Good Habits Make Better Days

How I developed a new habit and boosted a stale running routine

Jan 04, 2023

I hope your new year is off to a good start! I am a sucker for the optimism and motivation of the fresh start of a new year, and I’ll share below some ideas for developing better habits and reaching goals in 2023, which can be applied to running specifically or wellness more generally. But first, a housekeeping note about this newsletter.

Thank you and welcome to all the newcomers reading this post. Lots of new subscribers signed up recently. However, a surprising number unsubscribed over the past three days, prompting me to ask myself, what did I do wrong, or what did I write that turned them off?

I believe they unsubscribed after clicking on a bonus post I wrote Saturday night for paid subscribers, which I sent to the whole subscriber group. I put in a paywall after the first two paragraphs. Free subscribers thus received the post, took the time to open the email and start reading, and then encountered a paywall with an appeal after the opening hook to subscribe at the supporter level. Annoyed, they unsubscribed.

I apologize for this. If you wanted to read that post—with advice on training through stress plus ideas for running goals in the new year—I unlocked it so you can read it here (the paywall at the bottom now only hides the the Zoom link for paid subscribers’ monthly meetup).

Going forward, I won’t do “teasers” like that anymore in an effort to generate paid subscriptions, even though it’s common practice among Substack newsletter writers. It feels too gimmicky. If you’d like to support this newsletter at $6/month or $60/year, of course I would greatly appreciate that and pay it forward by paying for more of the content that I read. Most of what I write, I’ll make available in its entirety to free subscribers also; bonus posts will only go to paid subscribers. Paid subscribers also receive an invitation to a monthly Zoom and one-on-one virtual coffee chats, plus my deep gratitude.

Forming habits

Morning reading with my new lap pup, Daisy.

That’s a photo of me in the early morning of January 1 reinforcing a routine that became habitual over the last couple of years: reading for about 20 minutes most mornings before getting on my laptop or phone to respond to email or mess around with social media. Only now, I have a growing puppy (12 weeks old and 20 pounds) who displaced the cat to claim my lap.

Reading benefits mental health in myriad ways (for example, making me feel sharper, calmer, more attentive and curious, less rushed and self-absorbed) and inspires me as a thinker and writer. In a way, it’s a cheap substitute for travel, expanding the mind’s horizons and creating imaginary experiences. I always have one real book and one audiobook I’m working through, finishing two to three a month. That’s less than many people read, but it’s consistent and adds up.

For much of early adulthood, I didn’t prioritize reading on a regular basis (except for reading to my kids) because I was too busy or, at night, too sleepy. It became a special treat for vacations—but even during those reader-friendly getaways, I found myself scrolling my phone more than turning pages because I wasn’t in the habit of reading.

When I decided “I want to read more books”—because to be a writer, you have to be a reader, and I was a bookworm earlier in life—it took deliberate effort to create a routine, which over time grew into a habit.

Routines take effort and repetition but are the first phase of habit-forming. Habits—like making your bed, or stretching after a run—feel relatively easy and almost automatic. I’ll share the process I went through to become a consistent, habitual reader so perhaps you can adapt it to any habit, like exercise, that you want to cultivate in this new year.

Start with a genuine desire. You have to want to do something beyond feeling you should do it. For example, if you have fallen off the exercise wagon and feel you should restart cardio and strength workouts at least three times a week for health, try to identify and cultivate a desire. Maybe you’ll realize you want to prevent heart disease, or that you want to get fit for an upcoming special challenge such as a hike or run across the Grand Canyon, or that you want to spend time with a workout partner. Once you discover that you feel better and more satisfied after completing the routine, then you can focus on that rewarding after-effect to stoke your desire to continue it.
Set a goal, but set the bar low to make it achievable. Let’s say you want to eat healthier, cook more, and eat out less. I’d suggest a small, achievable goal such as planning one nutritious home-cooked dinner a week that generates leftovers, rather than trying to change all your meals all at once. Develop a routine around that meal-planning. With reading, I started by aiming to finish just one book a month, and I tried to read for a minimum of 10 minutes at bedtime. But that didn’t work—I’d fall asleep after only a few pages—which brings me to the next point.
Set aside time for it. It doesn’t have to be daily, but it does have to be regular and something that works with your schedule. For me, I realized that reading a book has to happen first thing in the morning. (Audiobooks are easier—I cue one up for drives and longer runs.) And it has to be before I check email or start scrolling Instagram.
Create a specific routine involving a place and method. To make sure I started reading, I had to sit in a certain chair in the living room, away from my office, right after I poured a cup of coffee and before I went upstairs to my laptop. Additionally, I had to keep my phone out of reach. (I no longer need to take that precaution; I can read without reaching for my phone because reading has become a habit, and it’s nice to have the phone nearby in case I want to use the online dictionary or to Google something mentioned in the book.)
Create a support network. This may seem unnecessary for solo pursuits such as reading or running, but camaraderie helps. I joined a book club through the library and also started using the Goodreads app to feel inspired by the reviews and to see what friends are reading. It also feels satisfying to track my books and write short reviews.

I’m going to use the steps above to try (again) to develop a creative writing practice, because I have a story idea brewing but can’t seem to make any headway on transferring it from my imagination to whole paragraphs. I lack a routine dedicated to writing, aside from producing these weekly posts, and I feel frozen by high expectations when I try to brainstorm and draft anything creative or fictional, as opposed to first-person nonfiction. I need to allow myself to start small, and make peace with feeling like I suck at it, to make a routine and with that routine, progress.

If you want to re-start or improve your running, then in addition to the steps above, try carving out a bit of time each weekend to look at your calendar for the week ahead and plan when, where, and how long and at what intensity you’ll run.

I self-coach by building future workouts in TrainingPeaks. Every weekend, usually Sunday night, I look at the week ahead and ask myself, where and when am I going to do some form of a speed workout this week? What about a long run? How about at least two strength sessions? How can I also fit in a ride on the horses and a ski date with Morgan? I make sure to calendar at least two or three high-quality runs and workouts, then I layer in easy workouts around those. I also try to invite a friend to share a run. If shit happens and complications crop up during the week, I try to skip the easy workouts rather than the higher quality ones.

Revitalizing routines

I felt burned out and beat up from running by the end of fall. I had achieved my main running goals for 2022—starting with a respectable road marathon, then running several 50Ks and a 100K to build up to a mountainous 100-miler for a Hardrock qualifier—but my training at year’s end felt stale, and my body needed rest.

Each year since 2010, I’ve aimed to run at least 2000 miles. A couple of years I got above 2500. This year by early November, I said screw it, I don’t need to reach that arbitrary goal by December 31. It’s OK to modify a goal if it feels right to do so.

I let myself scale weekly mileage way back during the past six weeks to finish the year with 1851 miles (not counting separate hikes in that total, which would’ve bumped it above 2000; I log my run/hike combos as “runs” if I run at least part of the way, and I log the miles as “hikes” if I intentionally hike the entire time). You can check out my nerdy annual mileage total list here if you’re curious.

I’m feeling jazzed about running now thanks to a few significant changes:

I dug into savings and bought a top-notch incline treadmill, the NordicTrack x32i. It comes with the iFit app, which I’m finding surprisingly good and motivating. Now I can go on virtual runs led by runners I admire, such as Tommy Rivs or Lucy Bartholomew, and feel like I’m running and hiking different trails around the world thanks to the high-def video and a treadmill that goes up to 40% incline and -6% decline. I’m also using the iFit personal training videos for strength workouts. It’s a splurge that proved worth it, especially during strong winter snowstorms that make running outside unappealing. (Read Meghan Hicks’ excellent review of this treadmill on iRunFar if you want more info.)
After a full decade of being Strava-averse, I got on Strava publicly, at least for a few months to give it a try. Unlike almost every other runner I know, I never took to Strava because I get all the data and training-log functionality I need from TrainingPeaks, and more to the point, I wanted to be private about my training. I didn’t want to feel FOMO or peer pressure to run more or faster than what felt right for me, based on what I was seeing my running peers doing on Strava, or based on caring about what others think of my training. I also didn’t want another social media time suck. However, when I peeked at Strava last month to look at Paul Terranova’s feed for my post about him, I realized that my concerns were overblown, and I was missing out on a lot of info and inspiration. I just have to be choosy about who to follow and whom to allow to follow me, and less self-conscious about how my training looks. It also helped to see that many runners I admire have blocks of time when they log hardly any activities. To each their own!
I registered for several races—Black Canyon 60K next month, Antelope Canyon 50M in March, Run Rabbit Run 100 in September—and started dreaming about and planning non-race run goals, such as crewing/pacing friends at their ultras. I vow to make this the year I finally do R2R2R and/or Softrock. (That’s rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, and a traverse of the Hardrock 100 course broken up into three or four days.)
I hired a coach, and we’re starting together soon. I’ll report back on that later.

Point is, if you have a routine that feels worn out, then change it up or boost it with something new.

Working the incline on my new treadmill. It feels good to work up a sweat in a T-shirt and shorts when outside it’s snowing and temps are in the teens!

I love this new year’s journaling exercise by

Suleika Jaouad

The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad

. She prompts us to brainstorm five lists:

What in the last year are you proud of?
What did this year leave you yearning for?
What’s causing you anxiety?
What resources, skills, and practices can you rely on in the coming year?
What are your wildest, most harebrained ideas and dreams?

I sat down on Sunday morning and hand wrote my answers—whatever popped into my head—in a notebook. I hardly ever handwrite, because I like having digital copies, and I type better than handwrite. But putting pen to paper somehow felt liberating, delightfully imperfect, and un-erasable.

I encourage you to share some of your answers to those five questions in the comments below, or on the chat thread. Or, describe a routine you’re trying to develop and make habitual. I’ll share what I jotted down for questions 1 and 5 on the chat app, which you can find here:

Join Sarah Lavender Smith’s subscriber chat

Available in the Substack app and on web

Also, did you notice? I didn’t produce an audio version of this post because it’s too noisy in my house this morning to do a voiceover. Do you listen to the audio version, and is it something I should continue? If you have an opinion on this, please let me know by email or in the comments below, thank you.