A few days ago I finished my third marathon. The first one was exactly 2 years ago. The second one was last year.

I finished my third marathon in 4 and a half hours. It’s not a fantastic time, but it’s not a bad time either, if you’re an “amateur” runner. 4 and a half hours means usually you run constantly with 5 minutes and 25 seconds per kilometer (not a sprint, but quite strong) and you hit the “wall” anywhere between kilometer 26 and 30 (more about the “wall” below). And after you hit the “wall” you go with an average of 6 minutes and 30 seconds per kilometer (light jogging). But that average is made of portions of walking and portions of running. It’s tough, you know, this marathon thing.

During the last two years, since I started to run marathons, a lot changed in my life as an entrepreneur also. And when I say “a lot”, I don’t mean a lot of different things emerged and made me a better entrepreneur. Nope. Only three. But these three things changed drastically the way I do business. For the better.

Thing Number One: The Subtle Power Of Inertia

When you start a marathon, you have 42.125 steps to make. Assuming you’re doing 1 meter per step, that is. Which is not always the case, because some people do smaller steps than that. But let’s approximate. Let’s say you’ll have to make 42.125 steps, corresponding to the 42.125 meters a marathon have.

When was the last time you did 42.125 things in a row, continuously? Second after second, immersed in a continuous flow, not focusing on anything else, step after step?

Running will teach you a very special skill: the skill of not quitting. And it will teach you this in a very surprising manner.

You see, when you start running, after you put your body in movement, your overall balance will be changed. You’re so accustomed with this situation that you won’t even notice. You’re just running, right?

But there is something significantly different about you now: it’s no longer safe to stop just like that, just because you feel like. If you run, and if you want to stop, just out of the blue, without any preparation, you’ll fall down. Because of the higher speed and because your body balances differently, and because it has to make different predictions about where the next step will be, and so on and so forth.

A lot of stuff changes with your body when you run. But then again, as I told you, you’re so familiar with it, you won’t notice. Until you’ll want to suddenly stop. Because, at that point, you will stumble and fall down. And it will hurt. Big time. Blood. Broken bones, twisted muscles, bruises, the whole thing. Believe me, I’ve been there. Many times.

Well, you may argue that you actually can stop all of a sudden from running, if you want: you’ll just need more space. More inertia. Instead of stopping within one step, you’ll probably need two or three steps. Well, that isn’t “all of a sudden”. It’s gradually. Fact is, if you already run, you can’t just quit. You’ll first have to slow down a bit, and then you’ll stop. You see what I mean?

It’s the same with business. Once you set up your startup, once you made this fantastic, yet very fragile machinery made of products, services, processes and people to make the first step, to move, you can’t just stop. You’re running. You’re advancing day after day with more inertia than before.

And it’s gonna hurt big time if you quit.

Thing Number Two: Drops Of Water

When you start a marathon, you have 42.125 steps to make. Ups, I think I already said that before. But let’s not talk about steps now, let’s talk about minutes.

You know how many minutes you can have from 42.125 seconds? 702 minutes. But if you estimate the average running step to be half of a second, you get a total of 351 minutes. Around 5 hours.

The average running step it’s significantly faster, but let’s stop here. It’s a good number. I finished my first marathon in 5 hours and 20 minutes. So, 351 minutes for a marathon is legit.

Well, it’s 351 minutes. Not 3 minutes. That would be your usual chat with a colleague in the company’s cafeteria. Not 35 minutes. That would be your longest string of uninterrupted concentration while working on some super important report. Nope. It’s 10 times that.

And this the second thing you’ll learn from running marathons. The power of small steps adding up. The ocean that is made of millions of drops of water.

As an entrepreneur you have (very) different days. Sometimes everything is working just great and you’re making big steps forward. Sometimes nothing works and you feel down. But as long as you get up from bed, show up, do your stuff, something will be changed. You will be one day longer in charge of your own business.

It’s the same with marathons. Step after step after step after step after step, you will finish a 42 kilometer long race. Some steps you’ll feel like flying (especially in the first part of the race). Some steps will hurt like hell (especially in the second part of the race). But as long as you keep putting one leg in front of the other, you’ll get there.

Thing Number Three: The Wall

I’m not gonna tell you again how many meters are in a marathon. I know you know that already. 42.125 (sorry, couldn’t help).

What I am gonna tell you about now is something very strange. It’s called “the wall”. Briefly put, “the wall” is a moment in a life of a marathoner when he or she will be totally helpless. And will feel defeated. Borderline dying. It’s something so brutal and so powerful, you can’t do anything against it. You may prevent it, by training better and harder, you may delay it, you may push it even over the 42 km limit, but, if you keep running, at some point you will hit it.

In medical terms, hitting “the wall” means you ran out of glycogen in your muscles. Glycogen is the thing that gets burned when you use your muscles and for that it may be considered the main fuel of movement (it’s more complex that that, but you got the idea). Your body can store a limited amount of this thing. It’s like a battery. It can be charged only a limited amount of energy. Once you start running, you will also start consuming this energy.

And, if you run long enough, at some point, you will run out of it. And you won’t be able to move anymore. A marathon is designed to make 95% of the people on this planet to hit “the wall”. The average human has glycogen fuel for about 30 kilometers, plus/minus 5 kilometers. So, 42 kilometers will most likely make you hit this beast.

What happens in your body at that level is kinda scary. I won’t go into details, but I will tell you that your entire metabolism changes. Your body starts looking for glycogen in places it never looked before. Like in your liver, for instance. You start to consume reserves of glycogen from your own liver.

But that’s just medical mumbo jumbo. How you actually feel when you hit the wall it’s almost impossible to describe. You may get face numbness. Or your members can get numb. You will space out. Feel dizzy. The only desire left in your consciousness is to lie down in the middle of the street and scream. Like I said, borderline dying.

But you’ll survive. Despite the fact that it’s just your mind, and your mind only, in charge of what happens, and despite the fact that your mind actually works against your own body, which screams from every cell: “I WANT TO STOP”, you somehow get over this. Just put one leg in front of the other and keep moving. It hurts. Your entire body hurts. But you keep moving.

Well, as an entrepreneur, I hit “the wall” many times. I ran out of resources many times. I was out of fuel for moving forward: no money, no clients, no partners, no employees, nothing. Just me and my projects, waiting somehow to witness our own death as a business.

I’m an entrepreneur for more than 15 years, but it’s only after I started to run that I made this parallel. I didn’t know I was hitting the “wall” . I thought something like “bad luck” or “market collapse”. And, many times, I did lie down in the middle of the street and screamed.

After I hit the running “wall” three times, during marathons, I changed. I don’t lie down in the middle of the street. I don’t quit. I just put one leg in front of the other and move forward. That won’t make the wall disappear. That won’t make the pain disappear. That won’t magically transform the crisis in some flamboyant success. Nope. It’s still deep shit.

I just choose not to choke on it anymore.