get a message back from a bot asking me if I want to make them into a physical photo book? Approve this bot’s design for the photobook, pay in the chat with a payment link, and order it instantly. No website. Just WhatsApp.
I did a quick Google search and couldn’t find something like it hosted on WhatsApp yet. I’ll explore the landscape to see what exists.
What no one told me about being very healthy
Here’s a weird thing about getting healthier that no one told me. Being healthier made me more sensitive. Not weaker. More sensitive.
When I eat and train just enough, I feel great. When I go over, my body throws a flag.
For instance, the past two days, I experimented with a second dinner 3 hours after my regular evening dinner. I did it to get in some extra protein.
But both days messed me up completely: I had lower energy and focus, my mood was down, my rhythm was broken, my digestion was off, and all systems were just off. On top of that, the scale jumped literally two full kilos.
It was like my body said, “Oh, we’re getting more calories, awesome, let’s store those sons of bitches on your asssheeks.”
In the past, when the baseline was junk food and processed garbage, I could take in a lot of horrible-quality food without a big swing. It did not affect me that much, or at least I wasn’t as sensitive to my body’s signals.
But now, the baseline is clean inputs. So when I toss garbage into the mix, the drop is steep and obvious.
On one hand, that’s great because my newfound sensitivity stops me from repeating it because it throws me off.
But on the other hand, it’s a strange paradox.
You invest in health and expect more resistance.
What you get is a much louder signal when you mess up.
That signal is gold.
It tells me what I can handle, or when I’m pushing too hard, or when I can push a little harder, what I can sustain, and what I cannot sustain for now.
Garmin calls these signals load.
And I can feel that my load capacity is inching up every month. The baseline is rising.
The same is true in business. My capacity for sustaining business load should increase, not because I’m grinding myself into dust, but because I’m tracking and managing the load. Understanding load and adapting based on it is what prevents injuries.
I learned this the hard way in business. I got a preventable injury while running my own business. I wasn’t educated on load through work, and I treated work like I could push forever. You cannot. Just like running, if you ignore the signs, you break.
So when I go hard again, I’ll track my load from doing business in real time. I will try to analyse and deeply understand my inputs, outputs, and recovery needs. Next time, I will focus on that part with rigorous intensity.
This brings me back to that 50k under 5 hours. I want to reach that goal, and I’m excited about it. But at the same time, I’m also not giving my body to an app. Garmin can suggest. I decide. I’ll stay aggressive, and I’ll stay uninjured.
That’s the whole game for me now: Injury prevention while pushing it to the maximum load I can take.
Develop awareness of bodily signals.
Respect the load.
And go