A little while ago, I wrote Part 1 of My Top Life Lessons Learned from Running Marathons. Originally, I intended to write Part 2 much sooner, but I was too busy running (which is not necessarily a bad thing)! I ran 320km in February, which I’m thrilled with, and know I’m capable of more. I already have some solo marathons planned for 2021 since it’s unlikely we will get to do any big races this year.

Lessons 1–5 can be found here.

6. What other people think of your marathon time is not important.

When you complete a marathon, you…

For the past 10 years, running marathons has been my absolute favorite hobby and my biggest passion. I ran my first marathon in my early 20s when life wasn’t going too well. I became addicted to the feeling of accomplishment that running gave me. When I started training for my first, I was totally broke and out of shape. I was at my worst, and running was the only thing that made me feel good about myself.

Since then, every marathon that I’ve trained for and ran had its’ own set of challenges, breakthroughs and life lessons. It has brought…

When I was in junior high and high school, I felt that there was a lot of pressure on women to look a certain way and to lose weight (unfortunately, there still is although efforts have been made to change that).

I would look at all the fashion magazines and envy the thin models featured in the ads. At that time, I had no idea about Photoshop and I genuinely believed that they all looked that amazing in real life.

Back then, I was also running track, cross country, playing volleyball, badminton and lifting weights. My week consisted of track…

Although I started my personal training business after graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, I still had to figure out how things work in “the real world”. Studying business is one thing but actually attempting to start a business and then successfully running it is a different ball game.

Therefore, my post-university entrepreneurship journey has had a lot of challenges, some of which were the result of my own mistakes.

Let’s take a close look at my 5 biggest mistakes:

1. Not charging enough from the start. The truth is, you will always encounter customers who are bargain hunters and…

When I ran the Boston Marathon in 2015, I re-qualified to be in the 2016 race. Prior to completing the iconic race, I had already qualified for it a few times.

I finished the 2015 race in 3:23, which means, at the time, I was over 10 minutes faster than the qualifying time for my age and gender. Since then, they’ve changed the qualifying standards, requiring all of us to run five minutes faster than before in order to earn our way into the race. This makes it even harder for runners who want to complete the Boston Marathon.

With that in mind, I have good reasons for not wanting to do Boston again for quite a while.

No…

Whether you are new to running or are a seasoned running veteran, injury prevention is extremely important. In general, new runners are more likely to get injured because they often excitedly decide to do too much, too soon and too fast.

Therefore, if you are a new runner, the faster you learn about injury prevention, the more likely you are to stick to running for a long time. Not only do injuries set you back, but they can also discourage you from continuing your running journey.

Fortunately, you can reduce your risk for running injuries with these tips.

1. Gradually…

If you are training for your first (or next) marathon, you may be looking for ways to learn from other people’s training and racing mistakes. As someone who has done eight official marathons, including Berlin, Boston, New York, Victoria, and Vancouver, as well as ran 12 marathons in 12 days for a local charity, I definitely made my share of mistakes.

When it comes to running marathons, we can never really predict how the race will go. For example, I didn’t think I would qualify for Boston on my first attempt at the distance, but the race went surprisingly well…

Many people run too hard on their easy days. Perhaps they are just unsure of the purpose easy runs serve, or, maybe, they worry about looking “slow” for all their followers on Strava.

Unfortunately, while you may look good for your followers on Strava, you are doing yourself a disservice if you are doing your recovery runs too fast.

Without a doubt, using Strava has made some runners more self-conscious of their pace (I definitely used to be, and I’ll be honest about that). At the same time, Strava, or any other similar kind of running app, is a great…