Planning the Unknown: How Trail Running Teaches Me Discipline, Flexibility, and Adaptation

Life’s wild, right? Trail running life lessons are endless. Here are a few.

In trail running, life lessons from running an ultramarathon can be learned even when you never really know what’s coming next. But still, we plan. We put stuff on calendars, we think ahead, we prepare, and those trail running life lessons serve us well.

And then when that future actually shows up, it feels like, yeah, I was ready for this.

But, what if we didn’t plan and didn’t put stuff on calendars? The future would still present itself, right? Is the future dancing with me or is it forcing itself onto us? This uncertainty often reflects the unpredictability of trail running.

That’s what trail running has taught me, embracing the uncertainty of life.

People sometimes think running is just my escape or recharge… and it is, in a way.

But it’s also my testing ground. Out there, discipline shows up in the simplest way: you lace up and you go, even when you don’t want to. Flexibility kicks in when the weather shifts, or the trail’s blocked, or my body just isn’t cooperating. And adaptation? That’s every single step, like reading rocks, dodging roots, adjusting for climbs, and changing to the needs of the trail.

 

I remember once, a few years ago, training hard for a 50k. Put in the longmiles, had my gear dialed, felt weirdly confident. Then, mile 9; just as things felt steady I hit a cattle guard, cardboard slipped, and suddenly I’m full force, knee-first onto iron. Done, just like that. Race over before it really started.

It stung. But I keep thinking how even that moment was part of it. All that slow, steady work. None of it wasted. Maybe the point isn’t controlling how the story plays out. Maybe it’s building in the habit of showing up, bending, adapting, and learning to move forward anyway if it’s the race, or reflecting and adapting to new approaches based on life’s lessons learned from trail running.

It’s the same thing in my creative work. You plan the shots, you think through the story, but then the day has its own ideas. Something always changes. And that’s the point. You can’t lock down the future. You just practice being the kind of person who can handle it.

So no, trail running isn’t just about mileage for me. It’s about learning how to keep showing up, to bend without breaking, to adapt on the fly. And when I take that into my work, or my life, it feels less like I’m reacting to whatever the future throws at me… and more like I’m shaping it through the valuable lessons of life I’ve absorbed from trail running.

Feel free to follow me on Strava to continue the adventure.