What Marathon Training Taught Me About Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing

Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing and Training for a Marathon

For over 35 years, I’ve been a runner—not a particularly fast one, not the guy standing on podiums, but someone who laced up consistently, year after year. I was usually near the back of the pack for my age group. But I stuck with it.

That’s the thing about endurance sports: if you keep showing up, time has a funny way of leveling the playing field. As others slow down or burn out, your consistency becomes your edge. Somewhere along the way, my steady 8-minute-per-mile pace started to become competitive—not because I got faster, but because I never stopped showing up.

That same philosophy has carried me through the world of manufacturing and machine monitoring. You may not always have the flashiest tools or newest equipment, but if you stay consistent, keep improving, and show up for your team every day—progress happens. But there’s one key requirement: you have to be willing to adapt.

From Pain to Performance

In 2020, that consistency was tested. I started experiencing severe Achilles tendon pain in both legs. Each run became a battle with gravity. I could have thrown in the towel, blamed age or wear and tear—but instead, I approached it like an engineer.

I asked: what’s the root cause?

The answer was simple: too much load. Too much stress on my body. So I reduced the load—by shedding 35 pounds. It wasn’t easy, but it worked. The pain eased, my running returned, and something surprising happened: I was faster. At 45, I was running better than I had in my 20s.

This taught me a valuable lesson—real, lasting improvement often requires letting go of the old way of doing things. That applies in manufacturing too. Sometimes you have to shed the weight of outdated processes, legacy habits, or assumptions in order to move faster and with less resistance. This is continuous improvement in manufacturing.

The First Boston Attempt

With new confidence and improved speed, I set a new goal: qualify for the Boston Marathon. Anyone in the running world knows how special that race is. It's not something you just sign up for. You have to earn your way in with a time that meets strict standards—and even then, you’re not guaranteed a spot unless you're well under the cutoff.

In 2024, I gave it my first serious shot. My training had been strong, and I clocked in with a pace of 7:35 per mile. I was thrilled—it was my fastest marathon ever. But when the cutoff was released, I missed qualifying by just 90 seconds.

If you've ever spent months working toward a goal, only to fall just short, you know how that feels. Frustrating? Absolutely. But disheartening? Not entirely. Because underneath the disappointment was validation—I was close. I had never run this well before. I was trending in the right direction.

It reminded me of how many manufacturers approach their improvement journey. They invest in a system like Machine Tracking, start surfacing data they’ve never seen before, and suddenly realize: “Wow, we’re doing better than we thought—but we’re still not where we want to be.” That moment is powerful. You’re not failing—you’re learning.

A Setback and a Decision

Fast forward to February 2025. I signed up for my second Boston Qualifier (BQ). This time, I trained to run even faster—7:25 per mile. That would give me a solid 4-minute cushion to clear the cutoff with confidence.

Training began in August. I felt ready. On race day, everything clicked. I saw my wife and son at the halfway point and gave them a huge thumbs up. I was ahead of schedule, legs feeling strong, confidence high.

Then came mile 17.

Suddenly, I crashed. I didn’t know why. My legs simply gave out. I slowed, then walked—something I’ve never done during a race. Once you start walking, it’s hard to mentally bounce back. I finished the race, but well behind my goal time. I felt defeated. Months of preparation, a big finish to my race season, all unraveled in a few miles.

That hour after the race? I swore I was done with running.

But I’ve learned something from both running and business: failure is only final if you stop analyzing what went wrong.

Diagnosing the Breakdown

The thing I love about running is its simplicity. It’s just you, a pair of shoes, and the road. There are no mechanical failures, no broken parts—just your body and your mindset.

After some reflection, I started digging into what really happened. The more I analyzed the data and the sensations I experienced during the race, the clearer the root cause became: my hip flexors had given up. They were the first component to fail, and everything else followed.

So I went to work—not just physically, but strategically. I added targeted hip flexor exercises and stretches. I adjusted my running mechanics by shortening my stride and increasing my cadence (steps per minute). These changes reduced the stress on my hips, distributing the workload more evenly and preserving my strength deeper into the race.

That process—observe, diagnose, adjust—should sound familiar to anyone working in a factory or managing a production line. When a machine fails or underperforms, we don’t just accept it. We figure out why. Was it maintenance? Operator error? Overuse? Misuse? Then we fix the root cause and implement changes to prevent recurrence.

That’s how leaders get better. That’s how businesses improve.

The Breakthrough

I wasn’t ready to end my season on a sour note. I found another Boston-qualifying race just six weeks later in Las Vegas. I kept training, made my adjustments, and prepared to test the hip flexor theory.

On April 6, 2025 I ran the best race of my life.

3 hours, 6 minutes. A 7:05 pace. My fastest marathon ever—and this time, well below the Boston cutoff.

The lessons from that journey mirror the challenges we help manufacturers face every day with Machine Tracking:

• You need visibility to understand what’s happening on your floor—just like I needed data to understand why I broke down.

• You need to test assumptions, not just accept things at face value.

• You need to adapt your process when you uncover a weakness, not blame the outcome.

• You need to keep showing up, because progress isn’t linear—but it’s possible.

Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing

There’s a saying in endurance sports: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals—you fall to the level of your systems.” That’s true in manufacturing too. You may have the goal of increasing uptime, reducing changeover time, or improving operator accountability—but unless you have the systems in place to track, learn, and adapt, those goals will stay just out of reach.

Machine Tracking gives manufacturers the system. But it’s leaders like you who show up every day and choose to improve.

I’ll keep running. And if everything goes according to plan, I’ll be lining up in Boston on April 20, 2026. Until then, I’ll keep learning, training, and refining my process—just like you do on your production floor.

Because that’s how we get better. One mile at a time. One machine at a time.