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Yesterday, I started training for my 3rd half marathon. I ran one in 2018 and one in 2019. Three weeks after the 2019 half, I found out I was pregnant with Carter and I truly have not ran much since. My running days started way back in high school when I would run as just a little bit of freedom my 8th grade and freshman year. There is nothing better than worship music blasting and truthfully it is where I do a lot of my deep thinking. Then I actually started enjoying it.
I joined the military at 17, and my career became based on how fast I could run. And I held a lot of resentment for something that I once loved so deeply.
I got out of the military in March of 2018, and by August I was determined to take back running for myself, which led to me — obviously– going all or nothing, and signing up for a half marathon. I ran it in 3 hours and 12 minutes. (And to think that I used to complain about running for 20 minutes when I was in the military.)
The second that I got the e-mail for sign up for the 2019 half– I knew that I wanted to do it again. My mom kindly said “I can see doing it once, but doing it twice was crazy.” I finished in 3 hours and 27 minutes. Not better, but still a finish.
Three and a half weeks later, I found out I was expecting my son! I almost gave my poor OB a heart attack when I asked her what fitness things were still safe. She said “You are safe to keep doing a what you’ve been doing, but don’t start something new.” I simply replied, “I ran a half marathon a few weeks ago.” She chuckled and said, “maybe not that.” She then gave me the medical guidelines of things to look for with exercise and pregnancy.
My son was born, and the last 5 years have been a whole whirlwind of event after event. — so much so that I wrote a whole blog post about the last 5 years.
Fast forward to today– my boyfriend’s mom had mentioned wanting to run one and I casually said I would like to do it again too. I am excited to do this as something for ME! 
But today during my deep thinking run, I started thinking about actually how similar my debt free journey and training for a half marathon really are. In fact, they are basically the same journey with different end goals.
Here are the ways that my half marathon training and debt free journey are the same.
I have to prove to myself I can do hard things.
Today, I was running and it was just NOT it. I was cranky. I was running on the treadmill and 8 minutes in, I wanted to quit. ”
My debt free journey is similar. I don’t always feel like hustling. I don’t always want to stick to a budget. But I can. I am capable.
It can be so easy to get stuck in a comfort zone of “I am doing the bare minimum” but sometimes, I just need to do the hard things. My last semester of college I took 17 credit hours as a newly single mom. I can do the hard freaking things. But it can be easy for me to fall back into the “I don’t want to do hard things.”
For a while, I have really felt like just existing daily felt hard. Dishes. Laundry. Cooking. Cleaning. on repeat. But in starting to train for this, it has reminded me that I can do HARDER things and the daily shouldn’t feel that hard. Because I haven’t challenged myself to step outside of my comfort zone for a while, I have felt stuck in the day to day. I am on day three of my training and I already feel more empowered than this time last week.
I did both before being a mom, and I am doing both after being a mom
Lately, life has felt very before motherhood/during motherhood with not a l0t of similiarities. I feel like I have spent a lot of time comparing the things I did before and the things I do now. And it has honestly been something I have struggled with over and over again in the last few year. I love my kid more than anything, but it is no secret that life looks a little different these days.
Training for a half marathon and paying off debt are going to be two big things that I did before being a mom, and things I can do as a mom. I was absolutely inspired by a girl I know from high school sharing her journey of training and completing a wide array of races with a young baby and even pregnant. I know I can do both of them in both seasons of life.
Doing the hard things now will pay off in the end.
I didn’t train for my 2nd half marathon very much. Enough to survive and finish, but it was pretty ugly. Right now, I am starting to train 6 months in advance. My debt free journey might be hard. I might have to choose to work when I don’t want to work. Or give up some social things that I wanted to do. It will have its moments. But in the end, being debt free is 100% the goal.
They both require a plan to be effective.
I could go into it and just run randomly, as I feel like it. But it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as using a training plan designed to slowly increase your performance. The runs progressively get longer throughout the training period. I found a 6 month training plan that starts you off as a new runner and increases over the 6 months to get you ready for race day. This makes more sense than going out and trying to run random distances on random days.
Like running, my debt free journey requires some level of planning. I have a written budget every month and I am using the debt snowball to work on paying down my debt. I think a lot of people who want to pay off debt start by just throwing a little extra at each debt, but can often feel defeated because it doesn’t really feel like ANY of their debts are paid off. Instead, using the debt snowball to focus any extra money on the smallest debt until it has paid off. Then essentially rolling the extra payments into the next smallest debt. The “debt snowball” will gain traction like a snowball rolling downhill.
If you don’t have a budget yet, The Savvy Budget Workbook takes you step by step through figuring out where you currently are, where you want to go, and what changes to make to get there.
Not everyone can, will, or will want to. But I do.
I know there are a lot of things that make both the half marathon training and the debt free journey either out of reach for some or just a “I never want to do that.” I do get that. Not everyone will get it.
But these two journeys aren’t for everyone. They are for ME.
I hope that along the way, I can inspire and challenge someone to decide that it could be for them.
My motivation will not remain constant.
It is the first few days of training and I am feeling so motivated. There will be days where I just don’t want to run. There will be things that come up and make it harder for me to set my priorities. I know that “motivation” alone won’t sustain me. I will have to create systems of making sure that my clothes are clean and set out, that I set enough time aside for my workout, and having food that fuels my body for my next run. 
Having “motivation” to stick to your budget just doesn’t work. I’m not going to feel the same excitement as I did when I created the budget. I wrote this blog post about how to stay motivated on a budget.
I talk a ton about systems in my course How to Actually Stick to Your Budget. Money systems are the things that you fall back on when your motivation isn’t 100% or when you “just don’t want to.” These might be things like a frozen pizza in the fridge or setting up your bank accounts so you don’t have to consistently check in with your budget.
My progress will not be linear.
I don’t know how much you know about running, but there will be bad days along the way. There will be days that the runs get slower and not faster. That my body is not just at its prime. And I will look down at my watch after a run and realize that it was slower than the last one.
I know along the debt free journey, things will come up. I might have to drain my emergency fund to pay cash for something. There might just be a slow income month along the way. When there is, I know there will be improvements again after the setback. That is NOT the time to give up. That is the time to recover, reflect and keep going.
Mindset is EVERYTHING!
I mentioned that today’s run started off like trash. I was 8 minutes in and wanted to quit. But I didn’t. I flipped my mindset, switched my playlist, and ran the entire last 7 minutes of my schedule run today– sprinting the last minute to finish out my mile. If your mindset around a run is trash, then your run is going to be trash.
The same goes for budgeting and paying off debt. If you are constantly focused on how bad things are. How miserable you are. How hard it is. Then quite honestly the whole experience is going to suck and you are going to give up. Your brain wants to be right. Psychologically, your brain wants to protect you from harm. So if you are constantly saying, “I can’t do this.” “It isn’t possible.” “There is no way.” — you are probably going to be right. You are probably going to self sabotage your own journey.
If you are constantly thinking about how great life is on a budget. How many opportunities you have had since cutting your spending. How blessed you have been on the journey– you are likely going to have a better chance of success. And a better journey.
Henry Ford was once quoted– “Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you are right.”
I have an ENTIRE module in my How to Actually Stick to Your Budget course that talks about mindset and how to work on flipping it around and having a positive mindset.
I am going to have to set boundaries
Boundaries are this new thing that I am working on– and I am not great at them.
In order to train, I am going to want to go to bed early the night before longer runs. Choose water over a cocktail. Choose a protein heavy meal over fried foods. There will likely be a text right before a run saying “wanna grab coffee” and plenty of other excuses to not run, but honestly, it is time that I put my self care as a priority.
In order to hustles, I am going to have to say no to social things sometimes. Budgeting can be hard because plenty of people have opinions of what I should do with my money.
Setting the boundaries with people to do this for ME is what is going to keep me on track.
Both are good for my mental health
There are great benefits to exercising consistently. Exercise is not my main study as far as the brain, but there are so many things like more energy and focus, less brain fog, better sleep and so many more. There are also a few studies that show that cardio can be linked to lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s.
The stress that being debt free brings. The saying goes “what can you do when you are debt free? Anything you want.” And maybe ANYTHING might be a stretch, but there is certainly more freedom, more spontaneity, less restriction.
But not even just the final result, but the little dopamine hits I get from making debt payments, hitting my goals, and getting closer to my overall goal. It is a game that triggers the reward pathway in my brain.
I have an entire module about the psychology and neuroscience of money in my How To Actually Stick to Your Budget course!
People will ask why, and then congratulate me after.
I have done both of these things before. This will be my 3rd half marathon. My second time getting serious and paying off all my debt. (Read here for the background on the first debt free journey)
The criticism can get loud when you are on the journey. People will tell you that it can’t be done or that it is a waste of time. sometimes the criticism can be quiet. Lots of silent lurkers.
But when I finish, there will be cheering and congratulating. “I knew you could do it!” and “I’ve been cheering you on all along.”
It is easy to cheer for a finished project rather than a journey that you aren’t sure about.
No one would blame me if I gave up on either journey
Not a single person would blame me if I don’t finish. They are both hard things. They require time, dedication, and perseverance. However, there are going to be moments in both journeys where I am inevitably complaining about the journey. Things are hard. My body is sore. I am tired. And someone, somewhere is going to tell me “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
If I gave up on either goal, I would be met with a lot of “give yourself some grace.”
But I would blame me. So I am ready to crush both of these goals. Maybe this is some tough love, but sometimes I think we give ourselves too much grace. Too much “go easy on ourselves” for not keeping the promises to ourselves. I made this promise to myself to hit these goals and it might be a wild ride and not at the timeline I am hoping for.
Both are easier with an accountability buddy
I have been sharing both of my journey’s publicly on social media, but I am incredibly thankful for my boyfriend’s mom for starting this training with me.
If you are looking for accountability on your debt free journey, I opened The Savvy Society membership community. For $5-10 a month, I created the space to have some budget accountability. The goal is to find like minded people who are working towards similar goals– because paying off debt can be so lonely.
Possibly most importantly, it is a marathon- not a sprint.
Neither of these journeys are things I am going to just wake up tomorrow and accomplish. They take time, effort, motivation, systems, accountability, excitement and perseverance.
