Here’s this week’s White Space — a short reflection for leaders who need space to think, not more advice.

Long-Run Pace

This coming weekend, I’ll line up with several thousand other runners at the Vancouver First Half Marathon.

It’s usually cold. Sometimes dry. Always (mostly) fun.

I only started running a few years ago. At first, it was simple curiosity:

How far could I run?

How long could I keep going?

How fast could I get?

I quietly assumed that running marathons would put me in rare company.

Then I joined a running club.

Turns out… everyone runs marathons. Some of them seem to run one every other weekend. A whole new world opened up — people far faster, more experienced, and more consistent than me.

Since my first race in 2018, I’ve collected a small pile of medals and ribbons of varying colours and distances. I’ve added mileage, shaved minutes off times, worn through more pairs of running shoes than I can count, and logged thousands of kilometres through rain, early darkness, minor injuries, setbacks, disappointments — and the occasional euphoric finish line.

But the real gains haven’t been on the race clock.

They’ve been quieter than that.

Running has become one of my most practical leadership classrooms — not because it offers dramatic breakthroughs, but because it keeps teaching steady lessons over time.

The kind you don’t notice at first:

progress that looks ordinary,

setbacks that don’t disqualify you,

and the quiet importance of rhythm over intensity.

And maybe most of all, it has taught me about pace.

Saturdays are for long runs. Long runs are not fast. They’re easy runs — deliberately slower than you feel capable of. You hold back. You breathe easily. You stay conversational. You resist the urge to prove something every time you head out the door.

Because the goal isn’t to win on Saturday. The goal is to still be strong on race day.

Leadership under sustained responsibility has a similar feel.

When the pressure rises, the instinct is to speed up — decide faster, push harder, carry more. But without space to settle into a sustainable rhythm, energy drains in ways that aren’t obvious at first. Clarity thins. Reactivity creeps in. The cost of decisions quietly increases.

There’s a different way of moving that doesn’t look impressive from the outside. A steadier pace. A willingness to go a little slower now in order to remain strong when the decisions in front of you really matter.

Most leadership mistakes I see aren’t made because leaders don’t care — they’re made because they’ve been running race pace for too long while carrying responsibility that doesn’t ease.

This weekend, somewhere along the seawall in Vancouver, likely with cold hands and tired legs, I’ll be reminded again:

Going slower at the right times isn’t weakness.

It’s how you go the distance when others are depending on your judgment.

Paul