Today my wife and I are celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary.

As two people who have spent years chasing finish lines (Ironman races, half Ironmans, marathons, and countless early morning training sessions) you might think endurance is measured in miles, watts, or finish times.

I’ve come to believe it’s measured in something entirely different.

It’s measured in choosing each other every single day.

An Ironman teaches you that success isn’t about having the perfect race. It’s about responding when things don’t go according to plan. Every athlete eventually faces a flat tire, a missed nutrition plan, brutal weather, or a moment when quitting seems like the easier option.

Marriage is remarkably similar.

Over the past twenty years, my wife and I have celebrated incredible victories together. We’ve raised two amazing daughters. We’ve built careers. We’ve experienced unforgettable adventures. We’ve laughed more than I ever imagined we would.

We’ve also navigated uncertainty.

There have been seasons when work was exhilarating and seasons when it was exhausting. Seasons when one of us carried more of the load so the other could keep moving forward. Seasons when the future wasn’t as clear as we wanted it to be.

Watching my wife lead through some incredibly difficult professional challenges over the past few years has reminded me what endurance really looks like. It isn’t loud. It isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t make headlines.

It looks like showing up. Again. And again... And again.

As endurance athletes, we often celebrate grit. But I’ve learned that grit without love can become stubbornness. Discipline without grace becomes exhausting.

A strong marriage usually isn’t built in the big moments. It’s built in all the regular ones. Saying, I’ve got you. We’ll figure it out. I’m not going anywhere. It’s a lot like training for an Ironman. One good run doesn’t get you ready, and one good conversation doesn’t make a marriage strong.

You just keep showing up. One of the lessons I often share on the Chief Endurance Officer podcast is that the best leaders think long term. They don’t optimize for today at the expense of tomorrow.

The same is true at home.

Our culture celebrates intensity, endurance celebrates consistency.

Our culture celebrates achievement, endurance celebrates commitment.

Our culture celebrates the highlight reel, endurance is built in the quiet moments when no one is watching.

Twenty years later, I’m convinced the endurance mindset isn’t really about sport. It’s about becoming the kind of person someone can count on, the kind of teammate who doesn’t disappear when life gets hard, the kind of leader who stays steady during uncertainty, and the kind of spouse who continues choosing love after the excitement of the starting line has faded.

I’m grateful for every race I’ve finished, but I’m even more grateful for the woman who’s been beside me through the greatest endurance event of my life.

Here’s to twenty years.

And, hopefully, many more finish lines we’ll cross together.

What’s one lesson that endurance sports (or simply life) has taught you about building a lasting relationship?

And it was exactly the right call.

That’s not a sentence that comes naturally to me. I’m competitive. I train hard. I show up to races to perform. But there’s a version of that competitiveness that gets you hurt, and I’ve been around long enough to know the difference.

Here’s what actually happened.

The Setup

DC was a controlled environment. Mostly flat, wide roads, steady pacing from start to finish. The kind of course where you lock into your rhythm early and just hold it. I ran 2:18. It was clean, disciplined execution under ideal conditions.

Nashville was a different animal entirely. Rolling hills throughout. Constant elevation changes. No steady rhythm, no locking in, just constant adjustment from mile one to the finish. The kind of course that grinds your calves and quads in a way flat racing never does.

And I showed up to Nashville three weeks removed from a calf injury with a decision already made: I was not going to push.

The Decision

My chiropractor had been clear. Be smart. Don’t chase a time. Protect the longer goal.

Honestly, I probably would have landed there on my own. But having that voice in my head during the back half of the race mattered more than I expected. When you’re in the middle of a run and everything in you wants to push, having already made the decision takes the negotiation off the table.

So I ran a walk-run strategy. More than I normally would. I managed effort instead of pace. I let people pass me that I probably could have stayed with on a different day.

I finished in 2:38.

What That 20 Minutes Actually Means

Here’s what I want to be clear about. That 20-minute gap is not a performance comparison. It’s not evidence that my fitness fell apart or that three weeks off broke me.

It reflects three things. A more demanding course with constant elevation changes that DC simply doesn’t have. Reduced training volume coming off an injury. And a deliberate decision to manage effort rather than race.

My aerobic fitness was not the issue. If you put me on that DC course that same weekend, I’m running close to the same time. Nashville wasn’t a test of what I’d lost. It was a test of whether I could execute under constraint.

And that’s a different kind of discipline entirely.

The Business Parallel

I think about this a lot in the context of how companies make decisions.

The DC race is what most businesses are optimizing for. Ideal conditions, clear runway, steady execution. That’s when the plan works and the numbers hold and everything feels like it’s clicking.

Nashville is everything else. The quarter where a key person leaves. The season where cash gets tight. The growth phase where the old way of doing things stops working. Constant adjustment, no steady rhythm, effort-based decision making instead of executing a clean plan.

The mistake I see most often is companies trying to run Nashville like it’s DC. Holding to the same pace, the same spend, the same headcount plan, even when the conditions have completely changed. Pushing through because pulling back feels like losing.

But pulling back when the conditions call for it isn’t losing. It’s how you stay in the race.

A 2:38 in Nashville, healthy and intact, is worth a lot more than a 2:18 with a torn calf and six months of recovery ahead.

The Longer Game

I have a full Ironman ahead of me. That’s the goal. Nashville was one data point along the way, and a useful one at that. It told me where my body is, what it can handle right now, and what I need to build back toward.

If I had pushed and blown out that calf, the Ironman conversation is over. A three-week inconvenience becomes a six-month setback. That trade-off is never worth it, no matter how good it feels in the moment to compete.

The athletes and the business owners I respect most aren’t the ones who perform perfectly under ideal conditions. Anyone can do that. The ones I pay attention to are the ones who know how to execute under constraint. Who can show up to Nashville, read the course, adjust the strategy, and still finish.

That’s the real skill. Not the PR. Not the perfect quarter.

Knowing when to run your race and when to run a smarter one.