The first year I took running seriously, the goal was distance. A marathon. A 38 km trail run with 2,400 m of climbing. A 10k under 50 minutes, a half under two hours. I listed them in Counting Milestones and they still read like the proof that I had started for real.
Distance was the proxy. Going further meant taking it seriously.
This year the proxy changed. Distance was done, so the obvious next thing was speed. Same routes, less time.
The numbers
That worked, and it worked faster than I expected.
The half came first, in 100 minutes, the one actual race of the year. A 5k in 20 minutes along the way. Then a 10k in 40. Then a marathon in 3:47. Those last two were not races. No bib, no crowd. Just a route, a watch, and a morning I had decided was the one.
Each of them was the target at the time. Each one got hit. And after the last one, I waited for the next number to show up.
It did not.
Where the assumption breaks
The reasonable assumption is that goals renew themselves. You hit the 10k time, so you set a faster one. You hit the marathon, so you aim at 3:30. That is how it had gone the year before, when every finished distance produced a longer one.
But this time there was no fourth target. Not because I ran out of ideas. There are always faster times. It was that I had hit enough.
Not that it stopped being fun. It is still fun. Chasing a time is just not that healthy. It means pushing on days the body has good reasons not to be pushed, and it means a run is never only a run. It is a data point against a target. And there are other things I want the focus on right now.
So the numbers are done. Not abandoned. Done, in the sense that they did their job.
What running looks like without them
I will keep running. Less structured than this year, which was already less structured than the six-session split that broke. The fixed training days stay, because getting out the door stopped needing a plan a long time ago. What goes is the plan on top of that.
And then, because none of this means running less, the next thing is longer than anything so far. A few days ago my brother, a few friends and I ran somewhere around 60 km, self-organised. Lübeck to Hamburg, or something equally stupid. Next year, 100.
That sounds like a new target. It is not. There is no time attached. A 60 km day is not something you race. It is something you get through, with people, and the point is the day, not the clock.
Closing
Distance was the proxy for taking running seriously. Speed was the proxy for getting good at it. Both worked, and both ran out at the same time, once the last number landed.
What is left is the running.
Which is what the numbers were for.
