I picked up running again two months ago. My training culminated to running a half-marathon in my hometown of Indianapolis, IN in May 2025. The popular 13.1-mile race is also known as the “Mini-Marathon”. The course takes you to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where you run a lap on the track and head back to downtown. And it’s a big one, it is the largest half-marathon in the United States and top 5 in the world with 20,000 runners participating in the Mini alone. This year, it hosted the USA Track and Field 5K championships.
It was quite a rush, thrill, and paid off in many more ways than expected. I am not one for big socially conditioned reinforcers (e.g., running with friends, the thrill of competition), but it was nice to get back running among peers and contacting such contingencies once again.
During my training, I focused on middle-distances — anywhere from 3 to 10 miles. Getting back into running was another environmental challenge. I needed to set up my running environment, and running repertoire, with activities and behaviors that aligned with a half-marathon training goal.
These environmental changes included: 1) Updating my running gear 2) Rearranging my weekly schedule to accommodate more training volume 3) Learning to run longer distances and time domains 4) Dealing with the NEW consequences
Environmental Change #1: Updating My Running Gear
Having been a CrossFit athlete for 10+ years now, I have a decent arsenal of workout shorts, socks, and shoes. However, my Brooks running shoes were about 14 months old, and I knew that I needed new running shoes and a few extras pairs of running shorts. The shorter, the better.
Because my plan was to run 2 additional days per week, I ordered 3 pairs of running shorts to cycle through my workout laundry. Being prepared with the correct training gear is essential.
Environmental Change #2 Rearranging My Schedule
I train CrossFit, weightlifting, and some amount of cardio on a weekly basis. My steady-state cardio often includes variations of outdoor or treadmill running, and hitting the rowing, bike, or ski ergometer machines. I rested on Thursdays and Sundays for the past 2 years. With an emphasis on running 3x per week, I swapped Tuesdays and Saturdays with running, and added Thursdays, which gave me Sunday to rest.
My fitness goals include strength training at a minimum of 3 times per week and elevating my heart rate to 150 minutes per week. This new running focus checked off those boxes while allowing me time to build in additional running volume.
Environmental Change #3: Learning To Run Longer
I ran Cross Country in high school but only 5K distances in competition. I never got into running 5Ks or longer distances as an adult, even though many of my clients are runners and sign up for events all the time. Not only that, but I ran one Turkey Trot 10K with my family, but that functioned more as a fun run. My training history included only a few high school training runs that might have covered 8 or 9 miles.
Decision 1. For my longer runs, I made two decisions. The first was that I was not going to run with my phone or listen to any music. I wanted the mental challenge of focusing on my running pace, heart rate, and dealing with “feeling bored”. (This also frees you up from worrying about how to carry that extra stuff on a running armband, or in your pocket.)
Decision 2. I decided to strategically build volume leading up to the race. The fun part about this decision? I decided to register for the Mini-Marathon only 3 weeks before the event! Thankfully, the race was not sold out yet.
Up to this point, I ran once per week (Tuesdays) in the middle of my CrossFit training week for about 6 months. My training partners and I incorporate a lot of running in our CrossFit workouts but only at repetitions of 200m, 400m, 800m, or 1600m distances. Nothing longer than 1-mile at a time. Oh, and I was in the middle training for Murph with a 20-lb weight vest. Going into my half-marathon training, I had the confidence that my legs could handle the increased training load.
Here was my training volume, leading up to my training period:
With the added training volume, I knew that I needed to practice, and learn, how to fuel during the race. Running requires you to burn many calories, so you need to supplement during the race itself. The solution? Consuming sugar during the run. During my training runs, I packed fruit snacks and athletic gummies in my running shorts. Some athletes use gels, but I decided to supplement with chewables. After a few runs, a figured out how to run, breathe, chew, and swallow my sugary performance boosters.
To my surprise, fueling every 30 minutes was tricky but manageable, plus the refueling process gives you a 5-minutes task that keeps your mind off the run itself.
Environmental Change #4: Dealing with New Consequences
Consequences either increase or decrease future behavior. Throughout this process, I want to be strategic as to best understand if these environmental changes impacted my weekly run frequency in any way.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I engaged in a pre-commitment decision to prompt all later runs. The main one being,
“Well I signed up, I don’t want to suffer for 13.1 miles in 3 weeks!”.
While this rule prompted and maintained much running behavior for me, I quickly noticed during my training program that I often set many behavioral rules to manage each run.
“If I take this route, I will go out and back. That will give me 7 miles.”
“All I need to do is run this 9:00 minute per mile as a warm-up, then I should be fine with the rest of the way at 8:30 minutes per mile.”
“Let’s try to go out too hot and see what happens.”
There are countless variations of these rules that fill my head instead of a podcast or my Spotify greats hits playlist.
The last rule was fun. On one training run, I practiced running too fast at the start. This simulated getting caught up with the heat of the moment of 20,000 runners and not controlling my pace. Then, I backed my pace down to see how long it took to have my heart rate return to where it needed to be.
Eventually, I understood how my training load and physical consequences had on my body. At first, I became fatigued, especially in my hips, around mile 7. I knew that after a few weeks of training I could become conditioned and I would survive. However, with only a few weeks before the Mini, I hoped I could recover and learn to run more than 60 minutes at a time as an adult man. The last time that I had run longer than an hour was easily as a teenager, over 20 years ago.
In this 3-week training window, I knew I had the physical tools to run a half-marathon but actually doing was just…practice. That’s how I viewed it. It’s not the end of the world, just a new set of environmental consequences to deal with.
Although many new consequences filled this new training space, I will hit on three briefly.
Consequence #1: Time Commitment
This is two-fold. The first part is planning. A typical gym session including commute time would last about 90 minutes. Depending on my morning routine, I could actually start and finish my run faster than a CrossFit day. So, in that respect, running was more time efficient. However, I if I planned a longer run on the weekend, I would coordinate with my wife and family schedule to figure out if all of my responsibilities were taken care of first. During my longest training run, one week before the race, my wife dropped me off and picked me up 90 minutes later and the end of an 11-mile trail in the middle of Indianapolis, the Monon Trail.
Consequence #2: Time Under Tension
How long is this going to take? During each run, I calculated and recalculated my anticipated finish time with pacing intervals between 7:00 to 10:00 minutes per mile. That’s how I filled the majority of my training time while watching my heart rate on my Apple Watch. With my brain occupied, I didn’t worry too much about the training time itself, only when I went beyond 60 minutes of running. As I’ve mentioned throughout this blog, I am used to long, grueling CrossFit workouts.
The stark contrast to running onlywas that I only had to worry about running! I felt relieved that I did not have to think about the current rep scheme, a barbell to move, weights to change, or how one of my body parts was more fatigued than the others.
If I’m running, then I that’s it! Just be focus on running.
Consequence #3. Chaffing
Ah, yes. Chaffing. Skin and clothing all rubbing together, repeatedly. Fortunately, products like BodyGlide ease this pain. I view chaffing as the ultimate consequence above all else. I have not been a victim of in-race chaffing but can only imagine how much of an aversive stimulus it can be to deal with when running. Thus, we all practice avoidance behavior: I put on the BodyGlide to avoid the redness, discomfort, and potential for skin irritation or bleeding on repetitive motions of legs swinging and arms rubbing.
Chaffing provides us with immediate and long-term consequences. Didn’t put on your BodyGlide?!?! Now you have running discomfort during the next 5 miles and on future training runs, accompanied and possibly an altered running gait. Running attire with poorly positioned seams are also a close cousin of forgetting to BodyGlide. Not going to wear those shorts again!
This consequence also functions as a motivating operation, changing the stimulus conditions of future behavior and stimuli associated with your running routine.
The behavioral magic at play: your environment acquires stimulus control of certain actions. I will be more likely to search for and apply BodyGlide when I am getting ready for a run, see the training run on my calendar, or feel the sensation of physical discomfort associated with chaffing. To create fluency with this behavior (i.e., applying BodyGlide), I placed the BodyGlide in an easy-to-spot place in the bathroom. Reducing response effort for the win!
What about reinforcement, you ask? Continued positive experiences DURING the run, and the freedom of any rash immediately AFTER the run and the days that followed.
My Future With Running
Now that I checked off the half-marathon box, what’s next? Along my fitness journey, I have followed my own VO2 Max (an indicator of cardiovascular fitness) and targeted it with my clients. Before training, I noticed that my VO2 dipped in the previous 6 months. Since the race, and the training weeks that followed, it rose again in a short period of time. I couldn’t be any happier with those results.
With my baseline race time in the books, I will keep up with running over the next year to see how my time improves and my VO2 Max maintains.
Stay posted with an update on my progress a year from now.
