Your Best Run,

EP 2 - Your Comeback Starts With 7 Days, Not 12 Weeks

• Chevy Rough • Season 1 • Episode 2

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🎙️ Episode 2 – 

Shorten Your Horizon

If you’re coming back to running after a break—whether from injury, life getting busy, or just losing your mojo—the first step isn’t to pick up where you left off. It’s to meet yourself where you are now.

This episode is about ditching the fantasy comeback and setting real-world goals that fit your current energy, schedule, and life mess. We’re talking about working in shorter chunks of time, building momentum week by week, and letting go of those impossible “I used to…” expectations.

🔑 What We Cover:

  • How to set realistic goals when life’s pulled you off track
  • Breaking down that huge mountain of “getting back to where I was” into small, doable steps
  • Why running isn’t just about medals or PBs—it’s about feeling energised, clearer, and healthier for the long haul
  • How to run your training week like a feedback loop: review, adjust, move forward
  • Why I coach my runners in 7–14 day blocks, not rigid 12-week plans
  • Focusing on one habit at a time and letting that stick before layering on more
  • Giving yourself permission to start where you are, not where you wish you were

đź’¬ Reminder:

You don’t need to do it perfectly. You just need to keep showing up more often than you don’t.

And if this episode helped, please leave a review or share it with someone who’s stuck on the couch staring at their running shoes. You’re not alone in this.

đź‘ź Ready to run stronger, smarter, and injury-free?

Learn more about 1:1 coaching here.

đź’Ą Get strong in 40 days with Easy Strength for Runners:

Simple, time-efficient strength training designed for runners who want results without burnout. Learn more here.

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Got questions or just want to say hey? Drop me an email: chevy@chasingprojects.com

Follow the journey on IG @akachasing19


Chevy Rough:

Welcome to episode number two of your best run, and if you are here after listening to episode one, I just want to say thank you so much for the time. Ask me questions, find me on social media. Excuse me, I'm just burping. I promise to do this in one take and not edit. So, yeah, warts and all kind of stuff, but welcome to episode number two of your best run, and in this episode, me, chevy Ruff, your running and strength coach. I'm going to be talking through goal setting, right, and I'm going to be talking about how to set goals that are actually achievable for people who are in one of a few different positions One either returning from running after an extended break, and that extended break is basically being dealing with life right Looking after kids or building a career, looking after loved ones who might be sick, like there's so many things here that draw us away from looking after ourselves and doing the things that we know make us a better human being. It's funny, isn't it? I always say this. Like whenever life gets stressful and we need to show up for ourselves and other people, what's the first thing that goes, the things that we need to be doing to look after ourselves, to make sure that we have the energy and resources and capabilities to keep showing up. So you know, if you are someone who has had to show up in other ways in life and maybe hasn't been able to look after yourself as well as you have done historically, then this one is for you. If you're someone who's been injured and trying to return to running and you're trying to think about setting yourself achievable goals, or you're just struggling to get going, you know you're struggling to find anything that is achievable and sustainable this one's for you. Or if you are someone who does set goals for yourself and you find those goals are just a bit too lofty and you start out with good intentions but you just never really deliver on the end product, then this might help you as well. Or if you're just someone who's interested in how I set goals and set milestones for my athletes, then listen along. So let's just say you are someone who has run right. Let's just say you're a runner who used to run marathons, used to be able to run five, 10 Ks on the weekend, no problem at all, but now you're struggling to run for a bus. First of all, like well done for the fact that you once achieved those lofty heights of being able to run marathons, or just better, get out the door and run 5k. If you've done it before, you could do it again. But I get that it sucks that you can't do it anymore. But remember what we said in episode one comparison is the thief of joy. So let's look forward.

Chevy Rough:

But here's what this episode is about. This is what the conversation I want to have with you. Let's not set our gaze on the horizon too far out. Let's just start to break it down brick by brick. Let's stop making it an impossible mission of how will I ever run a marathon again, and let's just start to think about how, over the next 14, 30, 60 days, we can start to build the habits, the systems, the routines and behaviors that can get us back to a place where we potentially can start to train for the type of races that motivate us, that we love to do, that we enjoy, or just to a place where we can stay consistent with training. Because I'm guessing where you are in life right now. Yes, it's important to maybe get back to races, but it's not so much about PBs.

Chevy Rough:

You're probably here listening to this right now, this episode, or you're probably someone who follows along to kind of how I work, because you've kind of realized that actually running is more than the medals. Actually, you just want to be moving in a healthy way. You want to have the energy, you want to have the sharpness about you. You want to have this thing that helps you unwind from the day, process your day, organize your to-do list, that helps you show up for loved ones, show up for the challenges of work, and you want to be able to do this thing that makes you a healthier, better version of yourself into your 40s, 50s and 60s. You want to pass over a body now, into the next decade, that you know will keep you doing the things that you love, right?

Chevy Rough:

Basically, what I'm trying to say is you're just realizing there's more to running, there's more to movement. It's more important, maybe, than the bit of bling. We love a bit of bling, we love the pbs, but actually you are just in a position where you just want to feel healthy again. You want to feel better, you want to feel good yourself and you believe that running is a mechanism to be able to do that. It's a vehicle to be able to do that. So I mean, if that is you as well. Again, like I hear you, I understand that and I'm sorry you're feeling this way and I'm sorry you're stuck in a rut. But, as we said in episode one, comparison is the thief of joy. So let's look forward and let's look at not looking at the marathon that you want to complete again or getting back to running four or five times a week let's think about just what you can do in the next couple of weeks.

Chevy Rough:

And what I talk about here is my relationship with my athletes. I never program further out than really a couple of weeks, and when I start programming out a couple of weeks, it's usually after I've spent quite a bit of time with athletes and I understand them. My data is quite good on them, right, the algorithm on my, my algorithm is quite good. I understand the flows of their life and the flows of their energy, so I start to feel confident that I can program a couple of weeks out. You know, this is why I have a problem with people downloading 16 week training plans, because how does that 16 week plan know how I'm going to fill in week 13 when I've got to do a fast run, long run, whatever it may be, that's going to require a lot of energy and is high stress. How is it going to know what my stress levels are like that week? How is it going to know how I've slept the last couple of days, right? How's it going to know my workload that I've got going on and suddenly these projects that I've got to deliver on that have been thrown my way by? You know, a boss that I don't really like and have fallen out with over the last couple of months, and life is getting really hot, right, it doesn't, and so you know. This is why I talk about your best run comma, right. That's why, when you look at the logo, the commas there, because it's your best run in the context of your life.

Chevy Rough:

And if I'm working with an athlete, how do we know what the context of your life is going to be like in 12, 13 weeks? We don't. How do we? How confident are we that we know what it's going to be like in four weeks? Well, kind of. How confident are we going to be in three? Yeah, it's getting better. Two, okay, yeah, kind of confident. I will know how I feel.

Chevy Rough:

What about a week? What about the next week? What about if we program on Sunday for the next seven days. How confident are you to be able to say, well, this is where my stress is probably going to be high, my energy is going to be low, this is when I have time to train, this is when I have time to do easier things, this is when I can probably do harder things, like your algorithm is much more trustworthy. We stop being so optimistic and we start being realistic, right?

Chevy Rough:

So, as you're starting to find your way back to running again, stop focusing on the impossible problem, stop focusing on the big, big goals and just start planning for the next seven days. You know, one of the things that you can do that I do personally is you can do an end of every review on a Sunday. Be like what happened in the last week, what worked, what didn't work so well, what can we learn from? But then we can go back to the thing. But what did work? Why did that work? How can I make sure that works this week? How will that thing work in the context of this week? How can I double down on this thing that's working so well?

Chevy Rough:

Right, it's important that you do a little bit of fact finding and then, once you've got that data on a Sunday, you can start to plot out the week ahead and then, as you start to shorten the horizon, we're working on that brick by brick principle right? You never ran marathons by running 26.2 miles on day one, you learn to run to the end of the street, then you learn to run around the end of the street, then you learn to run around the park and then you learn to run around your neighborhood, then you maybe learn to run around the city. Like you know, you took it day by day, you took it moment by moment. So it really is important that you shorten the horizon, you put in an end of week review, you reflect on the week that you've just been through, you take the lessons, you take the positives, you build them into the next week and you just keep working on that cycle. And the most important thing is, you don't be overly optimistic.

Chevy Rough:

If you know that the most important thing for you is to do your rehab exercises, then then that's just the thing that you need to program in. That needs to be your priority. You need to spend all your time and energy on that one thing and then once those exercises, or once time aside for exercises has become a habit that you can trust is going to happen, even when you're a little bit tired. You can then move on to the next thing. Move on to the next thing, like build one, run in for the next three, four weeks and then build two, and then build two, and then do that for another three, four weeks and then build three. Right, this is a long-term game that compounds over a lifetime. This is about what type of runner do you want to be in the next decade of your life and beyond. So when you start to zoom out and look at your life and you look at that long horizon, you know you can start to think well, actually I've got a lot of time to figure these things out, so let me just spend the energy wisely of embedding one habit at a time and let me focus on things week by week. So shorten your horizon.

Chevy Rough:

As always, if you've got any questions that you have, or if you have any topics or questions that you would like me to talk about on future episodes, let me know. Um, please do write me your reviews, because I need to know if this is hitting the mark or not. I need to know how I can improve. So please do leave me a review or send me your thoughts, um super appreciated and, more importantly, just good luck on your journey, moving forward. You're not alone. You know you really are not alone. If you are trying to find that momentum again, speak to me. I will happily help where I can and offer any guidance or advice, but I'm thinking of you. Keep running. Keep trying to achieve your best run based on the context of your day in life here and now, not who. Keep trying to achieve your best run based on the context of your day in life here and now, not who you used to be or not who you hope to be down the line. Think about where you are today and keep moving, chasing 19 over and out.