🌍 ¿Recibiendo esto en el idioma equivocado? Actualiza tus preferencias en el pie → Español 🇪🇸
The hardest race you've ever run
Saturday, October 3 · Chicago D-8
A warm welcome to everyone who joined this week. Glad you're here.
I'm closing the week with a question instead of a lesson.
Eight days out from Chicago, it's worth remembering where you come from. For many of you this weekend is the last long run before the race. After this one you're no longer training to gain anything: you trust what you've already done.
01THE QUESTION
1 min
What's the hardest race you've ever run?
Not the fastest. The hardest. The one where there was a moment when everything in you was asking you to stop.
1 Which one it was, and when 2 What happened at the toughest moment 3 What you did to keep going (or to come back)
Two or three lines are plenty. Just hit reply: I read every one myself.
During the taper your head runs out of tired legs to deal with and starts hunting for threats. That's normal, and it's exactly when it pays to choose what you remember.
Memory doesn't store a race like a movie: it keeps the most intense moment and how it ended (the so-called peak-end rule, from Daniel Kahneman). If the peak was brutal and the ending was that you got through it, that's the evidence you want to carry to the start line.
📖 The full article
The neurobiology of effort and how to use it in your last days before the race.
When you finish Chicago (or when someone you love does), reply to this email with your time. I'll build Tuesday the 13th's edition from your stories.
Quote of the week
"Reflecting, learning, and moving on is a fruitful cycle."
— James Clear, 3-2-1, October 1, 2026 Looking back works when it's to learn, not to replay.
🎁 Share the newsletter
If you know someone who runs and would get something out of this, share it — you get a shot at the referral rewards. Or just reply: "Henri, I shared it with a friend…!"
