How This Guy Took A 9 Year Break And Ran 11% Faster Marathon | Adam Jaffrey

[00:00:00] Daren: This is Adam, a retired runner making his comeback and podcast production business owner. And this is the Sydney Marathon finish line, where he’ll push past every limit to crush his goal. What time are you looking to run? 

[00:00:10] Adam: 3. 29 And it’s coming from a 4 hour marathon? Yeah, I ran 3 hours 56 in Melbourne in 2016.

[00:00:17] Adam: He’s doing the whole, he’s 

[00:00:18] Daren: gotten older. But has he gotten better? So let’s see. In this episode, we’re going to go for a run through the heart of Sydney, Australia, and we’ll break down the specific mindset tools of how to run your best, whether that’s chasing your best time or just trying to finish your first five kilometer race.

[00:00:33] Daren: We’re going to touch on how persistence, not talent, builds endurance. Why enjoying the grind is actually the secret to long term running success. How focusing on progress over perfection makes something out of reach, feel a bit more obtainable and doable. And the eerie similarities between running.

[00:00:49] Daren: Podcast, production and life. I’m Darren D Lake Sub three Hour Marathoner, 10 hour Ironman Finisher and Certified Running Coach. And unlike other running brands offering quick fixes and all those inspirational quotes and all that stuff, we don’t do that because by the end of this video, the 1% better runner will transform you.

[00:01:06] Daren: Yes, you through small daily habit improvements to make you live an amazing run life. Let’s get into it. 

[00:01:12] Adam: It’s not actually about the destination, but it’s also not about the journey. It’s about who you become. During the journey. 

[00:01:21] Daren: So marathons are all about timing, obviously. You’re trying to run 329. And podcasts can be about timing.

[00:01:29] Daren: If your marathon was a podcast episode, what would the title be? 

[00:01:35] Adam: So I think that running a marathon and producing a successful podcast. actually have quite a few things in common. One of the key ones actually, not being so much about timing, but about being, um, persistence. And putting in the work, even if you’re not feeling like it.

[00:02:00] Adam: Um, and having a, uh, a mental attitude that focuses on the inputs of success, i. e. the training. Booking an interview or doing the stuff that people don’t see rather than the outcome race day getting a good time Getting podcast numbers, you know getting in the charts all that kind of stuff. I mean if my podcast had a title it would be Keep putting one foot in front of the other 

[00:02:31] Daren: That’s good, I think 

[00:02:32] Adam: it highlights the The key attributes of success both in podcasting, persistence, putting in the work, as well as running.

[00:02:41] Adam: Keep putting one foot in front of the other. I like that. That’s, 

[00:02:44] Daren: that’s actually one of the, uh, one of our statements is, uh, One step at a time. One person at a time. One step at a time. Let’s go right here. We’re going to go to the city. So, don’t want to burn his legs out today as we run through Barangaroo, which I’ve ran through many times in the last three days with runners doing all these video podcasts, but instead of the nice waterways, we’ll be doing the city.

[00:03:04] Daren: And we want to just get to the finish line area. I think Ms. Mokari’s chair, which is a big hill climb. So might be some walking involved because gotta save Adam’s legs So piggybacking on your idea of persistence you built a business on Growth obviously serving serving clients and that’s a big thing is you love waking up and serving serving your clients How does The idea and theme of Habits small incremental gains Tie into running from your business.

[00:03:48] Adam: Yeah, it’s interesting. I find that, um, since I’ve been running, I’ve noticed a lot of other business owners are runners. And, uh, I actually wonder if there’s some really good transferable lessons that come from both the hobby of running, whether it’s a marathon or whether you just, just run. Um, but it does seem that there is this really Strong overlap of the Venn diagrams between start up or business owners and, like, endurance athletes.

[00:04:21] Adam: And I think that’s got to do with this idea of persistence, this idea of, uh, doing things when no one’s watching, focused on the inputs. Um, and, like you say, this focus on Small incremental improvements. Um, so progress over perfection. Uh, the Kaizen philosophy of 1 percent improvement every day. You know about Kaizen.

[00:04:49] Adam: Yeah, the, uh, and the math is, the math stacks up. If you improve 1 percent every day, over the course of a year, that’s like a 37 times improvement. 

[00:04:57] Daren: Yep, 37. 5, yep. 

[00:04:58] Adam: Over, over 365 days. Yep. Yeah, the small improvements, if you do them every day, Uh, we’ll make the difference. Yes. Rather than a huge, monumental effort once off.

[00:05:11] Adam: Yes. 

[00:05:12] Daren: Most things, most of the time is another one of my sayings. Tripod true? What is it? Most things, most of the time? Yeah, do most things, most of the time. Yeah. You can skip days, but, and you know, you can skip things, but if you just do most of them, most of the time. Nice comprehensive swath of it all. I love what you said about perfectionism.

[00:05:33] Daren: Uh, lefty. Because, as we started out, I throw the mic on his So we have microphones on us, which I’m sure most of you don’t care about, but we are podcasters, so we care about the audio. And I throw the mic on his headband, and he immediately goes How’s it look? And I’m like, oh bro, it doesn’t matter. He goes in the bathroom.

[00:05:52] Daren: I think a full minute later, he comes out, he’s like, ah, it’s on my glasses. It looks way better. And then he’s like, oh, wait, wait, wait, let me, let me move it to the other side so it’s not in the shot. And I was like, oh man, I don’t even care. And he doesn’t do video nearly as much as I do, or at least I don’t think.

[00:06:07] Daren: So the fact that you took that pride in it, I, first off, I think it’s awesome, but just goes to show like, uh, your perfectionism. No, no shade to you. This is more on me. I’m realizing, cause I have the perfection, I’m a recovering perfectionist too. I’m realizing that perfectionism for me comes from fear. And it’s, it’s, uh, I’m sure any psychologists who know this, if you know, uh, CBT cognitive behavioral therapy and LP and all that.

[00:06:36] Daren: I want the best. I’m scared to put out an inadequate product. And now I’m just, I’m just like, I know my, I trust myself that my 80, 90 percent is still better than most people. I’m not competing with anyone, but most people’s expectations are pretty low. And I just trust like that. My, my taste as a Ira Glass would say, 

[00:06:59] Music: yeah, 

[00:06:59] Daren: it’s, uh, my taste is very good and I know my technicals will get better, but I know my technicals are good enough.

[00:07:04] Daren: Yeah. They’re good enough, and honestly, they’re just gonna get better. So, as long as it’s not trash, for trash sake. So, putting out content for the example of this. I’m not just putting it out, I know that I’ve put thought into the questions, that the video’s good enough, that the audio’s good enough. 

[00:07:18] Adam: So this is the internal battle that people like us have, it’s the constant tug of war between the 1 percent improvement of should the mic be on this side or this side to make the shot look better.

[00:07:28] Adam: I call that a 1% er. Uh huh. Because That’s me giving a shit about the final product. The input I’m making to change where the microphone is placed impacts the outcome. But, knowing what’s a 1 percent improvement because you’re striving for excellence and quality, that’s the give a shit gene, I give a shit.

[00:07:54] Adam: Knowing where that stops and where perfectionism takes over of like, oh I’m not going to ship this because it’s not good enough, is the challenge. So where do you draw the line on this is good enough because I have taste and I care about what it looks and sounds like and I’m, uh, abstracting myself from shipping something and publishing and posting it because it’s not quote unquote good enough.

[00:08:23] Adam: And knowing where that line is, is really, really hard. Yes. So straight 

[00:08:28] Daren: with the water. Yes, that is a great theoretical, almost existential, in our space existential, um, question. And I would say, I love where this conversation is going by the way, and I would say that, that is experience. Yeah, and that, that’s, uh, again, trust and belief.

[00:08:47] Daren: And, uh, sorry, now we’re gonna hit the water. Then we go right. So, you know what we’ll do? We’re gonna go right. Alright, now it’s gonna be crazy here. Oh, shit! Yeah. So, we got School of Rock here, there we go. Alright, we are at the Circular Quay. All the ships come in, got the Sydney Harbour Bridge over there.

[00:09:12] Daren: Opera House is over here. Speaking about running life business, I’m loving it. Alright, as we exit out of the chaos of Circular Quay, combination of tourism and the Sydney Marathon. Let’s take it back. If you could take a time machine and uh, sit next to yourself as you transition from working in an agency.

[00:09:41] Daren: Yep. To starting up Wavelength Creative. Yep. Your, your production company, your agency. What would you, would you tell yourself anything different? And if so, What would that be? To 

[00:09:57] Adam: do anything different? When you think about questions like these, you look back and I think the inclination is to want to try and avoid the mistakes that you made.

[00:10:08] Adam: When someone gives you the time machine question, you’re trying to Uh, how do I have done this better? And how do I avoid this massive screw up that I did? But I think you you learn and develop and grow through the screw ups. And that’s an important part of the process. I think the one piece of advice, There’s probably two things I’d say.

[00:10:30] Adam: One is like, Hey man, Like, Great job. You’re doing a hard thing. Not many people do this. Um, And, Just, Just keep up the good work. Business, podcasting, running a marathon, these are all activities that are like, kind of rare. It’s not widely done. And as a result, you don’t get these like, feedback mechanisms of like, you’re doing well.

[00:11:06] Adam: The only feedback you get is based on external validation. Yeah. You win an award. You get featured in New and Noteworthy. You hit some download milestone. Like one of the big things that I realized as I started growing my business and I started to employ people is that when you employ people none of your staff like pull you aside into a meeting and say hey boss good bossing today you bossed real well so true and so you don’t have this feedback of like I’m on the right path I’m doing a good job and so I think It’s the same with running.

[00:11:50] Adam: It’s very in your own head. It’s the same with producing a podcast. You kind of like shout into the void for like episode on episode, weeks, months, years, and you never like really get feedback from the people who are listening, except looking at like data of how many downloads or how many minutes people listen for.

[00:12:14] Adam: Now that doesn’t mean that like these activities don’t are not working. The problem is you just can’t see whether they’re working. So I think one of the two things I would tell myself if I could go back in a time machine is like, stay the path, you’re doing a good job and maybe point to a few things, a few leading indicators rather than the lagging indicators.

[00:12:35] Adam: That’s the, the inputs rather than the outcomes to use something that we mentioned before, uh, point to those. I think, so that’s one of the two things I would tell myself. I think the other thing I would tell myself is, don’t worry so much about the mistakes. I think, rather than trying to avoid making the mistakes, which I think is the natural inclination of these time machine questions, I think I would say, make the mistakes, but just make them faster.

[00:13:10] Adam: And just move through them quicker. You’re going to make them. And I could like, if I had a time machine and I could go back and I could be like, Hey, uh, here’s this like client issue that’s about to happen. Here’s how to avoid it. Great. I can avoid a problem, but there’s like a hundred other ones that I’m still going to make.

[00:13:28] Adam: Yeah. So I think we waste a lot of time and mental bandwidth on trying to worry and predict the future and trying to avoid Mistakes rather than just make them learn from them and move on. So I think my two pieces of advice to my younger self, uh, are to just give myself some positive reinforcement.

[00:13:51] Adam: You’re doing a good job. Keep it up. And two, Don’t worry so much about the screw ups. Just make them faster, learn from them, and then, uh, move on to the next success.

[00:14:08] Daren: Alright, as we go past one of the most beautiful parts of Sydney here, we got the Opera House there. Hell yeah! The Harbour Bridge, where you’re gonna be running across tomorrow. Over there, we got the water botanical gardens behind us. We’re in the domain, Sydney. Alright, here, 1 percent better. Alright. We’d like to end it off with a question about habits, incremental gains, consistency, all that fun stuff.

[00:14:31] Daren: So if you could tell a brand new runner, it’s like, Hey Adam, I’m going to run my first marathon. What’s 

[00:14:38] Adam: the one thing you would tell them to do that could trump all other things? I think the, I think the main thing is you need to make sure that you enjoy the process of actually running. If you were going to train for a marathon.

[00:14:52] Adam: Or even if you’re going to just run for fun, you need to run for fun because the actual training is brutal. I was saying to you before, training for a marathon is harder than running a marathon. Running a marathon is going to take you, you know, three, four, five hours on a singular day, depending on how quick you are.

[00:15:11] Adam: Um, training for a marathon takes six hours a week for four months in a row. running for, you know, your long runs are sometimes like three, three and a half hours in duration on a weekend. It’s a, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of time out there on the road, pounding kilometers. Like I’ve run a thousand kilometers this year, 2024.

[00:15:33] Adam: I’ve run a thousand kilometers and I don’t always enjoy the start of my run. If it’s like a cold day, if it’s raining, you know, I don’t love every single one of them. But I do enjoy how I feel during the run and after the run. Uh, and so try and get into running because you like it, not because you think you should, because you want to hit some time or you want to achieve some milestone, you have to actually enjoy the run component of it.

[00:16:05] Adam: It’s the same with podcasting. It’s the same with running your business. Uh, the analogy I’ll use here is like, you know, when you’re a little kid, people ask you what you want to be when you grow up, and I’m like, And people say, I want to be a rock star, I want to be a movie star, whatever. The problem is, the rock stars only perform to a sold out crowd in a huge stadium for a couple years of their life probably, um, and then like every other day, you know, like, like, it’s like two hours a day, basically, they do a, they do a sold out show.

[00:16:42] Adam: Um, for a couple of years of their life. And that’s the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the 1%. The The real story of being a rockstar is playing gigs at a dive bar where people are half drunk, where nobody shows up, where people aren’t really listening until you get good enough to perform at a bigger bar until you get good enough and well known enough to perform as like a warm up act to someone else so you’re still not the main thing like people think that the journey to becoming successful is the end goal and it turns out it’s this whole thing of like is the destination or is it the journey and here’s where i wrap all this up It’s not actually about the destination, but it’s also not about the journey.

[00:17:36] Adam: It’s about who you become during the journey. So I think that applies to running. I think it applies to business. I think that applies to podcasting or it applies to becoming a rock band. See who you become on the journey. You need to enjoy the process along the way. 

[00:17:55] Daren: You know, I was going to add some stuff to that, but I’m just gonna end it there.

[00:17:58] Daren: Thank you very much, Mr. Adam. You’re welcome. This is a lot of fun. Yeah, for coming on this run, sharing some miles with me. 1 percent Better Runner, Conversation Zone 2. Hope you all learned a lot out there and all the best with your marathon tomorrow. Thank you. 329, we got this. Work your plan, plan your work.

[00:18:18] Daren: All the best with podcasting. This is definitely gonna end up on LinkedIn and my YouTube. So, appreciate you, buddy. Can’t wait. Thanks, man. Quick update, Adam finished the Sydney marathon in three hours and 28 minutes, smashing his best time by almost 30 minutes and bettering his goal time by two minutes.

[00:18:38] Daren: This year, he’s gearing up to run close to a three hour, 20 minute marathon. All the best, Adam. If you want to find out more about what we talked about in this last episode that you just listened to or watched, go to this next video right here.