Saturday morning. My first parkrun of the year, and it's harder than usual.
Part of that is my own doing. I've left my headphones at home. For a runner who's also been a DJ since 1987, that's a bit like turning up to a gig without the records.
Beats on speed dial
It turned out not to matter much. I saw another runner in a Public Enemy hoodie, and that was that. A couple of their songs dropped straight into my head and stayed there for the whole run.
It was as if the lyrics and the beats I needed were waiting on speed dial somewhere in my subconscious. I didn't have to go looking for them. They were already in there, from years and years of listening, ready the moment something reminded me.
I love that about music. The tracks you've played a thousand times become part of you. They show up when you need them, whether or not you brought the headphones.
The other thing in my head
There was something else rattling round my subconscious that morning. Earlier that week I'd had a conversation about relentless consistency, and it kept coming back to me with every step.
The real reason the run was hard? It was my first parkrun in ages, and I'd been a lot less consistent lately about being intentionally active. My legs knew it. My lungs knew it.
But I did it. I showed up, I got round, and my time was better than if I'd stayed in bed. That's the bit I want to hold on to.
Little things, done often
Long-term results come from small, consistent actions. The big thing you do once matters far less than the little things you do so often that they turn into habits.
Funnily enough, that's exactly how those Public Enemy tracks ended up on speed dial. Nobody memorises a whole album in one sitting. You play it, and play it again, until one day it's simply there.
Fitness works like that. So does business. The weekly email you actually send. The follow-up call you make every Friday. The ten minutes of planning before the day starts. On their own none of them look like much. Done every week for a year, they add up to something you can lean on when it matters.
And the reverse is true as well. Skip the little things for a while and you feel it, usually at the worst moment.
For me, the job now is simple: get back into the habit of being intentionally active. No heroic plan needed. Turn up again next Saturday, and the one after that. (If you want the longer version of where showing up got me, I wrote about the year I ran my Dad’s race.)
So what are you trying to achieve right now? And what's one small action you could take so often that it would feel silly to skip?
If you fancy a running soundtrack while you work it out, Public Enemy still works a treat.
