Latest / Amplifying Impact / 007: 7 Leadership Lessons from an Ultra Marathon
Transcript
- Mark Watkins: Welcome to Amplifying Impact, the podcast for leaders who strive to create exceptional experiences, develop high performing teams, and lead with purpose. I'm Mark Watkins, the founder of Amplifying Impact Events. I bring decades of leadership experience rooted in the hospitality industry. However, because the pursuit of growth, excellence, and meaningful impact is a universal goal, the principles I share apply to leaders across all industries and sectors. Each episode delivers actionable insights and practical tools to help you amplify your impact. on your team, customers, and community. You'll get valuable content, enough to make a real difference in your leadership journey. However, the complete transformation awaits you at our live events. Let's get started and amplify your impact together. It's lap 10. I'm somewhere between eight and nine hours into a 12 hour trail race with over 30 miles behind me in the mountains of North Carolina and my left knee is done. It's not injured. I know the difference, but it's done. Every downhill step sent a shot of pain through my knee, making me want to stop moving entirely. And the problem was that this particular section of the trail was nothing but downhill. Tight, rolling, relentless. Think of moguls on a ski slope, just condensed and on dirt. In a fresh state, you let the momentum carry you. Eight hours in, every single step down felt like a consequence. So I did the only thing that made sense in the moment. I turned around and started walking backwards down the hill. The incline was so steep, I was practically bent over at the waist, facing uphill, shuffling backwards in the middle of a trail race. Another competitor came through, looked at me and asked, did you lose something? I laughed. Probably the first real life I'd had in a few hours. I explained what I was doing. He kept moving and somehow that brief exchange gave me just enough to keep going. Here's what I didn't know on that 10. I'd finished the race with the two fastest laps. I'd run in the last five hours. Before I go any further, if you haven't already followed or subscribed to the show, take a second to do that now. New episodes drop regularly and I don't want you to miss what's coming. Hit the follow wherever you're listening and you'll be set. It may be hard to believe, but before 2023, I was not a runner. I mean, in the truest sense. I run before I done some 5ks, I jog here and there, but I didn't train with any intention. I didn't understand form, gear, preparation, and I certainly didn't enjoy it. Running was something that I could pull out when I needed to, but not something I pursued. That changed early in 2023 when I committed to a program you've probably heard of called 75 Hard. If you're not familiar, it's a 75 day mental toughness challenge with several non-negotiable daily parameters. One of which is two workouts a day from a creativity standpoint. That's the real constraint. So walking, running, or some combination of the two became my default second workout. And over those 75 days, I ran more consistently than I'd ever had in my entire life. As the challenge drew to a close something that shifted, I started asking what would intentional training actually look like? What would a real event look like? Something that extended the challenges to any five hard, but leveled up physically. So I picked a half marathon. I'd never run this distance and it felt like a true challenge. Something next level from 75 hard. My target, the actual half marathon in Asheville, North Carolina, in August of 2023. It's a hilly course, as you might imagine, since it's in Asheville, North Carolina, my goal was simple. Run the entire race without stopping. No walking, no specific time target, just one continuous effort. I did it two hours and 10 minutes goal accomplished. And then I couldn't barely move for days. I was not prepared for that race. My strength training was inconsistent. My mechanics weren't where they needed to be. And I had no real understanding of race prep. When people asked afterwards, if I was going to run a marathon next, I'd answer immediately. Absolutely not. I told people I'd never even run a half marathon again, but here's the thing about pain. It fades. And when it did, the curiosity came back. I started looking into training for a marathon. And when you start pulling on that thread, other things surface. kept seeing a word I recognized, but didn't really fully understand. Ultra. I knew it existed. I'd seen it listed as a distance option on various races, but I hadn't really paid much attention to it until I started following people in the running space. And this whole world opened up. Ultra marathons, 50 Ks, a hundred mile, timed events, last man standing formats. And the format that really caught my attention was the timed event. Not a fixed distance, but a fixed window of time. You run as many loops as you can before the clock runs out. found a race in North Carolina called the Firefly Ultra Trail Race, 12 hours, a 3.2 mile loop through mountain terrain. Start at 9 a.m. Finish at 9 p.m. No required pace, no required distance. Just you, the trail, and however many laps you could complete before the time expired. I signed up. And the question I kept coming back to, the one that drove every decision I made from that point forward was this. What are my limits? And when I find those limits, how will I respond? As a leader, you've probably felt it, that tension between wanting to grow and not knowing exactly what's holding you back. Maybe it's a conversation you keep avoiding, a team dynamic that's just a little off or a season of transition that needs more than a plan. It needs perspective. That's where Jody Hilkama coaching comes in. Jody works with leaders and teams at the intersection of life and leadership, helping them clarify what's really going on. align their strategy with their values and grow through the moments that matter. Her approach is human first, which means no one size fits all formulas, just real coaching built around your unique challenges and what's next for you. Whether you're navigating a pivotal decision, leading through friction or ready to build something that lasts, Jody brings the kind of clarity and courage the conversation needs. Learn more at JodyHilkemaCoaching.com. Once I committed, I went all in. That's just how I'm wired. When I flip a switch, there's really no other gear. I was fortunate to find the book Run Elite by Andrew Snow. It lays out a triphasic training model, three phases designed to build you progressively towards the event. Base training, support training, and specific training. It was the framework I didn't have when I ran Asheville and it changed everything. For the first time, I wasn't jogging miles. I was training with a purpose and a plan. I set a goal of completing 13 laps, which would put me right around 42 miles. And I built a whole system around that target. All to ensure I could peak at the right conditioning and preparation. My spreadsheet for the race projected pace, break intervals, lap averages, effective pace, counting for the pills that I'd be walking. I knew that if I ran roughly one lap per hour, I finished with 12 laps. That was everything, including running the lap, brakes, fueling, gear changes and the like. So somewhere in the 12 hours, I needed to find an extra lap. I needed to know exactly where it would come from. The race course had approximately 450 feet of elevation gain per loop. Over the 12 hours and the 42 miles, I locked 7,000 feet of climbing and 6,900 feet of descent. So I made sure my training terrain averaged about 130 feet of gain per mile. You can't train on flat roads and then show up to 7,000 feet of climbing and expect your body to handle it. That principle training as I would race extended everything. Whatever I planned to wear on race day, I trained in. Whatever I plan to eat and drink during the race, I practiced with during training. found socks at work, so I didn't change them. found shoes that work, so I stayed with them. I found a hydration powder and race day snacks that fueled me without weighing me down and I locked them in. I didn't experiment on race day. Every variable I could control, I had already tested. One decision I made early in training that might sound counterintuitive was no earbuds. No podcasts, no music, no audio books. Just me, the trail and whatever my mind brought forward. Part of it was practical. I wanted to stay present and in tune with my body during training. But the bigger reason was this. When you're running for three, four, five, six hours in a single session with no external simulation, your mind goes to work. It surfaces things, problems you've been avoiding, conflicts you haven't resolved, decisions that need to be made. And I made a deliberate choice to let it. Whatever came up, I'd work through it. However, many times it needed to come back up, I'd let it come back. Those long hours on the trail became some of the most clarifying thinking time I've ever had and building that mental resilience, the ability to stay present and not quit on yourself when things get uncomfortable turned out to be just as important as the physical training. By the time I peaked in my training, I was running 55 to 60 miles a week. I'd started roughly at 18 to 20 miles a week. Also did a full 50 K training run, which is 32 miles on the trail. to simulate race conditions. There were moments in that run where I wanted to stop. And every time I hit one of those walls, I came back to a question that I picked up from an ultra runner called Sally McCray, which is what is the story that you want to tell tomorrow? That question got me to the finish line of that training run and I carried it into race day. And I find it driving me through many tough moments, including a bucket list summit last year. When you reframe your thinking that focus can help drive you through the hard times. Also didn't do this alone. Two good friends, Donnie Hines and Zach Eshler agreed to crew for me. They showed up on race day with me with a tent, coolers, a cot, first aid, many other things to support me. They set up at the start finish line. I had pre-packaged every beverage, every snack, everything labeled and ready to grab. the end of each lap, I had a place to stop, refuel, change out gear, regroup. They tracked my pace, kept me honest on my targets and gave me something to come back to after every loop. The mental boost they provided was invaluable. Preparation like that, it doesn't just happen by accident. It's a series of intentional decisions made long before race day that determine how the race goes. What you're hearing today is one piece of a much larger system. The framework shared on this podcast, whether it's a leadership assessment tool or a goal setting approach, all connect to a single purpose, helping you build an organization that doesn't just perform, but scales and scales without you having to carry it all. We believe people are the key to unlocking everything else. And when you develop the right leaders, every other part of your organization performs at a higher level. That's what we do through amplifying impact events. There's also something we've seen proven out time and again, the right outside voice changes what's possible. Not because an outside perspective is always smarter, but because it sees what you can't see when you're inside the organization every day. That's the value we bring. Depending on where you are and what you need, we work with leaders and the organizations they lead in three ways. The first is the Impact Leadership Assessment. This is a structured leader level assessment paired with a 90-day habit formation plan. We identify where your leader is strong, where they're stuck, and what to develop next with a clear prioritized roadmap to get there. If you have a leader who's hitting a ceiling or a high potential team member who needs a defined growth path, this is the starting point. The second is the Gravity Framework, an organizational structural assessment. This is a diagnostic session designed to identify where work is stalling in your organization. We pinpoint task stagnation, missing leadership layers, and structural gaps, then build either a 90-day release plan or a six-month build plan to restore healthy task flow. If you're the kind of leader who still finds yourself doing work that should belong to someone else, this framework is for you. The third is a leadership summit or strategy intensive, a facilitated half-day or full-day session built around your organization's current priorities. Your team walks away with shared language, practical tools, and clear direction. It's the right investment when you need alignment. whether you're entering a growth season, navigating a leadership transition, or resetting your team's culture. Every engagement we offer starts the same way, with a complimentary discovery conversation, not a sales pitch, a diagnosis, because the right solution depends on knowing where you are. If today's episode gave you something useful, imagine what a structured engagement could do for your entire leadership team. Visit amplifyingimpactevents.com to learn more or reach out directly at events at amplifyingimpactevents.com to start the conversation. All right. April, 2024 in the mountains of Hendersonville, North Carolina, 9 a.m. The first few laps felt controlled. That's intentional and an ultra. Interestingly, Andrew Snow, the author that I mentioned earlier, is from Asheville and he was running in this race. It felt like a good plan to kind of pace with him for the first few laps before I settled into my own pace. You're not racing the clock in the early hours. You're managing it. The runners who go out too hard in the first two or three laps are the same ones that you pass in hour eight. I had my pace targets. I had my plan and I stuck to it. It was also a six hour version of the race happened at the same time. I'm not going to lie. It was a crazy feeling to see the six hour racers show up on the course when I'd already been running for six hours. So I had to not let the freshness with which they attacked the course discourage me. Donnie and Zach were at the crew tent every time I came through. I had cell service on the course and I was able to place an order, so to speak, about what I needed on my next pass. If I was going to stop or take a break, keep in mind when I say take a break, I'm talking about four or five minutes. They helped me get my vest refilled. They took any trash, replenished my nutrition and track my lap times. Having that anchor point at the end of every lap mattered more than I anticipated. It wasn't just logical. It was psychological. Always had that interaction, support, encouragement to come back to. The middle hours are where ultras are really decided. Early excitement is gone. The finish line isn't close enough to pull you yet and you're just out there doing the work lap after lap. The trail doesn't change. The climb doesn't get easier. You just keep going. At 10, I'd been on my feet somewhere between eight and nine hours and that's when my left knee decided it was done. Not injured. I want to be clear about that distinction because I knew the difference. This was fatigue. My knee had simply logged more hours than it wanted to and it was letting me know. The problem was A particular section of the trail that was essentially moguls. Tight, rolling, relentless downhill. Up and down, up and down with almost no flat in between them. In a fresh state, you just let the momentum carry you right through it. Eight hours in, every single downward step, send a shot of pain through that knee that made me want to stop moving entirely. So I turned around and walked backwards down the hill. The incline was so steep that I was bent at the waist, facing uphill. shuffling backwards during the trail race. Another competitor came through, looked at me and asked, did you lose something? I laughed, probably the hardest I'd laughed in hours. I explained what I was doing and he moved on and somehow that brief exchange gave me just enough to keep going. Lap 11 was more of the same, still grinding, still managing the knee, still moving. And then something shifted. As lap 12 began, daylight was fading. Enough that I had to stop at the crew tent and grab my light before heading back out. And something unexpected happened when I stepped back onto the trail in the dark. Over the months of training, I had done the majority of my running in the early morning hours, long before sunrise. Somewhere in those miles, I developed a genuine love for running in the dark. There's something about it that's hard to explain unless you've experienced it. Moving freely through the woods and conditions that wouldn't make sense in any other context. Just you, the trail, and whatever your light reaches. The darkness was a way of narrowing your focus. down to exactly what's in front of you. When I stepped onto the trail for lap 12, I was back at that place. A place I had been hundreds of times during the training. Comfortable, familiar, almost like home. The pain that had been my constant companion for the last three or four hours started to fade. I think it was adrenaline. also think stepping into the dark gave me something the daylight hours couldn't. A quiet sense that I was exactly where my training had prepared me to be. I ran lap 12 faster than I run the previous 4 5 laps and lap 13 faster still. Lap 13 was faster than my lap 7 through 12. I finished my 13th and final lap just a few minutes before 9pm. Donnie and Zach were there cheering me across the finish line 42 miles. 12 hours on a mountain trail, 30 my age group out of 9 and quitting never crossed my mind not once during the 12 hours. I think that's worth sitting with for a moment. Because it's easy to hear that and assume it's just personality or stubbornness, but I don't think that's what it was. The training had already made the decision for me. Every early morning run, every long session without earbuds, every time I asked myself what story I wanted to tell tomorrow and kept going anyway. By the time I got to race day, not quitting wasn't a decision I had to make under pressure. It had already been made hundreds of times before I ever reached the trail. Preparation doesn't just build fitness. It builds resolve. I want to share six lessons from that experience plus a bonus. So let's just say seven lessons from this experience, not because I sat down afterwards and manufactured them, but because when I look back at what the trail taught me, these were already there. Number one is set clear goals. didn't show up to the Firefly Ultra with a vague intention to do my best. I had a specific target 13 laps, roughly 42 miles. had spreadsheets, I had pace targets. I had break intervals mapped out. had a nutrition and refueling plan. The clarity of that goal shaped every decision I made on the course. Leaders who set vague goals get vague results. The goal has to be specific enough that you know in real time, whether you're on track or off. Number two is be adaptable. No plan survives contact with reality completely intact. My knee on lap 10 was not in the spreadsheets. Walking backwards down a mogul section was not in my training plan. But because I understood the goal clearly, I could adjust the method without losing the mission. Adaptability isn't the absence of a plan, it's the ability to protect the goal when the plan breaks down. Number three is persevere. 10 and 11 were the hardest miles of the entire race. The pain was real, the progress felt slow, and the finish line wasn't close enough to see yet. But quitting never entered my mind. Not because I'm wired differently than anyone else, but because the training had already built the answer. that question long before race day. Perseverance isn't something that you summons in the moment. It's something that you build in the preparation. Number four is acknowledge others. I did not run this race alone. Donnie and Zach were there for every single lap. Crew tent stock, splits track, encouragement ready. The logistical support mattered. But what mattered more was knowing that every time I came off the trail, someone was there. Leaders who think they can sustain high performance without acknowledging the people around them. are leaving something significant on the table. Number five is manage emotions. All those hours of training without earbuds were not just a physical discipline. They were an emotional one. My mind surface things on those long runs that I needed to deal with old tensions, unresolved decisions, things I've been too busy to sit with. I process them on the trail. And because of that, when the race day came, I wasn't carrying anything extra. Emotional management isn't about suppressing what you feel. It's about creating the conditions to deal with it. Number six is recognize impact. I was fairly public about my training. made announcements about my journey, let people into the process and that accountability loop had a real effect on what I was willing to push through. What I didn't fully anticipate was how many people would reach out afterwards to say the experience had inspired them to take on something they had been putting off. You don't always know who's watching, but someone is and the standard you hold yourself to has a reach that extends well beyond you. The bonus lesson is. Find your familiar ground. Preparation doesn't build fitness. It builds familiarity. And familiarity under pressure is one of the most underrated advantages a leader can develop. When a crisis hits, when the conversation gets hard, when everything is uncertain and the stakes are high, the leaders who perform are the ones who have been there before in some form. Not necessarily that exact situation, but close enough for something in them. to recognize the terrain. You don't rise to the occasion, you fall back on what you've already built. The question worth asking is this, what conditions are you training in right now so that when the pressure arrives, you're already at home in it? Here's what I've been sitting with since the race. Everything about how I prepared for it. The book from a performance specialist, the training principles I pulled from ultra runners, the middle frameworks I borrowed from athletes competing in entirely different contexts in mind. None of that came from the leadership development world. I went looking in completely different places and brought back things that made me better. I didn't have a name for it at the time, but now I do. And it's something I've been building towards in my work for longer than I realized. I'll be sharing more about that very soon, so stay close. Thank you for joining me on the Amplifying Impact podcast. If this episode has helped you see leadership differently, share it with another leader who's ready to move beyond conventional approaches. Leadership is better when we lift each other up. If you're getting value from the show, I'd be genuinely grateful if you'd leave a rating or review wherever you listen. It helps more leaders find the content and it makes a real difference. For more resources or to explore bringing the complete impact leadership assessment framework to your organization. Visit AmplifyAndImpactEvents.com. You can also check out the full podcast archive at AmplifyAndImpactPodcast.com. Until next time, keep amplifying your impact and remember the world needs the unique leader that only you can be.