The other morning, I found myself running on a stretch of base that had been closed for construction. It had just reopened, so I had the trail to myself. As I rounded a corner, I saw something familiar: a weathered sign on a chain-link fence. “400m.”
Years ago, after the MARSOC compound was built, I had those signs made—100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1 mile. I walked the distances with a GPS, zip-tied the markers to the fence, and used them for speed work. A friend and I started the “Stone Bay Running Club.” Wednesday mornings meant a 3-mile warm-up, followed by a workout of around 12 x 400m sprints with 400m recovery jogs, and a 3-mile cool-down. Add it up—that’s 12 miles before sunrise.
When I shared this workout with our strength and conditioning coaches, they would shake their heads. If the goal was pure speed, our rest intervals were too short. By the time we hit the 10th or 12th sprint, we weren’t getting faster—we were just surviving. And yet, that was the point.
Those 400s taught us how to suffer well.
Legs burning.
Lungs on fire.
Vision starting to blur.
And still, one more. And one more after that. Ticking off reps with rocks piled in the dirt. Halfway. Three left. Two left. Last one—the hardest one—and somehow, often the fastest.
The science said we were training ourselves to run slower. But the reality was we were training ourselves to keep going when everything in our bodies screamed to stop. That’s not just conditioning. That’s character.
So there I was on the trail, tugging the last surviving “400m” sign loose. The plastic zip ties had weakened with age. I slipped it into my hand and thought: this was never about perfect programming. It was about programming ourselves. To face discomfort. To welcome exhaustion. To harden the will.
Because life isn’t a track meet. Life doesn’t hand you ideal rest intervals. Life doesn’t care if you’re hitting negative splits. Life cares if you can push one more rep, one more shot, one more mile, when everything around you whispers “enough.”
That’s why we do hard things. Not because they’re efficient. Not because they’re optimized. But because hard things change us. They strip away excuses. They carve resilience into the bone. They teach us to keep running when the easy option is to quit.
Execution
Pick your “400” today—a task that hurts, that tests, that forces you into the red.
Don’t overthink the science. Stack reps until your body says stop, and then do one more.
Mark the tally. See the pile grow. Let it remind you that grit is earned, not given.
The 400s were never about speed. They were about the choice to keep moving. And that choice—the choice to do the hard thing—will always be the one that makes the difference.
Run one more 400 & Keep Walking Point,
John
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Just keep moving forward! Love it!