Consider this Superset a personal memoir of the year that was 2024. 2024 was the best year of my life holistically. I got married. I achieved more balance in my work-life relationship. I got in the best physical shape of my life, building on the prior year’s efforts. I put on new muscle, lost some necessary bad weight. A ton of positives to pull from.

It was also a year with plenty of failures and setbacks. It was a challenging year at work, at times hard to balance. I missed my first set endurance goal in the 4-year stretch of pursuing such things. I had periods of poor structure around my diet.

It’s all part of it. Missing the 3-hour goal at my marathon probably ended up teaching me more than hitting it would have. Battling through tougher stretches at work has given me an improved perspective for the good times, and a heavier appreciation for balance. Getting loose with my diet has helped me improve the systems and relationships I have with food to become more consistent. It all adds up. Below are just some lessons I figured I would share from the 365 days before.

Brain - Where Did We Grow in 2024?

I have always had a heavy emphasis on my professional career when it comes to goals for each year, and I always seem to have a few smaller areas of my life where I believe I can improve. I guess it’s one of my short list of skills, the ability to be honest with myself on where I need to / can get better.

As I look back on the year, this was what I would consider to be my biggest breakthrough that I will leverage into 2025:

Work-Life Balance isn’t a Result, It’s an Action

I have typically errored on the side of a poor work-life balance, mostly skewed on the work end. I like to work, always have. But especially in previous years, success at work was the north star for most of my years and goals. As I continue to pour into my career, I have begun to think of work-life balance in a different light. By becoming more objective with what success at work for the year looks like, I have become more intentional with laying out structure to achieve that success, while also being mindful of its relationships with the other important areas of my life.

When the work-life balance is not 50-50, it’s easy to let other areas of your life falter. Reflecting on times when my ratio has been closer to 80-20, I can honestly say that while I was achieving the professional success, I wasn’t truly fulfilled. In the past, I didn’t think there was another way. It was max-input creates max-output. Time in, results out. On the flip side, there have been plenty of times in the past when I have been putting in the hours, but not necessarily moving many balls forward. That was my biggest lesson of this year.

Work-life balance isn’t about working less so you can have more fun. Work-life balance is about getting more done in the time you do have, so you can be completely present in the time you spend enjoying other things. It doesn’t mean slacking off - it means not viewing punching in and punching out as your measure for successful effort for the day. It’s about assigning proper perspective to things so you can handle the good and the bad. It’s about being honest with yourself about the effort you are putting in during times when you are feeling off.

When I look back on 2024 and say my work-life balance improved, what I will really be saying and feeling is that as I take on 2025, I know that there will be turbulent times, and I have the perspective on how I will let them impact me when they come. It means that I know when I am feeling unfulfilled through the year, that the first place I need to look is in the mirror, and what I have truly been working on / gotten accomplished in recent memory. It is the understanding that the best day at work will never be able to mask a day of poor effort at home. These things have to be achieved in one, and that is the foundation I attempt to build on this year.

Body - What I Learned Missing the Sub-3 Hour Attempt

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” - Denis Waitley

The day after missing my sub-3 hour attempt at the Boise Marathon in May was one I don’t wish to have to relive very soon. I had trained for 20 weeks, building on top of the previous year’s 50-mile ultra effort, and I truly felt like I was in the best shape of my life.

My previous personal best at the marathon was 3:29. That 3:29 was thirty minutes faster than my first marathon, in which I had never trained for a race prior to. Since that first marathon, I had completed the 50 miler, finished an IronMan 70.3, and ran 3:29 in Austin with a shorter training block than my previous races. I had a delusional confidence that trimming another 30 minutes off my time was not only feasible, but that with the proper effort, it was likely. The proper effort was given - the result wasn’t achieved.

Set loft goals, raise the probability of failure. I had some thoughts in the weeks leading up to race day that maybe sub-3 hours was a stretch. Yet I continued to battle my way through training blocks, running 13, 15, 17 miles at the pace that would be needed come race day to get the job done. Still, as most experienced runners know, training leaves signs. And some early signs I was ignoring were that I was pushing my body right up to the limit line, and that race day would need to be perfect to get it done.

The short version of the race day story is that after being one-minute off pace at the 13.1 mark, my race went sideways. The 6:49 pace needed to break 3 hours slowly started to slip to 7:00, and 7:05, 7:10…all the way to the point at mile 22 where the lights went out and I blacked out. An ambulance ride to get some more fluids, some rest in the hotel, and I was left with a 5-hour flight trip home to Kansas City to ponder on my thoughts.

I was pretty bummed out in the moment, but looking back, I have taken the following lessons as positives heading into the new year:

• Setting this goal was ambitious from the start. It was a big leap to make, and the chance of failure was high. A normal goal would have been to take that 3:29, and maybe shoot for a 3:15. But I had a pretty good idea I could finish in that time with some training anyway. Sub-3 was an uncertainty. What I am proud of looking back is the confidence I approached the training block with, delusional or not.

• I got in the best shape of my life during these 20 weeks of disciplined training. My easy runs became 7:30, 7:40 pace efforts, which were my max output times at my previous marathon. Progress, although not enough, was made. The floor is higher because of that training.

• Race day isn’t the end-all-be-all. We didn’t consider the elevation and the travel, my race-day nutrition wasn’t perfect. These are all controllable variables for the future, but also simply understanding that while I might have even been in good enough shape to get the job done, there’s a chance race day just might not be the day. Perspective for the future

• It’s supposed to be hard. That’s the point. Every time I complete one of these training blocks I realize even more how deep the commitment is to perform at a race like this, and I continue to further understand that the true gain from doing so is felt in all other areas of life, primarily in the ability to leverage the newly founded discipline when needed.

I don’t get to mark off sub-3 as accomplished in 2024, but I feel confident that it wasn’t close to just a failure. I am closer to that goal than last January, and it’s only a matter of time now before it gets done.

Book - My Favorite Books From 2024

Short and sweet to keep Volume 048 from being 10,000 words long - looking back at the reading year that was, here are my favorite books I finished:

• The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson - Unbelievable fantasy read for those of you who want to partake in such journeys. It’s 1000 pages of great characters and constant action. I can’t wait to finish the series

• The Life Impossible by Matt Haig - A book that I wouldn’t typically pick up, but one that I am glad I did. The premise of a lady moving to Ibiza to eventually find meaning in her life doesn’t align with my typical David Goggins read, but I am appreciative of the perspective I gained from picking this one up. Haig is a great writer.

• Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg - A great read about improving the most impactful, foundational skill we all possess - communication.

• Outlive by Peter Attia - Sometimes read like a textbook, but this book was a comprehensive overview of how to maximize your health and longevity through actionable practices, backed by science.

• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport - Much of my approach to work-life balance this year came from reading this book. A modern playbook for how to get more done and become more fulfilled.

• Good Energy by Casey Means - Much like Outlive by Peter Attia, this book gave me ideas and understanding that I could immediately take action on to improve my health. A must-read on the kitchen