Starting Over is Pretty Awesome

"I don't want to have to start over from zero."

I hear this a lot when clients are worried about an injury. The fear isn't really the injury, or even the pain. It's losing fitness. It's having to start all over again from nothing.

It's the thought of all the work they think they'll have to redo.

But I've come as close as you can get to starting over from nothing. For a month going into hip replacement surgery, I could barely walk a mile. And after surgery, I was doing slow laps around the house with a walker.

And I can tell you: starting over is pretty awesome.

For at least three reasons.

First, you get new wins almost every day.

It's exciting. It's gratifying. You get visible progress, all the time - up the hill faster than yesterday, heart rate lower than last week, distance a little longer than last time.

I shed the cane. I added mileage. I added flat dirt, then elevation, then trail. I got faster. I got stronger.

Maintaining fitness doesn't give you that. It's steady-state. It's great, and it's exactly where I intend to get back to. But steady-state can't compete with the joy of daily, undeniable progress.

Second, starting over means you can fix what you put off before.

You're focused on the small things, because right now, small is all you can do. So this is your shot to start over the right way - the way you actually want things to be. Fix the nagging stuff you kept putting off.

I'm teaching my good leg to stop doing all the work. I'm retraining myself out of a limp so habitual I'd almost forgotten how to walk without it. And instead of just walking more miles, I’m building a stronger stride from the ground up - so that it’s just how I walk.

Not a fix. The new normal.

Third, you find places you never would have found otherwise.

Logging bigger miles, I never noticed what was right in front of me. Now I have.

I've explored trails I'd never have touched before. I’ve become a regular - for now - on the flat, beautifully landscaped 1.25-mile concrete path near my house. I found a new trail I’m folding into training for good.

And every day out there, I feel something new: an appreciation for the perfect places I have to recover and start over in - right here, any time I need them. Not everyone gets trails like these. I almost missed mine, because they weren't big enough, or long enough, or epic enough to matter.

Starting over isn't the stressful, demoralizing place your brain says it is. It's a place with its own wins, its own opportunities, its own gratitude - if you let it be.

So next time you're dreading the work of starting over, remember this: you've forgotten the wins, the milestones you didn't think you'd hit, and how good undeniable progress feels - and you're about to get all of it again.