The Rock in the Road

What's really keeping you from reaching your goals?

I’ve finished half-marathons. I’ve crossed the line in Half Ironmans. But a full marathon? I never tried because I was afraid of the commitment.

But 2025 was to be the year where I broke through more personal barriers. I thought, what better way to do this than to train for and complete a marathon?

So, I registered in December for the Philadelphia Marathon, held every year in November, plenty of time to train and be competitive in my age group.

---

At the end of January, I was in Nashville leading a three-day strategic planning retreat. The morning before our first session, I went out for a training run. It was raining so I was going to use the treadmill, but when I arrived at the hotel gym, one machine was broken, and the other was being used. So I geared up and ran into the morning rain.

I found myself in flow early on. I was comfortably in a rhythm and pace I could have held for hours. Despite the weather, I was enjoying the scenes around me as the city was coming out of its slumber.

I arrived at an intersection in front of the Bridgestone Arena, stopped at a red light and was ready to proceed up Broadway.

First, I took a few pictures. Just a few hours ago, this street was alive with lights, people, and great live music. Now everything was quiet.

Once the light turned green, I planned to run a few blocks up Broadway, taking my time to observe the different marques along the way.

Zoom in on the last section of the crosswalk

The light turned green and I started across the street. I never made it to the other side.

As I crossed the road, I didn’t see a rock that was sitting in the crosswalk. The middle of my foot hit the rock square, and my ankle caved one way as my foot went the other. I lost my balance and fell forward. Thankfully, there were concrete stanchions in front of me, the kind set up to prevent cars from driving onto the sidewalk. I inadvertently hooked one with my arm, preventing me from face-planting on the sidewalk.

I hit the ground on all fours in immediate, intense pain. I rolled over onto my back, not caring at all that I was now lying in a puddle, expecting to see my foot pointed in an unnatural direction and was relieved when I looked down to see that this was not the case.

Still, the pain was incredible. I couldn’t put any weight on my foot. I was two and a half miles from my hotel in a city hundreds of miles from home in a steady rainstorm. So, I called an Uber and got a ride to a local Urgent Care.

Before I got into the Uber, I hobbled over to that rock in the road and put it into my pocket. Not only did I not want someone else to suffer the same fate as I did, but I also wanted a little souvenir from my trip.

My ankle wasn’t broken, but it was badly injured. I was in a walking boot for four weeks and then in a brace, which I still use every day. For almost three months, I’ve been rehabbing my ankle with physical therapy appointments twice a week. I went 13 weeks without running at all, and I am now about halfway through my “return to running” progression, up to four miles of running three times a week.

Four miles three times a week…twelve miles total for the week. Not even half of the marathon distance I’m running in November.

Something like 90% of all New Year’s Resolutions are dead and buried by February 1^st. This year, I reached that date and thought I was another one of those statistics.

But then I reached into my bag from the Nashville trip and pulled out the rock: the small chunk of limestone that had no business being in the middle of the street.

At first, I laughed. What kind of fool holds up an Uber to hobble over and pick a rock up out of the road in the rain?

I put the rock on my desk, right where I can see it at all times. I looked at the rock and thought, “Is this what’s going to stop me?” The rock has altered my plans and significantly disrupted my routine, but am I really going to give it the power to take away my goal?

In the past, this answer might have been yes. In the past, I may have been willing to give up the power. It would be far easier to give up on the marathon goal: less time in the PT office, less stress worrying about my recovery, and less effort overall.

But this goal represents so much more than completing a marathon. It’s about developing and sustaining new habits that will provide value to my life far beyond race day, including scheduling and time management, diet, personal discipline, and the acceptance of discomfort.

Crossing the finish line of your goal matters, but who you become along the way matters even more. When you can use goals to make sustainable lifestyle improvements, that becomes the real victory.

You can set a goal for yourself and map out a plan to achieve it, and I guarantee that plan will inevitably need to be altered along the way. I like to view it as a test from the universe: are you truly dedicated to reaching this goal?

That day in Nashville started with the treadmill, then the rain, and then there was the rock - all bumps on the road to achieving my goal.

Sometimes, these challenges prove to be too tough to overcome. In these rare instances, you may need to adjust your goal or timeline. People talk about “moving the goalposts” with a negative connotation, but making adjustments is a crucial part of success.

This is not failure!

Giving up when there is still something to achieve is the only failure. Only you need to determine what success looks like, not anyone else.

The rock sits on my desk as a reminder of the challenges I’ll face with any goal I set for myself. I look at it multiple times a day and remind myself: that little object doesn’t have the power to derail me.

Unless I choose to let it.