Time on Feet

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives, a 2x/month newsletter where I share a story about a transformation, revelation, or change in thinking that has improved an aspect of my life.

I heard this phrase when I started training for my first competitive half marathon: "Time on Feet".

I didn't quite understand what it meant.

After I finished my half Ironman in under 6 hours, I asked myself the question "how fast could I actually go if all I did was focus on the running and getting fast?"

So I set out to run a half marathon in under 1 hour 30 minutes (6:52 per mile pace).

But I had never had any formal distance running training. I would just google half marathon training plan and followed what it said. I thought that it was about getting faster with each run and by race day, I should be running faster and faster.

This time, I needed to learn from someone who was an expert so I got connected with James, a running coach in Austin who had completed 26 marathons. Before I talked with him I thought I needed to get a baseline for where my cardio was at. So I went out on the Austin lake trail and pushed myself to run 10 miles at 7:43 pace. I texted James the results, wanting to see how fast he thought I could go.

He got back to me a couple hours later "That pace is awesome but that doesn't really tell me much. You'll want to run slowly on long runs to build aerobic base…Keep the pace easy on long runs, be consistent, and grow weekly mileage by 10%".

I didn't understand.

I just ran a pretty fast 10 miler and he was telling me to run slower? Why couldn't he judge how fast I could go with 3 months of training?

I thanked him for his advice.

He responded with one last piece of feedback "The only metric you need to be worried about is Time on Feet".

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Turns out getting fast is less about how fast your times are in practice runs and more about the amount of mileage you run per week.

You start at your foundation whether its 0, 10, 20, or 30 miles then you slowly build up from there, adding about the 10% number that James mentioned. All of the runs you do are just different ways to accumulate time on feet. Track workouts are the one place pace really matters — they're more intense but for shorter distances with rest in between. You are training your body to handle running faster than you need to go on race day. Then you have easy runs throughout the week where you can go super slow. The only thing that matters is you do it. Then you have your long run on the weekends. Sometimes it can be easy with no pace and sometimes you have some splits you want to hit, but it's never going above 60-70% of your all.

It doesn't matter how fast any individual run was. What matters is that they all added up to your weekly time on feet.

I think this concept applies to life outside of running. Its not always about just the intense go as fast as you can. Its about consistency. Showing up over and over, even when you don't feel like it. Like running 20 miles on a treadmill while on vacation because there was no where else to go (true story, dont recommend).

I've been struggling with my writing routine recently. I've been getting my client work done but I havent been doing my own personal writing as much. And I think i've lost some of the momentum I had in 2024 when I was publishing this newsletter 2x a week. Not every issue was incredible. There were times I just summarized a book or podcast I consumed and shared my reflections but at least I was working on the writing muscle. I transitioned to just writing this when I had a high quality story to share. But that puts too much pressure and strain on my writing practice. Just like it would be too much to not run for a long time then decide to just go out and run 10 miles fast.

And just like with running there are different types of workouts. I have a new project of deep dive profiles on top performers that I've been working on. These are like long runs. 5,000+ words with hours of research that go into them. There are newsletters like this one that are anywhere from 800 to 2000 words where I just riff on an idea I've been thinking about. I don't overly dig into the storytelling, structure, etc. I just write. These are my easy runs. Then I have some of these newsletters where I do focus on the story arc and the narrative, these are my flash memoir pieces and can be like my track workouts.

The type of writing matters. The quality within each piece matters. But what actually makes me a better writer is that I keep doing it. Even when I'm traveling. Even when I have a busy week with client work. Even when I'm sick or not feeling like writing. Some of my best pieces were early on in 2024-2025 when I was just writing more. It's more shots on goal and I get more in a flow with the momentum of writing.

So yeah. Time on Feet. Thanks for that saying James. Thinking I’m going to put that up on my wall somewhere to be a constant reminder. 

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew