What Inbound Marketers Can Learn From Marathon Training

Yes, this blog will be a personal one.

In June of 2012, three years after my very last college field hockey season, I decided it was time to get back in shape. I started a “couch to 5k” program at a local running shop and haven’t looked back since. One 5k and four half marathons later, Quintain Marketing CEO Kathleen Booth (a marathon veteran herself) convinced me to sign up for marathon training. In late June I began a 19-week training program that would have me running a gamut of emotions. On October 27, 2013, at the age of 26, I ran the 38th Marine Corps Marathon, my first marathon.

You may be saying, “Wow, that’s awesome! I could never do that,” or perhaps you are simply thinking to yourself, “What does this have to do with inbound marketing?”

You Can

First of all – yes you can! If I had to choose the most important lesson I learned from marathon training, it’s that you can accomplish anything if you have enough conviction. Now, I am not saying you can wake up tomorrow and tell yourself you are going to run a marathon and realize that goal in two months time. You have to work hard and you have to build strength.

Every single thing you do leading up to race day has an effect on you. Be it good or bad, it is shaping your experience. You will run – a lot. You’ll start off at only 10 miles on your weekend long run, but you’ll find yourself increasing your weekly mileage from three miles three times a week to five miles twice a week, plus a seven miler thrown in there. Yes, it seems like a lot and it is. You are increasing volume. But, look at what’s happening! Your thighs don’t fit into your skinny jeans and your husband thinks you have calves like Thor. It’s working.

Pretty soon you are challenging yourself with longer runs. What seemed impossible only weeks before, you are knocking out with ease. 16 miles? Yeah, that’s a long way, but it is all in a morning’s work, and most importantly, it isn’t anything you weren’t ready for.

You have made it through almost three months of training. All that hard work, day in and day out, through the summer heat wave and those stormy mornings has brought you to the defining moment of your training – the 20 milers. You head out for your first 20 miles, excited, nervous and scared s***less. You cruised until mile 18, then you had to give those last two miles every last thing you ever had in you, but you made it. Your first weekday run comes around again and it hurts. It hurts like it never has before. After months of meticulously following your plan, running every single mile, your body retaliates. You’re injured, your knee doesn’t care and you can’t do a thing about it. You encounter your very first setback.

Setbacks happen and sometimes there isn’t anything you can do about it but shed a few (ok, a lot) of tears and move forward. Every single step should be a forward one. At this point, all you can do is read the signs and give in. Your body needs rest, so you take a break. You trust in the training you have already completed and you don’t try to beat yourself up. After a little research, you may learn that, yeah, you should have cross-trained more. Lesson learned! Take your advisor’s suggestions seriously, and just don’t do it again.

After two weeks of solid recovery time, you are back at it. You bust out a 20-mile run and you feel on top of the world! It is a month until race day. The next month is filled with injury anxiety, nursing blisters, hydrating like it is going out of style, and the perpetual fear that it all hasn’t been enough. You taper, and you cut back on the miles like 26.2 isn’t just a couple of weeks away.

You Made It

Race day is here. It’s pitch black as you get off the DC Metro at Pentagon station to make your way to the starting gates. You forget every rational germ-a-phobe fear you have about port-o-johns and you wait. You wait for the cannons that will signal the most defining 5:44:53 of your life. You start.

Every single emotion you had during any given moment in training you experience tenfold during your actual marathon. Gatorade has never tasted so good and you have never been happier to high-five that sideline stranger. You take in everything around you and you become so overwhelmed that you get to have this experience in your nation’s capital that it’s almost too much to take.

You put one foot in front of the other, and at mile 23 you wonder why the heck you ever decided to do this. You start to wonder if this race could be any longer, or if it is ever going to end. The longest two miles you have ever run are between 23 and 25. You have come so far, but you begin to doubt everything. At mile 25, you find “it”. That “it” pulls you through the last 1.2 miles, up the hill and across the finish line. You finish.

This sounds trivial, but there is nothing cooler than having a Marine salute you, shake your hand, and congratulate you on an amazing accomplishment. It is in that moment you vow to yourself to do it all again.

It’s All Relative

So, what does all this have to do with inbound marketing? Plenty. Inbound marketing takes work – hard work. The kind of work that makes your friends tell you that you’re crazy (as I write this, it is 10:30pm and my entire team is still up emailing). It isn’t just about the big things, just like training for a marathon isn’t just about the 20-mile runs (premium content). It’s about the small, repetitive stuff that happens day in and day out (blog posts and emails). It’s going to be uncomfortable and you are going to have to change your perspective. Once you commit, you are going to develop new and improved habits.

It isn’t going to happen overnight, just like training for a marathon can take up to four months (and that is only after you’re able to run ten miles comfortably). It takes patience and determination. An inbound strategy is a long-term strategy. You don’t sign on 20 clients with one blog post, but you will see results from consistent activity.

Are you a runner? Do you want to be? Since starting to run about a year and a half ago, I have accomplished things I never thought I could. A little encouragement and a will to continue forward can go a long way, literally.

Have you run a marathon? How was the experience?

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/marketing/inbound-marketers-can-learn-marathon-training-0687042?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=inbound-marketers-can-learn-marathon-training