By 2014 I was on a liquid-only diet.

Not a choice. A necessity. Years of Crohn’s disease, decades of symptoms I’d pushed through, managed, minimised — and eventually the bill came due. Strictures had formed. The inflammation had done its work quietly, patiently, while I’d done mine. Painkillers had kept me functional. Kept me working. Kept me from having to stop and deal with what my body had been trying to tell me for a very long time.

We’d started Key Digital three years earlier. The business was growing. There was always a reason to keep going.

There’s always a reason to keep going.

The surgery was a bowel resection. I spent two days in ICU afterwards. Catherine was there. We both thought — and we’ve talked about this since, in the way you only talk about things once they’re safely in the past — that I might not come home.

I did come home.

And somewhere in the recovery, something shifted. Not a dramatic conversion. Not a moment of clarity on a hospital bed. More of a quiet recalibration. An acknowledgement that I had spent years treating my body as something to be overridden rather than maintained. That I had applied discipline and rigour and long-game thinking to the business and almost none of it to myself.

I started running not long after. Tentatively at first — you don’t bounce back from major abdominal surgery — and then with increasing commitment. And what I found, over months and then years, was that the running didn’t just make me physically stronger. It made me a better operator. Clearer thinking. More patient. Better at absorbing pressure without it accumulating somewhere it would eventually cause damage.

I hadn’t expected that. I’d thought I was just going for a run.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about entrepreneurial health, having learned it the hard way.

The body keeps score. It doesn’t send invoices. It doesn’t schedule meetings to discuss your arrears. It just accumulates the debt quietly, in the background, while you focus on everything else — until the debt becomes a demand and the demand becomes a crisis.

Most founders I’ve known are meticulous about risk in the business. They’d never ignore a structural problem in their finances or their operations for years at a stretch. They’d never take painkillers for a recurring system failure and just keep running the machine.

But they’ll do exactly that to themselves.

Because the business feels urgent and the body doesn’t. Until it does.

You are the asset. The one that can’t be replaced, can’t be insured against, and has no redundancy built in. The business can survive a bad quarter. It can survive losing a client or a key member of staff. There are versions of most business problems that you can recover from.

There is only one version of you.

Read more

The Map Has Been Redrawn

For most of human history, the deal was straightforward. You were born. If you survived childhood — which was far from guaranteed — you worked hard, physically, for most of your life. Then you got old quickly and died.

Life expectancy has more than doubled in two centuries. But here’s the thing almost nobody talks about: that isn’t because people got fitter. It’s because they stopped dying young of things that had nothing to do with fitness.

The rise in life expectancy came from clean water, sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics, and improvements in neonatal care. As a Harvard medical historian bluntly put it, most people credit medical advances for the increase — but most historians would not. The steepest rise occurred from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, before most of the effective treatments we recognise today even existed.

Our great-grandparents didn’t die young because they were unfit. They died young because infections killed them. Medicine fixed that. We got more years.

What medicine couldn’t fix — what nobody even thought to address — was what we’d do with them.

Longer Lives. The Same Old Ending.

Although people may live longer now, many are doing so with poorer physical function and reduced quality of life. We extended lifespan. We didn’t automatically extend healthspan — the years in which you are strong, capable, independent, and fully alive.

The generations before ours moved more through necessity. In the early 1960s, almost half of jobs required at least moderate physical activity. By the 2000s, fewer than 20% demanded that level of exertion, and daily work-related energy expenditure had dropped by over 100 calories for both men and women. Before that, people were out in fields, mines, and factories. Their bodies were working.

But that movement was incidental. It came from labour, not from intention. And it stopped when the labour stopped. Nobody was training at 65 with the explicit goal of staying strong into their 80s. The concept simply didn’t exist.

The latter part of the 20th century brought rapid technological advancement — computers, smartphones, digital devices — leading to a significant increase in sedentary behaviour. We engineered the physical work out of our days and replaced it with screens. We got longer lives and softer bodies.

That’s the world most people are navigating right now. More years, but no guarantee of good ones.

The Pioneers

Here is where something genuinely new is happening.

A generation of people is doing something with no real historical precedent. Not working hard because they have to. Not staying active by accident. But deliberately, consistently, structurally training into their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond — with the specific intention of closing the gap between how long they live and how well they live.

The science on what this does is striking.

Sedentary adults lose aerobic capacity at roughly 12% per decade. Masters athletes who keep training lose it at around 5.5% per decade — less than half the rate. Lifelong aerobic exercise cuts the age-related loss of muscle volume by around 50%, and the infiltration of fat into muscle tissue — one of the quiet markers of physical decline — is also reduced by around 50%.

Masters athletes show markedly greater physiological function and more favourable risk profiles for cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, frailty, and cognitive decline than their sedentary counterparts. Researchers have gone as far as saying that studying this group puts ageing back into the domain of physiology rather than clinical medicine. Which is another way of saying: what looks like inevitable decline is, in many cases, a lifestyle outcome.

And it’s never too late to begin. A study comparing masters endurance runners who had trained all their adult lives with those who only took it up after the age of 50 found no meaningful difference in athletic performance or physical composition between the two groups — despite a 30-year gap in training history.

The Gap Nobody Warned Us About

There’s a question worth sitting with — whether you’ve just sold a business, taken early retirement, stepped back from a career, or simply reached the point where you’re asking what the second half actually looks like.

We were sold an idea. Work hard, build something worth having, get out at the right time, and life after that is the reward. For many of us, getting out was exactly the right call.

But nobody warned us about the gap. The gap between the age at which you finish and the age at which, if you’ve looked after yourself, you might still be very much alive and capable. That gap could be 30 years. It could be 40.

What fills it matters. Not just financially — though we’ve written about that — but physically. The person who achieves a remarkable exit, or a clean and early retirement, and then spends the next two decades in gradual decline has, in a very real sense, won the wrong game.

Life to Your Years

I can’t tell you that what I do will add years to my life. Nobody can make that promise. What I can tell you is that it is adding life to my years — and at 56, with 80-odd marathons and ultras behind me and more ahead, I feel that difference every single day.

I started running in 2016, slowly and reluctantly, after a health event I couldn’t ignore. I had no idea what I was beginning. I’m now in the best physical shape of my life. That isn’t a boast. It’s evidence — not just of what the body can do, but of what happens when you commit to the long game and refuse to let the calendar make your decisions for you.

We are, I think, the first generation with both the longevity and the knowledge to do this differently. Not the generation that worked hard physically because they had no choice. Not the generation that sat down when the work stopped. Pioneers. Opening up territory that nobody before us ever reached, because they never had the years, the science, or the option.

The map has been redrawn.

The question is whether you’re going to explore it.

Thanks for reading The Long Run Mindset! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

If you’ve enjoyed this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful. 👇

Subscribe now

I met a man at a business event a few years ago. He’d just sold his company. Twelve years of work, a clean exit, a number that would have made most people in that room go quiet.

Someone asked him what he was going to do next.

He looked genuinely startled. Not overwhelmed. Not emotional. Just... blank. Like the question had never occurred to him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I’ll start another one.”

He wasn’t being humble. He wasn’t deflecting. He meant it. The business had been the answer for so long that he’d forgotten what the question was.

I’ve thought about that moment a lot.

There’s a version of entrepreneurial ambition that’s really just forward motion dressed up as purpose. You’re working hard, building something real, hitting milestones — and it all feels meaningful because it’s difficult and consuming and the numbers are going in the right direction.

But difficult isn’t the same as purposeful. Consuming isn’t the same as fulfilling. And a number going in the right direction is only useful if you know what you’re pointing it at.

Most entrepreneurs I’ve known — and I include my earlier self in this — can answer the what without hesitation. What are you building? A technology business. A services firm. A brand. A team. Fine. Good. All accurate.

Ask them what for and the answer gets murkier.

“Financial security.” Okay — but what does that look like on a Tuesday afternoon when you’re sixty?

“To prove something.” To whom? And once it’s proved, then what?

“Because I love the challenge.” That’s a personality trait. It’s not a destination.

None of these are wrong answers. But they’re not complete ones either. And if you’re spending ten or fifteen years of your finite life building something, incomplete probably isn’t good enough.

Here’s what I’ve come to think.

The business isn’t the point. It never was.

The business is the vehicle. It’s the thing that generates the resources — financial, but also experiential, relational, psychological — to fund the life you actually want. And if you haven’t defined that life with any clarity, then you’re essentially building a very sophisticated machine with no idea what you’re manufacturing.

You can do that for years. Decades, even. The machine will keep running. You’ll keep feeding it. And one day someone will ask you what you’re going to do next, and you’ll look startled, because the machine was always the answer and you forgot to write down the question.

I’m not telling you to stop building. I’m asking you to run both things in parallel — the business and the life you’re building it for. Not sequentially. Not “I’ll figure out what I want once I’ve exited.” Now. With the same rigour you’d apply to a revenue target or a hiring decision.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: the clearer you are about what you’re building for, the better the business decisions get. You stop chasing contracts that pay well but cost you everything else. You stop building teams in a shape that serves the business but not the exit. You start making choices that compound towards something you’ve actually chosen, rather than defaulting to whatever’s in front of you.

Read more

It was somewhere around mile eighteen on a training run last winter. Cold, dark, the kind of morning where you question every decision you’ve ever made. My legs were heavy, my head was heavier, and I had a very clear thought:

I could just stop. Start fresh tomorrow. Do it properly.

I’ve had that thought before. You probably have too. And here’s the thing — it always sounds reasonable. It always dresses itself up as wisdom. I’m not quitting, I’m recalibrating. I’m not giving up, I’m being strategic.

I kept running.

Not because I’m tough. Because I’ve learned — slowly, painfully, over years of training and a fair few mistakes — that the urge to start again is almost never about the plan. It’s about the discomfort of staying with one.

We live in a world that sells reinvention. New year, new you. New system, new results. New journal, new habits, new morning routine. There’s an entire industry built on the idea that the reason you haven’t achieved what you want is because you haven’t found the right framework yet.

It’s nonsense. And deep down, you already know it.

The diet you abandoned in February wasn’t flawed. The exercise habit you dropped in March wasn’t wrong. The creative project you shelved in April wasn’t a bad idea. They all had one problem: you stopped doing them before they had time to work.

That’s not a plan problem. That’s a consistency problem. And no new plan fixes a consistency problem. It just delays the reckoning.

Here’s what I’ve noticed after 80-odd marathons and ultras: there is no point in a long race where it feels good to keep going. There are good patches and bad patches, but there is no moment where your body says yes, absolutely, this is completely comfortable, crack on. The whole thing is a negotiation between what you planned to do and what feels possible right now.

The runners who finish aren’t the ones with the best training plans. They’re the ones who decided, somewhere on a cold hill at mile thirty, that the plan they had was good enough — and that abandoning it would cost more than finishing it.

Life works the same way. So does building anything worth having.

And before someone says it — yes, some people can’t run right now. Knees. Shin splints. Something that flared up and never quite settled back down. I hear it a lot, and I’m not dismissing it. Injuries are real.

But here’s what running has taught me about injury: more often than not, the pain isn’t the problem. It’s the signal. The shin splints aren’t telling you to stop moving. They’re telling you that something underneath — a weakness, an imbalance, something you’ve been ignoring — needs attention. The answer isn’t rest and hope. It’s stretching you’ve been skipping, strength work you’ve been avoiding, the slow unglamorous effort of fixing the thing that was always slightly wrong.

That’s not a comfortable message. But it’s an honest one.

And it applies well beyond running. Most of the things we quit — we quit because they’ve exposed something. A gap in our discipline. A habit we haven’t built yet. An area we’re weaker in than we’d like to admit. The plan didn’t fail. It found the weakness. And instead of doing the work to fix it, we found a new plan that hadn’t found it yet.

The weakness is still there. It always is. Until you deal with it.

Think about the last thing you quit. Not gave up on forever — just paused, restarted, revised, or quietly shelved.

Was the plan actually wrong? Or was it just hard, and hard started to feel like a sign that something was wrong?

There’s a difference between a plan that genuinely isn’t working and a plan that’s working but uncomfortable. Most people can’t tell the two apart because they abandon ship before there’s enough data to know. Three weeks into a new habit isn’t enough. Six weeks of a new approach to your health, your relationships, your mornings — that’s barely a warm-up.

Consistency doesn’t feel like progress. That’s the cruel trick of it. It feels repetitive and unglamorous and slightly boring. Right up until it doesn’t. Right up until you look back six months later and realise the hill got smaller, or the kilometres got easier, or the thing you were building started to look like something real.

But you have to stay with it long enough to find out.

I’m not telling you to ignore bad plans. Some plans are wrong. Some things genuinely need changing. The key is asking an honest question before you reach for something new:

Am I quitting because this isn’t working — or because it hasn’t worked yet?

That’s the question. It’s not always comfortable. It doesn’t always have a clean answer. But it’s the right one.

Because most of the time, if you’re honest with yourself, you already know the answer. You don’t need a new plan. You need to stop quitting the old one and find out what it’s actually capable of.

The plan didn’t fail you. You just left the trail before the finish line came into view.

Get back on the path.

Andy

Thanks for reading The Long Run Mindset! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

If you’ve enjoyed this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful. 👇

Subscribe now

In today’s world, it’s far too easy to pass the buck. If a hire doesn’t work out, we blame the candidate. If a business deal fails, we blame the market. If we DNF a race, we blame the weather.

But the truth I’ve learned is this: When you own the outcome, you own the solution.

Accountability isn’t a burden; it’s a tool. And the best way to sharpen that tool is to make your intentions public. I call it the “Public Contract.”

The Midnight Choice

A few years ago, I faced a real test of this. A team member had a serious accident, aquaplaning into a central barrier. Catherine and I spent the night in A&E with him, keeping his wife informed while she was stuck 50 miles away.

The problem? I was due to start a 50k challenge at 2:00 AM.

To celebrate my 50th Parkrun and raise money for Pendleside Hospice, I’d planned to run the 5k loop ten times, finishing with the official 9:00 AM Parkrun.

At midnight in that hospital, I was exhausted and drained. I could have easily cancelled. But I had already created a system of accountability that made “quitting” feel worse than running:

• The Hospice: People had already donated their hard-earned money.

• The Volunteers: People were getting up at dawn to open the gates just for me.

• The Pacer: My friend Dave had his alarm set for 1:30 AM to meet me in the dark.

Sharing Your Intentions

This is why I’m a big believer in telling people what you’re going to do. Whether it’s telling your team a business goal or sharing a training milestone on social media, you are signing a contract.

When you keep your goals a secret, it’s easy to let yourself off the hook. But when you share your goal, you invite a healthy kind of pressure. You aren’t just running for yourself anymore; you’re running for everyone you told.

I left Catherine at the hospital and met Dave at 2:00 AM. By 9:00 AM, I had 45k in my legs and stood on the start line for the final 5k. Catherine even managed to get our colleague home and make it to the finish line just in time to see me finish.

Ownership = Achievement

It is too easy to dodge responsibility. But if you hold yourself accountable—by verbalizing your goals and owning your mistakes—you can achieve things that seemed impossible when they were just “private dreams.” Every DNF I’ve had was my fault for not preparing; every successful hire was my win for getting it right.

The Lesson: If you’re struggling to stay disciplined, stop keeping your goals a secret. Tell your partner, post it on social media, or start a fundraiser. Give yourself a reason to show up when you’d rather stay in bed.

Thanks for reading The Long Run Mindset! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

If you’ve enjoyed this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful. 👇

Subscribe now

The sceptics came out of the woodwork after I announced my plans to run 100 miles on my 100th birthday.

“Andy, be realistic. You’re 58. A 100-mile run at 100? You might not even make it that far. What then? All those miles for nothing?”

I laughed. Because they’re looking at my life like a balance sheet. They think the “profit” only happens at the finish line. They think the Long Run is a transaction.

They’re dead wrong.

The Raw Story

Saturday morning. 9:00 AM.

Burnley Parkrun. Towneley Park. A 28-minute lung-buster through one of the most beautiful parks in Lancashire. My heart is thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird. My legs are heavy, but my head is clear.

I cross the line, catch my breath, and then the real training begins.

We don’t go home. A dozen of us pile into the Stables Cafe — damp shirts and all, smelling of rain and effort. Sub-20 runners. People who walked it in 45 minutes. Volunteers who spent their morning standing in the cold with a stopwatch just to make sure everyone got their time. Every age. Every background. Every walk of life. One thing in common.

The last to arrive is always Anthony. Anthony volunteers as the tail walker every single week. He walks behind the final finisher the entire way round, making sure nobody feels alone out there.

Nobody comes last at Parkrun.

We sit there for two hours. Steam on the windows. A massive slice of Victoria sponge on the table — the kind of cake that makes a nutritionist weep but makes a runner feel like a king. In summer we take our coffees outside and sit by the Rotunda, watching the park fill up with dog walkers and families who have no idea what we just put ourselves through.

We don’t talk about optimising our lives. We talk about the raw stuff. The joy of scaling a mountain at 4:00 AM just to watch the sky turn from bruised purple to gold. The silence of the woods where the only thing you hear is your own breath and the sharp, clear call of birdsong.

Then there’s the digital tribe. The Strava kudos from a mate three towns over who’s grinding out his own miles in the driving hail. The messages from like-minded lunatics who get why you’d rather have mud under your fingernails than a remote control in your hand.

I’ve met more fascinating people on a muddy single-track trail than I ever did in a corporate boardroom. Why? Because when you’re twelve miles into a run, the mask slips. You’re too tired to lie. You’re just two humans moving through the world.

If this resonates with you, there’s more every Tuesday in The Long Run Mindset — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, a resuscitation ward, and 1,564 days of running without a single day off. Free to subscribe. One email a week.

Subscribe now

The Lesson

Most people are saving themselves for a retirement that looks like a slow fade-out in front of a TV. They spend forty years protecting their joints and avoiding risk, only to find that when they finally have the time to live, they’ve forgotten how. Or worse, their body has forgotten how to let them.

If I spend the next thirty years training for that Centenarian Ultra and I drop dead at 85, I’ve still won.

I’ve won because my 70s were spent watching sunrises from peaks instead of through a window. I’ve won because my 80s were filled with the laughter of friends in crowded cafes. I’ve won because I chose to be a participant in the world, not a spectator.

The training isn’t just about the muscle. It’s about the soul. It’s about the community that keeps you honest and the nature that keeps you humble.

I’m not just building a body that lasts. I’m building a life worth living while it does.

YOUR TAKEAWAY

Check your Liveability Score. If you’re so focused on the destination that you’re ignoring the cake, the coffee, and the camaraderie, you’re missing the point of the long run.

The 100-mile goal is the North Star — it gives me direction. But the life is what happens on the way there. It’s the 28-minute blast through Towneley Park, the Strava banter, and the deep soul-level connections made in the dirt.

Go to a cafe after your next run. Don’t look at the calories. Look at the people across the table. Tell them a story. Listen to theirs.

Nobody comes last.

Thanks for reading The Long Run Mindset! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

If you’ve enjoyed this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful. 👇

Subscribe now

I used to know a founder — good business, sound fundamentals, the kind of slow-build story that actually works — who made a decision that cost him two years.

A competitor landed a big contract. The kind that gets talked about. And within six weeks, this founder had restructured his team, expanded his pitch, and started going after work that was too big, too soon, for a business that wasn’t ready to deliver it properly.

Not because his strategy was wrong. Not because the market had changed. Because someone else had gone past him looking comfortable, and he couldn’t help but respond.

Two years of strain, two years of overreach, two years of being somewhere he hadn’t planned to be. He recovered. But it cost him more than time.

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Because the pull he felt — the instinct to respond to someone else’s pace — is almost impossible to suppress entirely. I’ve felt it myself, in business and in running. Eighty-odd marathons and ultras and I still catch myself doing it. Someone goes past you at mile eighteen looking fresh, and before you’ve thought about it, you’ve picked up your pace to match theirs. Two miles later you’re hanging on. Four miles later the wheels have come off completely.

The problem is that you never have the full picture. You see their stride. You don’t see their race plan.

I watched it happen to entrepreneurs around me for thirteen years at Key Digital. Someone would be building something solid — patient, consistent, good work compounding quietly over time. Then a competitor would land a big client, or someone in their network would open a flashy new office, or they’d read about a business in their sector raising a round of funding.

And just like that, they’d change course. Start sprinting. Hire too fast. Pitch too wide. Stretch into territory they weren’t ready for.

Not because the fundamentals had changed. Because someone else had gone past them looking comfortable.

There was one year — probably year seven or eight — when a competitor won a contract that stung a little. Bigger than anything we were chasing at the time. There was pressure, unspoken but felt, to respond. To go after larger work faster than we were ready to deliver it properly.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table with Catherine going through it. All the reasons we should react. All the logic that made response feel like strategy.

She listened to all of it. And then she said: “They’re not us, though.”

Not a question. Not a debate. Just four words that cut straight through the noise.

They’re not us. Different margins, different overheads, different pressures, different definition of a good outcome. Maybe they needed that contract in a way we didn’t. Maybe they were buying revenue to paper over something else. Maybe they’d timed it right and got lucky. We had no idea. What we knew was our race. Our plan. The number we were building towards, and the kind of business we wanted to be when we got there.

We didn't change course. We stayed at our pace. And a few years later, Catherine and I walked away with our number.

Read more

I’ve always found it fascinating: I see more people hitting the wall or needing medical assistance in half marathons than in 100-mile ultras.

Why? Preparation.

Most people think they can “wing” 13 miles. Nobody thinks they can wing a hundred. And that difference in attitude changes everything — before they even get to the start line.

The Further You Go, The More The Small Things Become The Only Things

As the distance increases, the margin for error shrinks towards zero.

Marathons force you to think about fluid and fuel. 50ks make you consider navigation and chafing. 50 miles require a plan for changing weather and GI issues. And 100 miles demand a strategy for footcare, mental hallucinations, and even 15-minute “dirt naps” in a hedge at 3am.

It’s not that longer races attract more serious runners. It’s that longer races make you serious. The distance does the work. It strips away the illusion that good intentions and a decent pair of trainers will see you through.

Half marathon runners get caught out because the distance doesn’t demand a plan. It allows you to be underprepared and still finish. Most of the time.

Until it doesn’t.

The Pendle Way

A few years ago, I lined up for the Pendle Way in a Day — a 40-mile ultra, over Pendle Hill and around the surrounding fells, usually run the first weekend of February.

I should have known what February in Lancashire meant. I did know. I just didn’t act on it.

The conditions that day were brutal. Driving rain and wind from the off, temperatures dropping below zero as we climbed. By mile ten I was soaked to the skin. Not damp — soaked. The kind of wet where your gloves are heavy and your jacket has stopped doing anything useful. By mile fifteen I was wearing every piece of kit I owned and it wasn’t enough. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t even get my gloves off to open a gel.

I was shuffling across an exposed fell in sub-zero wind, my body beginning to shut down. Not dramatically. Quietly. That’s how hypothermia works — it doesn’t announce itself. It just starts making decisions for you.

What saved me wasn’t fitness. I had plenty of that. What saved me was knowing the route. I’d recced it. I knew exactly where I was, and I knew where the next road crossing was. I called Catherine, walked to the road, and she picked me up.

Another hour out there and I’m not sure the story ends the same way.

I retired, called the race officer, and sat in a warm car feeling equal parts relieved and humiliated. I’d underestimated the conditions. I had the miles in my legs — I didn’t have the kit on my back.

The Long Run Mindset is free. If you’re reading this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful.

Subscribe now

The Bowland Ultra

A few years later, I learned the second half of the lesson.

The Bowland Ultra — 45 miles over the Bowland Fells in January. I turned up properly this time. Layers sorted, nutrition planned, waterproofs tested. I’d done the work.

The fells were stunning. Snow-covered and silent, the kind of morning that makes you remember why you do this. Beautiful, but unforgiving. In places the snow was knee-deep on the path. Step off it — and out there, covered in white, you couldn’t always tell where the path was — and you’d go in waist-deep. Every step demanded attention.

Descending off one of the fells, I hit a patch of ice. I’d put my snow spikes on by then, but it wasn’t enough. I went down hard.

The fall itself wasn’t serious. Winded, shaken, a bit battered — but nothing broken. I got up, took stock, and started moving again. That’s when the back pain started. Not sharp. Deep. The kind that tightens with every stride until running becomes unbearable and even a slow shuffle feels like a negotiation.

I made it to the next checkpoint. Then I retired.

Here’s the thing though: I was warm. I was dry. I was safe. I made a clear-headed decision based on a real assessment of my body, not a panicked scramble for the nearest road. I’d got the kit right this time. I just couldn’t finish. And that’s a completely different kind of DNF.

The Cost of Underestimation

Two DNFs. Same fells, roughly. Very different outcomes.

In the first, poor preparation nearly cost me my health. I had the fitness but not the kit, and I was lucky the route knowledge was there to bail me out.

In the second, good preparation meant a bad day stayed a bad day. It didn’t become a crisis. I retired on my own terms, not the mountain’s.

In business, poor preparation costs you a bad quarter. In the fells, it costs you your health. Sometimes more.

The difference isn’t talent. It isn’t even experience, necessarily. It’s whether you took the conditions seriously before you got into them.

The Recce

The word “recce” comes from military reconnaissance. Going ahead. Checking the ground. Finding out what you’re actually dealing with before you commit.

Every serious ultra runner does recces. Not because they’re nervous — because they’re professional about it. They know that familiarity with the route is a form of kit. Knowing where you are when things go wrong is the difference between a controlled retirement and a mountain rescue callout.

I see business owners who skip the recce constantly. They have goals — vivid, detailed, motivating goals. But they haven’t walked the route. They haven’t stood on the hill on a quiet Tuesday and asked themselves: what happens here if the weather changes?

A goal is where you want to go. A recce is finding out what stands between you and it.

Don’t mistake the two.

A goal without a plan is just a dream.

And on an exposed fell in February, dreams don’t keep you warm.

Ask yourself honestly: do you have a plan, or do you have a goal with a hopeful face on it? Have you done the recce — on your finances, your health, your business — or are you assuming the conditions will stay kind?

They won’t always. The weather will change. The question is whether you’ll be ready when it does.

If you’ve enjoyed this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful. 👇

Subscribe now

Stephen Covey said it thirty years ago and every business leader nodded along.

Begin with the end in mind.

They wrote it in their notebooks. They applied it to the next negotiation, the next product launch, the next quarterly target. They got very good at beginning specific projects with the end in mind.

And then they went back to building a business with no defined finish line.

Most entrepreneurs I know have never written the number down.

Not the revenue target. Not the EBITDA multiple. Not the profit target. The number. The one that means you never have to take a meeting you don’t want, a client you don’t like, or a job you don’t need. The number that means the business has done its job and you can get on with living.

Covey’s principle is taught in boardrooms and MBA programmes around the world. It gets applied to projects, negotiations, and five-year plans.

Almost nobody applies it to their business exit. Their career. Their life.

And that absence — that single unanswered question — is quietly running in the background of every decision they make.

Here’s what makes it harder.

The number isn’t just a figure. It’s a decision about what enough actually means. And most people avoid that decision for their entire career, because answering it honestly requires you to look past the image of success and ask what you actually need.

Not what sounds good at a networking event. Not what impresses people who don’t know your margins. What you genuinely need to live the life you want, on your terms, without the business consuming every waking hour until there’s nothing left to spend the money on.

That’s a harder question than it looks.

And then there’s lifestyle creep. The thing that makes the number a moving target for people who never pinned it down.

Here’s where entrepreneurs specifically get caught. It’s not a salary increase that does it — entrepreneurs don’t get pay rises. What happens is subtler. The business does well. The draws get bigger. The reinvestment decisions get more comfortable. The house gets better, the car gets better, the holidays get better. None of it feels excessive in the moment. Each decision feels like a fair reward for what you’ve built.

But nobody stops to count the cost in time.

That’s the calculation most people never make.

This is The Long Run Mindset for Entrepreneurs — a paid newsletter about the long game. Exits, financial freedom, and what comes next. If you’ve landed here for the first time, you might also enjoy our free Tuesday newsletter — The Long Run Mindset for a Life Worth Living — which is available to all subscribers and covers the bigger picture: running, health, mindset, and life after the exit.

The full article continues below for paid subscribers. You can unlock everything for £5 a month.

[Subscribe for £5/month →]

Subscribe now

Business class to New York is a genuine pleasure. I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t have it. But what does it actually cost in time? In years of your working life? If your business needs to be worth an extra £200,000 at exit to fund a decade of business class travel, is that trade worth making? One more year building? Two? Five?

Only you can answer that. But you can only answer it honestly if you’ve defined what enough looks like first.

The same question applies to everything. The second home. The watches, the cars, the restaurants. Every upgrade to the lifestyle is a decision about how long you’re prepared to keep building. Most people make those decisions without ever doing that maths.

I’m not arguing against living well. Quite the opposite.

The point is that improving your life and wasting the years you have left are not always different things — and without a clear number, you can’t tell which one you’re doing.

I’ve watched people build for twenty-five years who could have walked away at fifteen with everything they actually needed. The extra decade bought them a bigger house and a better car and cost them the retirement they’d promised themselves.

They didn’t know what enough was. So they never stopped.

Catherine and I wrote our number down early. Not as a wish. As a target.

It shaped every decision we made for thirteen years. What we reinvested. What we drew. What we refused to do. When we almost walked away in 2013 and chose instead to go all in one last time. When a broker called while I was isolating in bed with Covid two weeks before our wedding — and I actually listened, because we were close enough to our number to make the conversation worth having.

We didn’t deprive ourselves. We made deliberate choices about what was worth having now and what we were prepared to wait for. We knew the cost of every upgrade in time, not just money.

When we eventually walked away with our number, it wasn’t luck. It was the result of beginning with the end in mind — not for a project, but for the business and the life.

Covey was right.

Begin with the end in mind.

He just didn’t say it loudly enough about the things that matter most.

If you’re building something right now and you haven’t written the number down — not just the exit target, but the life it needs to fund and what that life is genuinely worth in years — that’s the most important thing you’ll do this week.

Not the sales call. Not the strategy deck. Not the LinkedIn post.

The number. What it funds. What it costs in time.

Because a business without a finish line isn’t a vehicle.

It’s a treadmill.

Andy Ratcliffe writes about the long game — exits, financial freedom, and what comes next.

The injury, the Vivos, and why “it doesn’t always get worse” might be the most important thing I know.

Twenty weeks out from the 130 mile Liverpool - Leeds Canal Race, and I’ve just lost three weeks of training to a swollen foot. Let me tell you what happened, what I’ve learned, and why I ended up buying a bike.

The background first. Training had been going well — 50k Tuesday long runs for four consecutive weeks, which were doing exactly what I needed them to do: revealing weaknesses. Two things kept showing up. Weak glutes. And persistent pain in my first and second toes on my right foot.

The terrain on the LLCR is different from anything I’ve raced before. Flat, hard, tarmac and compact surfaces with the occasional grass or mud section thrown in. My usual minimalist shoes are brilliant for technical mountain or fell terrain — the biomechanical chain handles the impact beautifully. But over 35 hours on hard flat ground, that chain has to absorb a very different kind of punishment. I’ve been trialling different shoes each Tuesday to work out what actually performs on this surface, and there’s still plenty to figure out. Being at the end of August, sweat is going to be a real problem — keeping my feet dry, managing shear, avoiding blisters. That stuff can end a race. The fact I can change shoes at checkpoints makes this one of the most important things I need to get right before August.

Which brings me to the Vivos.

When I first transitioned to barefoot shoes, I bought two pairs of Vivobarefoot — the ones everyone raves about. They never worked for me. After about an hour they’d rub the top of my feet and I’d be done. One pair has about 150 miles on it; the other has six. Two very expensive paperweights. Sensible Andy would have donated them months ago. Instead, I decided to get my money’s worth.

I wore a pair for parkrun. Three miles, a bit of rubbing, feet fine the next day. I wore them again the following day. I remembered immediately why I’d stopped. Cut the run short.

A couple of days later I did my Tuesday long run in my cushioned trail shoes — the ones that carried me through 113 miles on the Summer Spine Challenger last year. No rubbing. A small amount of the toe pain I’d been experiencing, but nothing to worry about. Until I took my shoes off.

My right foot was swollen like a balloon.

Matt, my physio, came the next day. He flushed a lot of the swelling away and was fairly confident it wasn’t a stress fracture — just bruising. Reduce the mileage. Do these rehab exercises for your toes and glutes. Then come back gradually.

Any runner knows what comes next. Two weeks of reduced mileage, barely 12 miles in a week where I’d been doing 50 to 60. No pain during runs. Pain and slight swelling after every run. It wasn’t getting better, and I’d convinced myself it was a stress fracture — which, combined with developing calf tightness and the early signs of plantar fasciitis, had me spiralling into a pretty dark place. I stopped running altogether for nearly a week.

The Long Run Mindset is free. If you're reading this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There's a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful.

Subscribe now

I went back to Matt fully expecting to be sent for an X-ray.

He talked me through every possibility — an oedema (bruising), a stress fracture, arthritis. The arthritis was the least likely given how quickly it came on. The oedema was the most likely and would also explain the other niggles. Stress fracture was still on the table, but here’s the thing: the treatment for both a stress fracture and an oedema is rest. So we’d treat it as an oedema and see.

And then Matt said something that only works because he knows me well: don’t stop running, because I know that’ll affect your mood too much, and then you probably won’t do the rehab either. If the swelling or pain gets too bad, get on a bike.

That afternoon I bought a bike.

An exercise bike, to be specific. It sits in the corner of the room looking very pleased with itself. Brand new, slightly smug, and so far entirely unridden. I’m not ruling out the possibility that it becomes the world’s most expensive coat rack. But the point is, I had a plan — and having a plan was enough to stop me doing something stupid.

The next morning I did my go-to fitness test — half a mile from home to Gorple Track, a three-mile route with 1,000 feet of ascent up to Gorple Rocks. What we call the Big Rocks. It’s a tough climb, and the descent demands concentration. I’ve done it enough times to know exactly what my body is telling me up there.

I was expecting to turn around halfway. Either fitness or foot pain was going to stop me.

Something amazing happened instead. I felt strong. I enjoyed every step. I came home after seven miles with no pain, no swelling, and two Strava segment PBs.

I’ve run every day since.

When this goes out on Tuesday, I’ll be heading out on my first long run in four weeks. I know I’ve lost fitness — and I’ve had to sit through the banter from friends. It’s those silly shoes you wear. You need a rest day. You’re doing too much. On the face of it, they’re not wrong. There’s truth in all of it.

But here’s the lesson.

Everything has a cost. I paid the price for a combination of overtraining and being tight with my money over the Vivos. And I also gained something — knowledge about what my feet need for this race that I wouldn’t have without those miles.

The old mantra held true: it doesn’t always get worse. That seven-mile run on Gorple could have ended in the X-ray department. It didn’t.

And once again, I’m grateful for the power of the crew.

Matt knows me. Within 24 hours I went from frustrated and grounded to back on the fells — not because of a magic fix, but because he gave me the right advice for me. We talked through the risks honestly. We agreed we’d deal with whatever happened. That’s what you need from a support team.

The bike, for its part, has so far contributed nothing whatsoever. But I feel better knowing it’s there.

Enjoyed this? Share it with a runner who needs to hear that it doesn’t always get worse.

Share

And if you’re reading this and not yet subscribed, the best thing you can do to help is hit the button below — it takes ten seconds and it means the world. There’s a paid tier too if you ever want more, but free is absolutely fine and genuinely helpful.

Subscribe now

The Long Run Mindset for a Life Worth Living — every Tuesday.

In June 1986, Andrew Ridgeley walked away from one of the most successful pop acts in the world.

Wham! had sold over 30 million records. Six UK number ones. Sellout tours. A concert in China — the first Western pop group to play there. They were at the height of their fame, not the end of it. Nobody was forcing the decision.

Ridgeley made it anyway.

Years later he was asked about the split. He corrected the interviewer. It wasn't a split, he said. They brought Wham! to a close in a manner of their own choosing. He knew George's future lay outside the band. He knew his own future did too. So they finished it properly — a farewell concert at Wembley Stadium in front of 72,000 people — and walked away on their own terms.

Ridgeley moved to Cornwall. Quiet life. Out of the spotlight.

George Michael stayed in the game. More albums, more tours, more headlines — the brilliant and troubled solo career of one of the greatest voices of his generation.

George Michael died on Christmas Day 2016. He was 53.

I'm not drawing a simple moral from that. George Michael's life was his own and the reasons for how it ended are complex and not mine to reduce to a business lesson.

What I am saying is this.

One of them knew when. He made the decision himself, while the choice was still his to make, and built a life on the other side of it. The other stayed in the game until the game ended it for him.

The question this newsletter exists to ask is a simple one.

Will you know when?

Most entrepreneurs I know have a vague idea of when they want to exit.

Fifty-five. Sixty. When it feels right.

What they don't have is a plan for recognising the moment when it actually arrives. And that gap — between the intention and the ability to act on it clearly, at the right time, for the right reasons — is where a lot of very good exits go wrong.

The moment doesn't announce itself. It doesn't arrive with a fanfare or a sign that says *this is it, you're done, you can go now.* It arrives quietly — in a broker call you nearly didn't answer, in a morning when the answer to a question you've been asking yourself for years is finally different from what it's always been.

And if you haven't done the work to recognise it, you'll miss it. Or worse — you'll feel it and talk yourself out of it, because there's always one more year that would make the business worth a little more, one more thing to fix before it goes to market, one more reason why now isn't quite right.

I know this from my own experience.

The broker called while I was isolating in bed with Covid, two weeks before our wedding. I nearly didn't answer. Something made me pick up — and I've thought about what that something was many times since. It wasn't desperation. It wasn't exhaustion. It was readiness. A quiet, settled sense that we were close enough to our number to make the conversation worth having. For the first time in thirteen years of building, I could hear the question “have you considered selling?” without the automatic internal response that said “not yet, not now, too much still to do.”

Read more

In all my years running sales teams, the biggest mistake I saw wasn’t a bad pitch—it was the failure to ask for the order.

I took it so seriously that when I was interviewing candidates, if they didn’t have the stones to ask for the job at the end of the interview, they didn’t get it. Period. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. It’s the same in life: You only catch the fish in the pond you are fishing in. If you fish in a small pond, don’t be surprised when you only catch minnows.

The Power of the BHAG

I’m a big believer in the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).

There’s an old saying: “Aim for the stars and you might hit the moon.” Most people do the opposite. They set “realistic” goals. They decide to build a business that makes £50k a year, or they decide to run a 10k. The problem? Once they hit that 10k or that £50k, they stop. They’ve arrived.

If you decide you’re going to run 100 miles or become a multimillionaire, the scale of the ambition changes your behavior. Even if you “fail” and only get halfway to a 100-mile goal, you’ve still run 50 miles. That’s five times further than the person who set the “realistic” 10k goal.

Grow or Shrink

My dad taught me a vital lesson in business: You are either growing or you are shrinking. There is no such thing as standing still.

I’ve found this to be a universal law. Whether it’s your finances, your fitness, or your health—the moment you stop pushing for growth, you’ve started the process of shrinking. This doesn’t mean you don’t use S.M.A.R.T goals for the day-to-day tactics, but those small steps must be leading toward something audacious.

The Missing Link: Constant Assessment

The part people miss isn’t the “setting” of the goal — it’s the relentless review.

In business, you don’t just set a budget and check it a year later. You assess, review, and amend constantly. When I’m training or running a long race, I’m doing a continuous audit of my pace, my fuel, and my form. If the “market” changes (or the weather turns), you pivot.

The Lesson: Don’t be afraid to fish in the big pond. Set a goal that scares you a little, ask for the order, and never settle for “standing still.” If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. Which one did you do today?

The LLCR. 130 miles along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, non-stop, one of the toughest ultras in the UK. It’s on my calendar, and it’s a massive milestone. But if I told you it was the “end goal,” I’d be lying.

I’m training for something much bigger. Something that scares the hell out of most people: The Marginal Decade.

I’m training for a 100-mile run on my 100th birthday.

And if I’m honest? I’m training to be the 100-year-old who can still stand in an airport queue without a wheelchair, lift his own luggage into the overhead locker, and climb the steep concrete stairs at Turf Moor to watch the mighty Clarets.

The Raw Story

Last week, I was doing strength work in my living room. No fancy gym. No chrome machines. Just me, some weights, and the floor. My knees were clicking like a geiger counter and my breath was coming in ragged stabs.

Why? Because a few years ago, my body broke. I was a CEO chasing money, and I nearly ran out of time before I ran out of cash. I realized then that the most expensive car in the world is useless if you don’t have the strength to open the door.

Most people “retire” and then sit down until they can’t get back up. They treat their 80s and 90s like a waiting room. I treat mine like a training camp.

The record for the oldest 100-mile finisher? It’s currently held by men like Wally Hesseltine, who crushed a 100-miler at 80 years old, and Nick Bassett, who is still setting records in his 80s. But the one that stays with me is Fauja Singh — the “Turbaned Tornado” — who ran a full marathon at 100 years old.

He didn’t start running until he was 89. If he can start at 89, I’ve got no excuse at 57.

If this resonates with you, there’s more every Tuesday in The Long Run Mindset — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, a resuscitation ward, and 1,564 days of running without a single day off. Free to subscribe. One email a week.

Subscribe now

The Lesson

The strength training I do at home isn’t just about the LLCR. It’s Functional Longevity.

When I’m doing lunges in my kitchen, I’m not thinking about the canal path — I’m thinking about the moment I trip on a curb in twenty years. If I have the muscle memory and the core strength, I stumble — but I don’t hit the deck. I don’t break a hip. I keep walking.

We spend our working lives chasing a “number” for retirement. But what’s the point of the number if you’ve run out of health?

As Dr. Peter Attia says: “If you want to be able to pick up a 30lb grandchild when you’re 80, you need to be able to do much more than that now.”

YOUR TAKEAWAY

Train for the Centenarian Decathlon. Pick 10 things you want to be able to do when you’re 90. Get off the toilet? Carry a bag of groceries? Walk 2 miles?

The world keeps turning. Your current crisis is just weather. Don’t wait for a gym membership. Do ten squats in your kitchen right now.

I’m training for the 100-mile birthday. What are you training for?

📬 WANT MORE LIKE THIS? I publish every Tuesday — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, business failures, and a resuscitation ward. All exploring one question: What does endurance teach us about life and business? Subscribe free below — one email a week, lessons from the long run. 👇

Subscribe now

Imagine if a pharmaceutical company announced a new “magic pill.” A single daily dose proven to slash your risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. It would be the most successful product in human history.

But that pill isn’t in a pharmacy. It’s found on the canal path at 6:00 AM, in the driving rain, or in that one-mile streak you refuse to break.

THE STORY

We don’t have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. We spend billions waiting for people to break, then billions more patching them together with chemical interventions. Prevention isn’t the priority. It never has been.

Here’s what a daily mile actually does to your body — and why nobody’s selling it to you.

Your heart is a muscle. Like every other muscle, it gets stronger when you use it. Regular running lowers your resting heart rate, reduces blood pressure, and cuts your risk of heart disease and stroke significantly. The research on this isn’t new or controversial — it’s been settled for decades. We just collectively decided to ignore it and wait for a pill instead.

Then there’s type 2 diabetes. Running improves insulin sensitivity — your body gets better at managing blood sugar without chemical intervention. For the millions living with or at risk of type 2 diabetes, a daily mile isn’t a nice idea. It’s a treatment. It just doesn’t come in a box with a patient information leaflet.

Running is also weight-bearing. That matters more than most people realise. It’s one of the only ways to naturally increase bone density as you age. And bone density isn’t vanity — it’s survival. Falls are the biggest cause of death in older people. Not heart attacks. Not cancer. Falls. Every mile you run on uneven ground is training your balance, your proprioception, your ability to catch yourself when the world shifts under your feet.

You’re not just running. You’re fall-proofing your future.

If this resonates with you, there’s more every Tuesday in The Long Run Mindset — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, a resuscitation ward, and 1,564 days of running without a single day off. Free to subscribe. One email a week.

Subscribe now

Then there’s what happens above the neck. Running outside — in actual weather, on actual ground — reconnects you to things a gym never can. You get the Vitamin D your body is quietly starving for. You get the immune support that no supplement replicates. And you get perspective. No matter how chaotic the business is, the sun always rises. Winter always turns into spring. Your current crisis is just weather.

THE LESSON

The reason the world isn’t taking this pill is simple: it’s hard to swallow. A chemical pill requires zero effort. The running pill requires you to endure those first few painful steps when your feet feel like they’re walking on glass.

But if you keep moving, the blood flows. Within five to ten minutes, what felt impossible becomes manageable. Motion creates momentum. Your body was built for this. It just needs you to start.

DON’T WAIT FOR THE RESUS WARD

In 2016, my world was the size of a hospital curtain. I was 47 years old and a metre of my intestine had just been removed. For 48 hours in the resuscitation ward, staring at the ceiling, I understood something I couldn’t have learned anywhere else.

Health isn’t an obligation. It’s a privilege.

Most people overestimate what a doctor can do and underestimate what they can do for themselves in a year of consistency. One mile a day is barely 13 minutes. But over 1,564 days, it’s 1,564 miles. That is the power of compounding.

YOUR TAKEAWAY

Stop waiting for a medical miracle to fix your life. You have the most powerful medicine in the world sitting in your hallway.

Lace up. Take the pill. Do the mile.

While you still can.

📬 WANT MORE LIKE THIS? I publish every Tuesday — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, business failures, and a resuscitation ward. All exploring one question: What does endurance teach us about life and business? Subscribe free below — one email a week, lessons from the long run. 👇

When I first stepped onto that treadmill after my surgery, a 46-minute 5K nearly levelled me. If I had looked at the person next to me — or worse, scrolled through a leader board of “elite” runners — I would have quit right then. By their standards, I was failing. By the world’s ruler, I was irrelevant.

But I wasn’t running against them. I was running against the version of me that lay in a resus ward thinking it was all over.

In the world of business and fitness, we are constantly told to look at the “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAGs). While I believe in aiming high, there is a trap: Comparison is the killer of pride. If you measure your progress using someone else’s ruler, you will always feel short.

The Trap of the Other Man’s Ruler

I’ve run 75 marathons and ultramarathons. I have covered 113 miles in a single go. But let’s be honest:

• I will never run a sub-3-hour marathon.

• I will never clock a sub-20-minute 5K.

• I am not the fastest, the strongest, or the most “natural” athlete.

If I made those times my metric for success, my 75 finishes would feel like 75 failures. But they aren’t. They are victories of resilience, evidence of a body that was once failing and is now thriving.

In that famous book Who Moved My Cheese?, the characters who survived were the ones who stopped complaining about the old “cheese” and started moving into the maze on their own terms. They stopped waiting for the world to be fair and started navigating their own path.

If this resonates with you, there’s more every Tuesday in The Long Run Mindset — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, a resuscitation ward, and 1,564 days of running without a single day off. Free to subscribe. One email a week.

Subscribe now

Why “Completing” Beats “Competing”

When you compete, you are at the mercy of someone else’s talent. When you complete, you are only answering to your own potential.

• The Corporate Trap: In my 20s, I lied on my CV and chased titles because I thought I had to keep up. I was miserable.

• The Business Pivot: When we were insolvent in 2013, the “experts” told us to quit. By their ruler, we were broken. By our ruler, we were just getting started.

• The Health Journey: My “race” wasn’t about the podium; it was about being able to eat an apple and run along a canal without a hospital bed waiting for me at the end.

Your Long Run

You might be starting today with a “5K” that feels like a mountain. You might be looking at a business idea and feeling small because you aren’t a tech giant yet.

Stop. Put away their ruler. Your progress isn’t defined by how much faster you are than the neighbour; it’s defined by whether you are a step further than you were yesterday.

The Long Run Mindset isn’t about being the best in the world. It’s about being the best version of you over the duration of your life.

Run your own race. Finish your own journey. That is where the real pride lives.

📬 WANT MORE LIKE THIS?

I publish every Week — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, business failures, and a resuscitation ward. All exploring one question: What does endurance teach us about life and business? Subscribe free below — one email a week, lessons from the long run. 👇

Subscribe now

“You’ll regret that, Andy.”

The person at the bus stop points at my mud-caked trainers. They’re leaning on a cane, barely sixty. “Running ruins the knees. Friction, mate. Like brake pads wearing down.”

I nod. I keep moving. I’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s the biggest lie in health.

THE STORY

My physio, Mat, comes to the house. Costs me £40. We’re in the kitchen. No waiting room. No elevator music. Just the truth.

“Andy,” he says, leaning against the counter. “My diary isn’t full of ultra-runners. It’s full of people who live on the sofa. Their joints aren’t worn out. They’re seized.”

Mat tells me about his other patients. Not ultra-runners. People who stopped moving years ago. Their joints aren’t worn out — they’re seized. Stuck solid from the inside.

“They get three basic exercises from the NHS,” he says. “Simple stuff. Just to wake the muscles back up. But they don’t do them. Too much effort. Too pointless. They’d rather wait for me to fix them with my hands while they refuse to move their own legs.”

Then there’s Fiona Oakes. Had her entire right kneecap removed at 17. Doctors said she’d be lucky to walk. She ran marathons on every continent and broke world records. No kneecap. Just the refusal to accept the story someone else wrote for her.

If this resonates with you, there’s more every Tuesday in The Long Run Mindset — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, a resuscitation ward, and 1,564 days of running without a single day off. Free to subscribe. One email a week.

Here’s what nobody tells you: running is linear. The same movement, repeated. It’s the twist that breaks knees — the Sunday League tackle, the sudden pivot, the torsional snap. Those are the real killers. Running? Running is the grease the engine needs.

But we’d rather buy the solution than do the work. People drop £180 on shoes with enough foam to float a boat and wonder why nothing changes. They won’t spend £40 on someone like Mat to tell them their gait is a wreck and their glutes have been asleep for a decade.

THE LESSON

Your body isn’t a car with a fixed mileage. It’s an adaptive machine. It gets stronger under stress — if you respect the mechanics.

The exercises Mat gives you aren’t pointless. They are the blueprint. But people would rather buy a new pair of Nikes than do ten minutes of glute bridges. The human knee is a masterpiece of evolution, but it hates being stagnant.

Rust is a choice. Motion is the cure.

YOUR TAKEAWAY

Stop listening to people who haven’t seen their own feet in a decade. If your knees hurt, don’t sit down. Fix your form. Strengthen the chain. Pay the professional to look at your movement, not your shoes. Stop waiting for a miracle and do the work.

Don’t save yourself for death. Arrive at the finish line completely used up.

📬 WANT MORE LIKE THIS? I publish every Tuesday — stories from 75+ marathons, ultras, business failures, and a resuscitation ward. All exploring one question: What does endurance teach us about life and business? Subscribe free below — one email a week, lessons from the long run. 👇

In January 2018, I started a challenge called RED (Run Every Day) to support the mental health charity MIND. It started as a bet between four mates. Most stopped after 31 days. One friend made it to 500.

I didn’t stop until day 1,564.

That’s four years, three months, and thirteen days of never saying “no.” People ask me why I advocate for a daily streak—especially given the risks of injury or burnout. My answer is simple: Consistency is the ultimate life hack.

Removing the “Decision Fatigue”

The biggest hurdle to any goal isn’t ability; it’s the mental energy wasted on deciding whether or not to do the work. By making my run a non-negotiable start to the day (minimum one mile, outside, under 13 minutes), I removed the choice. I didn’t have to check the weather or ask “do I feel like it?” The answer was always yes.

I’ve run in Tokyo at 3:00 AM while the city was locking down for a typhoon, fueled by a bit too much sake and the need to catch the last flight out. I’ve run through Covid, where the only time I left my bed for weeks was to shuffle through my daily mile. I’ve even run on a sprained ankle, spending the rest of my day in a compression ice boot just to earn the right to go again tomorrow.

The Science of the “First Few Steps”

Running every day—especially the day after a marathon—taught me a lesson in pain management. When your feet are a mess of blisters, putting on shoes feels impossible. You have to learn the “foot management” that works for you: Do you pop or tape? One pair of socks or two?

But the biggest discovery was mental: The first few steps are always the worst. When you start a run on battered feet, the pain is sharp and immediate. But if you keep moving, the blood flows and the pain subsides. This applies to everything. Things are often easier than you imagine once you’re in motion; you just have to endure those first few painful steps.

Reconnecting with the Natural Flow

Most of us live sheltered lives—moving from the house to the car, to the office. We are climate-controlled and disconnected.

Running every morning reconnected me to the natural flow of things. I noticed the subtle shift in the seasons that you miss from behind a windscreen. It gives you perspective. No matter how chaotic the business was, the sun always rose. Winter always turns into spring. Your current “crisis” is just a season, and it, too, will pass.

The Power of “I Can”

Above all, running every day taught me Gratitude.

There were mornings where the hail was driving into my face, my legs were heavy, and every blister was screaming. It would have been easy to complain. But then I’d remember: Today, I can. I can run a mile. One day, whether through age or ill health, I won’t be able to do it anymore. Knowing that makes every painful, wet, or freezing mile a gift. When you stop looking at your challenges as “obligations” and start seeing them as “opportunities,” your entire mindset shifts.

Knowing When to Stop

My streak only ended when my body finally sent a signal I couldn’t ignore. A few days after a lymph node biopsy, I developed swelling. My physio, “Big Hands Mat,” refused to treat me and sent me to a specialist who gave me a stern lecture on the dangers of continuing. I listened. Because the “Long Run Mindset” isn’t about being stubborn to the point of self-destruction; it’s about understanding your machine so well that you know exactly when it needs a pit stop.

The Lesson: Everyone has 15 minutes. Before you check your phone or look at Strava, get outside. Don’t do it because you’re a “runner.” Do it because the privilege of showing up for yourself and being grateful for what your body can do will change your life.

In 2021, I broke a promise to myself.

I entered the Leeds-Liverpool Canal Race - 130 miles along the canal where I grew up, learned to swim, learned to run.

Then I pulled out.

For someone who has built his entire life around one simple philosophy - under-promise, over-deliver - that has sat heavily for five years.

The Way I’m Wired

I don’t make promises I can’t keep.

If I agree to meet you at 10:30, I’ll be there at 10:28.

I’d rather turn down an opportunity than commit to something I can’t deliver. I’ve frustrated people who wanted a quick “yes” when I needed time to be certain. I’ve walked away from deals that looked good on paper because something told me I couldn’t follow through.

It’s caused me problems over the years.

But it’s who I am.

Under-promise. Over-deliver. Every time.

Which is why 2021 still bothers me.

I made a promise to myself - 130 miles, start to finish - and I didn’t deliver.

Not because of injury. Not because of illness.

Because I was scared.

This Isn’t Just Any Canal

I need to tell you about this canal.

I learned to swim in it.

First time without armbands. Cold water. Our canal boat moored nearby. My dad watching from the towpath. Childhood summers that felt endless - weekends and school holidays drifting slowly between Leeds and Liverpool, the world moving at 4 miles per hour.

I didn’t know then that this canal would become the spine of my entire running life.

Every milestone happened here:

First 5K. First 10K. First half marathon. First full marathon. First 50K. First 50 miles. First 100K.

Three months after spending 48 hours in a resuscitation ward, it was this towpath where I shuffled my first post-surgery run. 46 minutes for 5K. Shaking for hours afterwards. But alive and moving.

This canal has seen every version of me.

The child learning to swim. The broken man learning to run again. The ultra runner chasing distances that once seemed impossible.

It deserves to see me finish this.

Why I Pulled Out in 2021

The honest reason?

I couldn’t get my head around running all day, all night, and into the next day.

The continuous movement. The 3am darkness on a towpath with nothing but your own thoughts. The unknown of what happens when your body has been moving for 30, 40, 50 hours straight.

I told myself I wasn’t ready.

Really, I was scared.

So I pulled out. Broke the promise. And quietly carried that with me.

What Changed

Last June, I stood on the start line of the Summer Southern Spine Challenger.

113 miles along the spine of England.

50 hours later, I was still moving.

When it ended, I felt like I could go again.

The thing I was scared of in 2021 - the all day, all night, into the next day - I’d done it. Lived it. Survived it. Even thrived in it.

The excuse I used five years ago no longer existed.

The fear was gone.

Which meant only one thing: it was time to go back to the canal.

Why This Race Is Harder Than It Looks

Everyone assumes flat is easy.

They’re wrong.

In the mountains, the terrain thinks for you. Hills force you to walk. Technical sections demand concentration. Navigation keeps your mind occupied. Livestock, weather, and constantly changing landscape break the monotony.

The course dictates when to run, when to hike, when to eat, when to drink.

On a canal towpath? There are no such instructions.

Just you. And 130 miles of flat path stretching to the horizon.

No natural breaks. No navigation. No technical challenge to occupy your mind.

Just relentless forward motion while your feet slowly fall apart on the tarmac and your brain has nothing to focus on but the miles still ahead.

The Leeds-Liverpool Canal Race isn’t easier than a mountain ultra.

It’s a completely different kind of hard.

And if I’m honest? That’s part of the appeal.

I’ve conquered the mountains. I know how to read terrain, manage navigation, use the hills.

This is new territory. New problems to solve. New version of suffering to understand.

I’ve never been able to resist a problem I haven’t solved yet.

The Promise Renewed

So I’ve entered again.

29th August 2026. I’ll be 58 years old.

The same canal. 130 miles. One continuous movement from Liverpool to Leeds.

Under-promise, over-deliver was my philosophy for 30 years in business.

In 2021, I did the opposite.

I promised 130 miles and delivered nothing.

That ends on 29th August 2026.

What’s Your Unfinished Business?

I don’t think I’m unique in this.

We all have a promise we broke to ourselves.

Not to a boss. Not to a partner. Not to a friend.

To ourselves.

The business you nearly launched. The qualification you started and abandoned. The relationship you should have fought harder for. The thing you entered once and quietly withdrew from when it got real.

Maybe you weren’t ready then.

Maybe, like me, you’ve spent the intervening years quietly proving you are.

Over the next six months, I’ll be documenting this journey - the training, the doubt, the dark towpath moments at 3am when everything hurts and the only thing keeping you moving is a promise you made to yourself five years ago.

Follow along. Not because running 130 miles is something you’d ever want to do.

But because we all have unfinished business.

Mine just happens to be 130 miles long.

📬 WANT MORE LIKE THIS?

I publish weekly - stories from 70 marathons, ultras, business failures, and a resuscitation ward. All exploring one question: What does endurance teach us about life and business?

Subscribe free below - one email a week, lessons from the long run. 👇

For years, I bought into the marketing. I wore the high-tech, super-cushioned “pillows” that every running magazine told me I needed.

Then I read Born to Run. I was captivated by the stories of the Tarahumara in the Copper Canyons, running hundreds of miles in thin sandals, and the revelation that world-class Kenyan athletes often only wore Nikes when they were competing. I was sold. I tried running truly barefoot on a treadmill, but after two miles left the soles of my feet in blisters, I retreated back to the safety of my heavily padded Hokas.

They felt great—until they didn’t. Eventually, my toes were being crushed and overlapping; I’d have to stop every five miles just to massage my feet back into a human shape. I had to stop listening to the adverts and start looking at the engineering.

The Marketing Trap

The running shoe industry is a masterpiece of consumerism. They’ve convinced us we need expensive shoes that “wear out” every 300 miles. It’s a brilliant recurring revenue model, but it ignores the fundamental truths of the foot:

1. Toe Boxes vs. Feet: Most shoes are pointed. Human feet are not. Wider toes mean better balance.

2. The Arch Paradox: If you support an arch from underneath, you weaken it. It’s basic engineering.

3. The Mattress Effect: Standing on a “pillow” shoe is like standing on a mattress; your legs wobble and work harder just to find stability.

4. Evolution: We evolved to run barefoot over millennia, not in “air bubbles.”

The Economic Upside: From 300 to 1,000 Miles

As a business owner, I started looking at the ROI of my gear. When I ran in Hokas, I had to replace them every 350 miles or so as the foam compressed and died.

Since switching to Xero shoes, I regularly get over 1,000 miles out of a single pair. They last three times as long because there is no complicated foam to break down. By stripping away the “tech,” I actually ended up with a more durable, cost-effective product.

The Reality of the Transition

Fixing the damage of decades in “normal” shoes is a “Long Run” in itself. Even now, I am still transitioning. For runs over 20 miles, I still opt for cushioned shoes. Why? Because as I get tired, my form slips. I’ve misplaced a foot on a rock and badly bruised my sole before—which is a miserable experience. I’d rather have the temporary “sore plantar” feeling after a long run than a bone bruise that stops me from running for weeks.

The Lesson: In business and in health, we are often sold “complex” solutions for problems created by the industry itself. But moving away from those solutions takes patience. It took me a year just to get into Zero Drop shoes for my daily miles.

I’ve had failed businesses and failed marriages. For a long time, I wore those like a heavy coat. I felt like a specialist in “not making it to the finish line.”

But I’ve realized that our definition of failure is completely broken. As Thomas Edison famously said:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

The “Dignity” of the DNF

I once dropped out of a race (a DNF—Did Not Finish) at the 43-mile mark. For a moment, I felt the familiar sting of failure. But then I stopped and thought: Since when did running 43 miles become a failure? Most people won’t drive 43 miles on a Saturday, let alone run them on their own two feet. To get to that 43-mile marker, I had to train, sacrifice, and show up. I used to tell my sales team the same thing: I was glad when they lost a big deal. Why? Because losing a deal meant they had done all the hard work to get into the position to be rejected in the first place. You can’t get a “No” from a big client if you’re sitting on the sofa.

Failure isn’t the opposite of success; it’s a sign that you were “in the arena.”

The “Why” Must Be Visual

To get past the 43-mile mark—or to save a struggling company—your “Why” has to be big enough to see. You have to visualize the finish line before you even lace up.

When the pain gets unbearable and the “quit” starts whispering in your ear, I use a mantra often associated with David Goggins:

“If you quit now, you’re going to have to go through all this pain all over again just to get back to where you are right now.” You started this journey because you wanted to be exactly where you are standing. Why would you want to do the first 40 miles twice?

The Result of Starting Over

When Catherine and I went “all in” on our business after my health crisis, we didn’t look at the 100-mile mark. We looked at the next ten minutes. We treated past failures not as a death sentence, but as “10,000 ways that didn’t work.”

Today, retired and reflecting from a much better place, I realize that the “Failed” label was just a training ground. You don’t learn much from an easy mile on a flat road. You learn everything when you’re staring at a red balance sheet or a DNF at mile 43.

The Lesson: Don’t be afraid of the “No” or the DNF. Be afraid of never being in the position to get one.