Read most any story of someone running their first race or marathon and you’ll hear a story of growth mindset.

Drew Shrader
I didn’t think I was a runner.
It was hard at first.
I wanted to give up.
I kept at it.
I started to get better.
That was motivating.
I realized I could do it.
Over time, I came to see myself as a runner.
I DID IT!
A good friend and colleague ran his first marathon about a year ago. Like many others, he turned to Hal Higdon’s Marathon Training Plan. For the uninitiated, Hal Higdon is well-known running coach with a set of highly regarded training plans to get you ready to complete a marathon. I am a fairly regular runner, and my friend recruited me to do the marathon with him. I had a schedule conflict for the race itself, but I did opt into doing the training plan with him.
In completing the plan, I often found myself thinking about how remarkable it was that so many people are able to go from non-runners to marathon finishers each year. While different from the academic demands of school, the challenges faced by new runners in many ways mirror those faced by students in school. For a new/non-runner, marathon training can easily seem like a daunting task, tedious to practice, with foreign goals and culture. Kind of like school.
Want to read more from @Edutwitt? Click over for the complete post here, on his blog!