Run Your Race Podcast

#020 - What I learned about building habits running 13.1 miles for 66 Days

• Pierce Showe • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Pierce Showe shares his experience running a half marathon every day on a treadmill for 66 consecutive days while attempting to break the Guinness World Record of 125 days. He reveals three crucial lessons about habit formation that have transformed his approach to consistency and performance.

• Make habit execution as easy as possible through checklists, preparation, and optimizing your environment
• Harness the unmatched power of accountability by telling others about your goals and commitments
• Focus on progress over months rather than day-to-day changes for better motivation and perspective
• Pierce has improved from an 8:40 pace to 7:15-7:30 pace over two months while feeling better than when he started
• The current record is 125 consecutive days of half marathons, and Pierre aims for over 150 days
• Proper nutrition, recovery, and sleep are essential components of Pierce's success strategy

Implement these strategies in your own life: make your habits easier to follow, find accountability partners, and measure progress over longer time periods rather than daily.


Speaker 1:

What's up everyone, welcome back to the Run your Race podcast. I'm your host, pierre Chow, and this is going to be a good one about what I learned about building habits running a half marathon, 13.1 miles, every single day on a treadmill for 66 days straight. Some people say that it takes 21 days. Some people say that it takes 60 days 66 days to build a habit, but I'm going to tell you what I learned about habit building through this process, because by now, running a half marathon every day has become a habit for me. Yes, there are so many days where I still don't want to do it, but it's like a habit. I'm expecting to do it, my life's optimized around doing it and I'm just in this routine of just no matter what, doing a half marathon every single day, regardless of how I feel. So, listening to this, you may not know my name is Pierre Hsiao. I'm an ultra runner and essentially, I've taken on this task of running a half marathon on a treadmill every single day to break a Guinness World Record. Now, the current record is 125 days straight running a half marathon and I'm going for at least over 150 days to break this Guinness World Record and also help make America healthy again. Okay, and so I have to run this half marathon every day and there's a lot that goes into it, so I have to record it. I have to have two ey or two eyewitnesses, two videos, one of the front, one of the screen, all these different things, and it's very repetitive. And one thing I'll start off by saying this one thing is that when you do something every single day, it's easy to forget aspects of it, it's easy to be sloppy, it's easy to lose the excitement, and so that's why number one, the most important thing I learned about building habits is you want to make it as easy as possible on yourself to be able to complete the habit. Now, I'm not saying running a half marathon every day is easy, but what I'm saying is I have optimized my life the last 66 days on how I can make it as easy as possible for me to follow through every single day running this half marathon.

Speaker 1:

And so for me, what this looks like is I have checklists everywhere. So on my mirror every night I have a checklist that I go through to make sure my computer's plugged in, my phone's plugged in, that I've texted the witnesses for the next day, because I have to have two eyewitnesses and a couple other things. Now, when I leave the house, I make sure I have my computer in my bag, because I did forget that one day. I make sure I have a snack. I make sure I have a filled up water bottle. I make sure I have texted my witnesses in the morning, because I want to make it as easy as possible for me to follow through, because here's why I didn't have these checklists and then I forgot my computer. One day. I didn't have these checklists and then I forgot my recovery snack to eat right after the run.

Speaker 1:

To make sure I'm recovering as fast as possible, okay, and so it is so, so, so, so important to make it as easy on yourself as possible to follow through in the habit. So checklists are huge, writing out a standard operating procedure. This is the way it gets done every single time. For me, going to bed early has been huge. I haven't been perfect, but going to bed early has made it way easier on me to be able to follow through every single day. Also, nutrition making sure I'm eating enough. Before this challenge, I hired a nutritionist to work with me to help make sure I'm following through on eating. I'm eating enough, I'm eating the right foods, all of these things. Okay. So you want to make it as easy as possible on yourself to be able to follow through on the habit. One thing's putting out your clothes the night before. Put out your clothes the night before if you're having a hard time getting to the gym in the morning or getting for a run because you don't have to think about it. You just go, boom, we're at the track, we're at the gym, we're getting it done. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Now second, when it comes to building your habits, accountability is unmatched. It's such a powerful force, such a powerful force, accountability. Okay, here's how it's played out in my life. I told every single person that I know that I am going to break the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days doing this half marathon on a treadmill. So when I don't feel like it, when I'm tired, when I'm sore, when all these things, all these people who I've told, who are expecting me to do it, who are counting on me to do it and I don't know about you, but I know it's a lot harder for me to let someone else down than it is myself If it's just me. Harder for me to let someone else down than it is myself. If it's just me, I'll let myself down. But when other people are involved, other people, I'm setting an example for other people. I've told and I've committed, I'm going to do this. There's no backing out, I got to get it done, okay. So accountability is unmatched. I told every single person I mean at this point, if I didn't show up at the gym one day, people would be calling me, dming me, pierce. If I didn't post that I did it, people would be texting me. Hey, you, okay, you all right, what's good, what's going on? You get it done for today, okay. So accountability is unmatched.

Speaker 1:

Now the third thing. This is huge. During this challenge, it hasn't really felt like I've gotten that much better day over day. If I'm just comparing day to day, like today to tomorrow, today to yesterday, it doesn't feel like I've made that much progress, when in reality it's been 66 days and I started running these half marathons at 840 pace, seven miles per hour, or actually 6.9 miles per hour on the treadmill. Miles per hour on the treadmill, okay. And now I'm running them at least at a 730 pace, sometimes 715. Sometimes my average pace has been seven minutes on my more speed days. Okay, so in two months time, my pace has dropped this much and, honestly, I feel better than when I started.

Speaker 1:

And so the lesson there is when you're implementing a habit, don't focus on the day over day progress. Don't focus on how you are today compared to yesterday. Focus on how you are today compared to last month, because a lot of times, if we compare day over day, there's not enough growth that's happened for us to realize. Okay, so don't focus on the progress day over day. Focus on month over month. Okay, those are the three things that I've learned about building habits running a half marathon every single day for over 66 days straight. Now, as of recording this, today was day 67 and we're still going. All right. So implement these things. Make it as easy as possible for you to follow along with your habits. Get some accountability and measure yourself over long periods of time rather than just day over day. All right, use this and go out and run your race.