“If you want to get to the end, you have to stop thinking about it.” (If you want to make it all the way, you have to stop thinking about it). A friend who runs Ultra Trails told me this one day, and I’ve never forgotten it.
On the path toward an ambitious goal, looking too far ahead risks crushing you; it drains your energy and pulls you away from what truly matters: the step you are taking right now.
When Everything Has to Be Built
I truly understood what “one step at a time” means when I started training for the Transgrancanaria Marathon: 47 kilometers with 1600 meters of ascent and over 2200 meters of descent, on technical, exposed, sun-drenched, grueling terrain.
I had never run more than 30 kilometers in the mountains, and looking at the goal in its entirety sent me into a panic. How could I possibly get there? How could I handle the necessary training? How could I endure all those kilometers, those descents, that heat?
In reality, all these questions were the wrong ones, and it was during my preparation – through ups and downs, peaks in fitness and setbacks – that I realized the best way to succeed was to stop asking them.
I focused on the single day, on the single workout. I stopped thinking of the race as a test to be overcome and started to experience it as a direction, with each workout being a step that brought me closer, little by little.
It took time and patience, but I truly started to enjoy the process once I changed my perspective.
The Goal is Important, but You Shouldn’t Always Look at It
Having a goal is fundamental. It’s what motivates us, pushes us to leave the house, to train even when we don’t feel like it. But the paradox is that the closer you look at it, the more it risks crushing you.
There will be days when it feels too far, too difficult, out of reach, and you’ll feel like you can’t make it.
Thinking about the whole mosaic helps you understand which pieces to use next, but it’s only by breaking it down that you can fit the tile you’re holding today into its right place.
For this reason, before you get discouraged by the big picture of overly ambitious goals, remember that what matters is today’s workout. The rest doesn’t exist yet.
Training Without Performance Anxiety
One of the most common mistakes I’ve made, and see others make, is wanting to “test” their fitness in every single workout. As if we had to verify every week whether we’ll be able to handle the distance, to reach our goal.
The truth, however, is that training is a slow and steady construction, and it can’t turn into a daily exam.
There are good days and bad days, moments when you feel incredibly strong and others when you feel like you’ve gone backward. It can’t be any other way; no progress, in any area of life, follows a linear path.
Accepting the process and living it with its highs and lows is the best way to arrive at the starting line ready and calm.
Training one step at a time means not wasting energy on anxiety, but putting it all into the present action and truly building something that lasts.
Transgrancanaria: The Day I Put It All into Practice
When race day arrived, I carried within me the confidence of someone who knows they have taken every step within their power.
I had given myself just one rule: no heroics, no comparisons, just listening and presence.
I started at a pace I knew I could maintain and stopped at every aid station, leaving with my cheeks puffed with bread and Nutella and Pepsi coming out of my nose. When I started the final climb at km 34, I still felt good. I offered water and gels to those around me, encouraging everyone with a smile. “Vamos, hombre. Queda poco, ya la tenemos.”
Encouraging others is always the best way to encourage yourself.
Then came the final monster, the terrible Barranco de los Vicentillos, which anyone who runs this race knows well or learns to know. A ravine of loose rocks, no shelter, and a burning sun. Inside that ravine, you can’t think about how much is left, and you can’t imagine how long it will last. You can only breathe, take one step, and then another.
The only thing that mattered in that moment was trusting all the tiles I had set in place to complete that mosaic. Now I was fitting the last piece, and I just had to be there, in the present.
When I crossed the finish line, exhausted and crying, I knew I had learned something bigger than a race strategy.
You Don’t Need to See the Summit to Climb a Mountain
The months of training – and the race itself – had taught me patience and shown me that there are no shortcuts to tackling a long journey.
The best way to face a challenge is not to try to dominate it all at once.
Stop asking yourself if you can do it and just start doing it.
One step at a time, one workout at a time.
In the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami writes: “Sometimes, taking time is the shortest way” – and that’s exactly right.
When you set ambitious goals for yourself, it makes no sense to focus all your attention on the finish line and be in a hurry to get there.
What matters is the discipline and consistency you have in staying true to the process.
The true meaning of any challenge lies in the patience, trust, and awareness that develop along the way.
If you follow that process, without obsessively watching it from the outside, one day you’ll look back and realize you’re much further along than you thought.
Not because you forced it, but because you kept walking, every day, in the present moment and in the direction of your goals.
That’s how you build something great, that’s how you go far.
One step at a time.
Laura Burzi