I ran 1,000 miles this year…
Today I finally completed my New Year’s Resolution of running 1,000 miles in 2022 and I’ve learned a lot about running over my first year of training so I wanted to share 10 key lessons here.
1) Running can be really, really fun if you slow down and breathe deeply.
2) I expected to get super ripped from running… that didn’t happen. In all of my most intense training periods I felt like I gained weight because I was super hungry all the time. Don’t just use running to change how you look, use it to change how you feel.
3) I ran 1,000 miles in a year all to prepare for the 31 miles on race day. It’s not the race mileage that matters, it’s the training. An important lesson similar to “it’s about the journey, not the destination.”
4) Making time to stretch, ice, rest, and massage is as important as the running portion for me. The moment I stopped thinking about recovery was the moment I’d get some random injury.
5) Running with friends is a great way to socialize but running alone is a beautiful place to dream and get lost in your head. All my best films, epiphanies, songs and business ventures began in a Strava caption.
6) You can run anywhere and this year… I kinda did.
7) Growth is discipline in the same direction. If you wanna grow as an athlete, move your body every day. If you want to grow as a student, learn everyday. If you want to grow as a person, love and serve everyday.
8) I thought I’d be a lot faster by now but training for speed and training for distance are very different.
9) The body adapts to running way faster than I thought. There were moments early this year where running 3 miles felt hard. The longest I’d run before training for this ultra-marathon was 11 miles. Now I done over 10 half marathons and I feel really strongly that, with enough time and patience, anybody can run far.
10) Running is relative. Your “slow and short” may be “fast and long” for somebody else. A few of my neighbors in Boulder run 1,000 miles just in the summer months but, for me, it’s about setting a goal and pushing past what you think is possible to achieve it.
Here’s to big goals in 2023 🎉
Places I ran in 2022
Washington - 94.3 miles
Mexico - 26.7 miles
Tennessee - 2 miles
California - 24 miles
France - 43.2 miles
North Carolina - 33.5 miles
Spain - 56.7 miles
Montreal - 15.5 miles
Colorado - 698.6 miles
About Roo Smith
Roo is a commercial/documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Boulder, Colorado but travels all around the world for his filmmaking career. He has produced films for Outside Magazine in Ireland, camera operated for Netflix in the Rocky Mountain West, photographed among indigenous communities in Peru and Ecuador, directed videos with professional climbers in Mexico and has received notable recognition in his hometown of Orcas Island in Washington State for his work telling uplifting stories in the outdoor space.
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