Daniel Berk was 32 years old, about 50 pounds overweight, and hadn't sprinted since college when two things happened in quick succession. His dad had a third heart attack. And then he saw a TikTok of a man in his mid-forties racing his teenage son in a hundred-yard dash and winning. Not yet, the dad's whole body language said. Not yet.

Daniel couldn't remember the last time he had sprinted. Full out. He was pretty sure it was college. He was 32 years old.

So he went for a run. His first 5K took 50 minutes. He described himself as a blubbery, slow, out-of-breath whale trying to run. And then he posted about it on Twitter, said he was going to become a runner, and asked for help.

About a hundred people replied.

🎧 Tune in here:

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other podcast platforms.

The first 60 to 90 days

Daniel was convinced runners high was a lie. He thought every runner in the world was collectively gaslighting him into believing that running could feel good. Every time he put his shoes on he was like, this is gonna be terrible, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

And then somewhere around the 60 to 90 day mark, running four to six times a week, it happened. He was four or five miles in and he felt like he could go forever. And that feeling lasted the whole day. He described it like a drug. And from that point on, the whole thing changed. He wasn't running to not be the guy who couldn't keep up with his kids. He was running to feel that thing again.

His father-in-law had run the Chicago Marathon ten times. He told Daniel that even in the peak of training, even when everything was aligned, there were still runs where nothing made sense. You were tired, you couldn't hold down liquids, the runner's high never came. Sometimes you just show up and your body says not today. That's not failure. That's running.

What running and entrepreneurship have in common

Daniel recently left a full time role at a startup and is now officially an entrepreneur. When Jon asked him how running and entrepreneurship overlap, he didn't hesitate. They're the same thing.

Both are uncertain. Both have moments where you're asking yourself which mile you're at and how much longer you have to go. Both make you want to quit. And in both, the only thing that gets you through is the mental game of knowing you've done it before and you're just doing it again.

He spent two and a half years downplaying his progress. Jon pushed back on that directly. You've cut twenty minutes off your 5K. You've lost 50 pounds. You've run four half marathons. You belong. The reason it doesn't feel significant is because you keep comparing yourself to people who are doing things you haven't done yet instead of looking back at where you started.

That's the gap and the gain. We spend so much time looking forward at who we're not. There's more power in looking back at how far we've actually come.

Being publicly curious

One of the most interesting threads in this conversation is how Daniel talks about curiosity. He's built his whole life around it. He doesn't pretend to know things he doesn't know. He asks publicly. He learns out loud. He tweeted that he was going to become a runner and asked what he was supposed to do and had no idea what he was getting into — and a hundred people showed up to help.

He did the same thing with his podcast studio setup. Took a picture of what it looked like, posted it, asked for feedback, iterated, posted again. Sam Parr told him to paint the wall. He painted the wall. Someone gave him a video walkthrough of their setup in his DMs for free just because he asked.

He thinks most people are too afraid to admit they don't know something. And that fear keeps them from the connections and the knowledge and the community that come from just asking the question.

Chicago

Daniel is sixteen weeks out from his first marathon at Chicago. His wife is due October 31st. The race is October 11th. His father-in-law's legacy is at that race. His kids will be at the mile markers and they will look at him like he is a superhero, which is the thing he thinks about most at the start of every race he's ever done.

He's experimenting with fueling — Morton powder in water, element electrolytes, gummies that are hard to chew when he's out of breath. He bought New Balance 1080s at a Fleet Feet he'd never been to because the toe box on the Brooks Glycerins was bothering him and he let himself ask questions instead of just grabbing what he knew. He's learning that different runs need different shoes and that rotating them actually makes them last longer.

He's chunking the race into fuel stations. Chicago has twenty of them. That's twenty small goals between the start line and the finish. Not twenty-six miles. Twenty stops.

His goal is to finish. And then he'll probably book his next race the same week.

That's just what he does now. He's a runner.

🎧 Listen to the full episode with Daniel Berk on For The Long Run wherever you get your podcasts.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to the For the Long Run newsletter and follow the show on Instagram.

Jon is a runner, cyclist, and podcast host from Boston, MA, who now lives in Boulder, CO. For The Long Run is aimed at exploring the why behind what keeps runners running long, strong, and motivated.

Follow Jon on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.