1,000 miles in 2025

On challenges not goals and previous failure as my best motivation

Today, I hit my goal of running 1,000 miles this year.¹

Running 1,000 miles in one year was a goal that I had been chasing for several years now. This was not an easy goal to meet. I ran 1,000 miles in 192 runs over 174 hours in 2025. That was a lot of time, energy, and effort to accomplish a goal I had been chasing for literally years. After years of failure, I was determined to finally conquer my 1,000 mile challenge.

In 2022, I remember going for my last run in December to hit my goal of 250 miles for the year. The year before I had become a father and moved to a new house near Rock Creek Park. I knew I needed to do something to combat the stress of having an infant and thought that I could pick up and keep running during one of the hardest parts of parenting, I could probably keep doing it when it got easier. So I wanted to keep that running momentum going into the next year.

In 2023, wanting to give myself a challenge, I set a stretch goal to double my mileage from last year and run 500 miles that year. I started training for races, first a half, then a marathon, and many other races. I ended up smashing through that goal, so I kept adjusting my goal upwards, first to 750 miles, then eventually settling on a goal of 1,000 miles. I ended the year with 913 miles, falling short of my revised goal but showing myself that 1,000 miles in a year was very possible.

In 2024, I knew it was an election year and that I hoped to be on a campaign that fall, so I knew that I wouldn’t be training for a marathon (made that mistake in 2008 and ran the Marine Corps Marathon and then deployed a field office for the Obama campaign two days later and couldn’t walk up the stairs to my office). But I decided to keep the 1,000 mile goal to see what would happen. I ended the year at 712 miles, despite going on a presidential campaign (where I somehow managed to keep running), I still failed to hit my 1,000 mile goal but that was solid base mileage for someone on a campaign in an election year.

In 2025, this was the year that I was determined to actually conquer the 1,000 mile goal. I knew that I wanted to run the Marine Corps Marathon again to try and accomplish the sub-4 hour goal that had eluded me in 2023. Having a marathon to train for, along with the various DC races I always ran, meant that 1,000 mile goal didn’t just seem reasonable, it seemed downright achievable.

I ran some races in the spring and then had to slow down my running while I attempted to climb Mount Rainier in May (failed to summit but more on that some other time). Then right after my return from the mountain climb, disaster struck, and I sprained my ankle in early June (I have historically bad ankles but hadn’t had issues for a few years). That meant almost a full month off from running and a gradual return at low mileage over the summer. I fell behind in May (planned with the climb) but then I just plateau through June, gradually starting to run again over the summer as you can see from my annual mileage tracker.

By August I had recovered enough to train for the Marine Corps Marathon in earnest, if slightly behind my training plan and having lost some fitness during my recovery, but I was on track with my training into the fall.

Then disaster seemingly struck again. While walking my dog in Rock Creek Park just three weeks before the Marine Corps Marathon, I came off a rock and resprained my injured ankle. I was despondent, all that hard work training for the race seemed to be for naught.

Long-time readers know what happened next. The orthopedic surgeon told me my ankle wasn’t great, but it could be worse, and while he wouldn’t recommend it, I could try and run the race if I thought I could handle it. I found a physical therapist Elliott Place at Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation who helped nurse me back into maybe being able to run. And on October 26th, I ran the Marine Corps Marathon on a sprained ankle (I would do it again but I would not recommend it).

After the marathon, I dialed it back for a few weeks, but my ankle was recovering nicely and I wasn’t that beat up by the marathon because I had taken it fairly easy due to the aforementioned sprained ankle, so my mileage was pretty quickly back up to twentyish miles a week.

Between the two ankle injuries (or arguably one extended ankle injury), I had written off the 1,000 mile goal as impossible for this year. But towards the end of November, I started to run the numbers and realized that I was on track to get within 30 or so miles of my 1,000 mile goal by the end of the year. That was close enough that if I was intentional for the last month of the year, I might have a shot at hitting my goal.

I had finally gotten around to getting an online running coach, Andrew Lemoncello of McMillan Running, and I worked with him to set up a plan to hit 1,000 miles in the time we had left. It was a tight timeline but possible, but I would need to make sure I ran every planned mile.

It meant that I had to up my mileage in the last weeks of the year. It meant that I had to go running on days and at times when I really would have preferred not to. It meant several runs in the cold, or in the dark, or in the very cold and dark. But my margin of error in the time we had was small and I had to bank as many miles as I could in case we got severe weather that would keep me from running. So I kept running, putting up a marathon training level mileage (for me) of 40+ miles the week before Christmas.

But on Saturday, December 27th, I did it. Today, I ran my 1,000th mile of the year.

Why, after so many years of failure and so many setbacks this year, was I so determined to hit this goal this year? This question was really bigger than running.

I am honestly not a super goal motivated person. I don’t live or die by New Year’s Resolutions. My attempts to adopt positive lifestyle changes have a mostly failed track record. So why was this 1,000 mile goal different?

One thing I realized about myself over the last few years, is that while I am not particularly driven by trying to reach goals, I am extremely driven by challenges. To me, a challenge is something that is not only difficult to accomplish, but that you might not succeed at, that you could fail to achieve. In corporate speak these might be called “Stretch Goals.”

It turns out that not only do I rise to a challenge, but failure is maybe my most powerful motivation. Not fear of failure, after all a challenge shouldn’t be something you know you can accomplish, but for me the motivation truly comes from my previous failures. I accept that I might fail in some of the goals or challenges, but I don’t like failure, and it turns out it motivates me more than anything else.

I failed to summit Mount Rainier this year, so we’re probably going back to climb it next year (I also failed to summit Mount Baker the first time I did mountaineering). I failed at my sub-4 hour Marine Corps Marathon goal in 2023 and 2025, so I am already looking ahead to running it again in 2027 (not next year, it’s an election year). I lost the 2024 election and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit on the sideline and let us lose again in 2028 (already thinking about how to go back to Pennsylvania). I had failed to reach 1,000 miles for the past two years. So I was not going to let the chance to reach that goal in 2025 pass me by, especially after the disappointments on the mountain and the marathon.

The thing about challenges is that while you can and should celebrate their accomplishment, it’s not really the thing that brings you actual significant sustained joy or pride. There’s all kinds of research out there that shows that it’s the journey, the love of the process, the work to get to the goal that is the real reward (read Brad Stulberg, Michael Easter, and plenty of others).

For me the reward is not the thousand miles I ran in 2025, maybe it’s just learning that for me it’s all about challenges not goals and that previous failures are my strongest motivator. Maybe it’s not the healthiest approach to the world but there’s value in that discovery and honesty with yourself, especially at my age. Running gives you plenty of time to think, I had 174 or so hours to do so, and you’ll learn something about yourself if you let it teach you. I am not a better person because I ran 1,000 miles, but I am a better person having run 1,000 miles this year.

Or I should say the 1,000 miles that I have run in 2025 so far. After all, tomorrow is my Sunday long run, and my last one of the year, and I can’t miss that.

Besides, I have to start thinking about what my running mileage goal will be for 2026 and how to make it a challenge.

1. Technically it was yesterday since it is almost 2am on the 28th but I haven’t gone to sleep yet so it