Pinhoti 100 Training Update: It Doesn't Have to Be a Perfect Week
If you looked at my training log this month, you'd probably laugh. Or maybe you'd recognize it, because your life looks the same way.
I'm training for the Pinhoti 100 — a 100-mile trail race through the mountains of Alabama. Back in January, I had this whole plan mapped out. Long runs on Saturdays. Back-to-back mileage on weekends to teach my legs what it feels like to run tired. A clean, steady build.
Then real life happened.
We have a new baby at home. We're running a practice that depends on us showing up fully present for every patient, every hour. Some weeks the long run doesn't happen. Some weeks I'm lucky to get out the door for 20 minutes before the day swallows me whole. I'm tired more often than I'd like to admit, and my mileage most months is nowhere close to what I wrote down back in January.
Here's what I've learned, though: none of that means I'm off track.
Something is always better than nothing
The temptation, when you miss your "real" workout, is to just skip the day entirely. If I can't do the 3-hour long run, why bother with 20 minutes? If I can't hit every rep of my rehab exercises, why do any of them?
Because 20 minutes still counts. A short jog still keeps your legs remembering how to run. A few sets of your exercises still keep your body remembering how to move the way you're training it to move. The goal was never a perfect week. The goal is staying in the game long enough for the training to add up.
This is the exact same thing I tell my patients
I see this all the time in the clinic, and I want you to hear it the way I say it to the people sitting across from me: you are not going to do your rehab homework perfectly every single day. Life is going to get in the way. You'll skip a day. You'll do half your exercises instead of all of them. You'll have a week where you barely think about your plan because work or your kids or just being exhausted took over.
That does not mean you failed. That does not mean you're back at square one.
What actually moves the needle — for a 100-mile race or for healing an old injury — is what you do most of the time, over months, not what you do on any single "perfect" day. Consistency beats perfection every time. A body that gets a little bit of the right input, most days, heals and adapts. A body that gets nothing because you were waiting for a perfect window to do it right — that's the body that stays stuck.
So if you've fallen off your plan this week, here's your permission slip: don't wait for a perfect day to start again. Do what you can today. Then do a little more tomorrow. That's it. That's the whole secret.
Where I'm at with training
Pinhoti is coming up fast, and I won't pretend I'm exactly where I hoped I'd be by now. But I'm still showing up, still logging miles when I can find them, and still trusting that consistency over the next several weeks matters more than any single long run I missed. I'll keep you posted as race day gets closer.
And if you're dealing with an injury or pain that's kept you from the activities you love — golf, running, lifting, keeping up with your kids — and you've been waiting for the "right time" to finally deal with it: there isn't one. Start where you are. DM us or book a free discovery call, and let's build a plan that fits your real life, not a perfect one.
— Dr. Cory Sellers, Momentum Spine & Sport, Orange City, FL
