Don’t count the days, make the days count
Look forward without counting down
What’s next?
I am writing this in the last week of May 2025. In the past 6 months I’ve completed a lot of races:
Dec 2024: Izu Trail Journey (70 km trail race)
Jan 2025: Shonan Fujisawa City Marathon (Half marathon)
Mar 2025: Shizuoka Marathon (Full marathon)
Apr 2025: Yagurazawa Ōkan (100 miler)
May 2025: Nobeyama Ultramarathon (100 km)
I’ve enjoyed every single one of these races. But whenever I finish one race there is always the next one to think about and “look forward to.” I also have a lot of enthusiastic friends who, whenever I have complete a race, ask me what I have coming up next.
I considered the Nobeyama Ultramarathon to be the end of this race season for me. (In Japan it gets very hot in summer, so there are few/no races. The ‘season’ starts again in Autumn). While I’d love to have another event in the schedule, I don’t have anything ‘serious’ in my diary until December 2025 (20th Shonan International Marathon).
Of course, I plan to add more races to my schedule because I like to “look forward” to things…but I’m also quite happy that I’m not “counting down” to another race.
Looking Forward vs Counting Down
I’s not uncommon at all for me to end posts (especially on Instagram) with the phrase “I’m looking forward to the next one.” On pretty much a weekly basis I take part in parkrun events (which I always look forward to) and beach running events (which again, I always look forward to). These running events are highlights of my week and I really look forward to the weekend because of them.
However, I don’t feel like I’m counting down the days until those events. I feel like the term counting down treats every second before something happens as some kind of chore or trial that needs to be endured. When it comes to some of the very big events I enter, there tends to be a bit more anxiety involved with them. There’s also the taper where I’m obliged to slow down for a while, break my regular rhythm, and have time to worry about all the things that might go wrong. (In Training Essentials for Ultrarunning: Second Edition, the increased anxiety and tension felt by people during tapering is referred to as “taper tantrums”). Tapers are certainly rest periods I feel like I need to endure.
I tend to separate the terms in this way:
Looking forward: Something is in the future that I am excited about. When that event arrives, it arrives.
Counting down: There is an event in the future I am excited about and I need to endure the time between now and the event.
For example, I really look forward to my weekly parkrun/sprinting events. While I am waiting for these events, I do things to prepare for those events, which include either training to run them better, or resting to prepare myself for them. The things I do before those events have a purpose, I’m not stressed about them, and I don’t wish for time to go faster until the events arrive.
But when an event is in the future that I am more anxious about I’ve found myself counting down. To move away from running for a bit, a few years ago I was getting ready to change jobs. I had a contract for a new job, I put my notice in at the place I was working and I needed to work for a few weeks until the end of my notice period. I was not enthusiastic about working those final few weeks and I saw every day as something that needed to be endured. I felt myself grinding through each day and counting down until I could start my new position. This had the effect of making me hyper focus on the enduring rather than trying to enjoy the good thing on the horizon.
Counting down is clearly a negative way of thinking about things and is probably something I should stop doing.
Learning from “There Is No Wall”
I recently listened to an audiobook titled, There Is No Wall by Allie Bailey. This book might be a hard read/listen for some people. Allie Bailey (who I will refer to as ‘the author’ moving forward) is a highly accomplished ultra runner, but as it says on the cover of her book, “Running won’t save you.”
While a lot of things that happen in this book revolve around running, the core of this book is about overcoming problems like depression and and addiction. Without giving too much of the story away (because I think people should read/listen to this themselves), the author ends up repeatedly coming across traumatic events in her life and develop a dependency on alcohol. While struggling with mental health and addiction problems, she conquers a ton of extreme challenges including running across frozen lakes in Mongolia, and running through jungles in Panama. After hitting rock bottom multiple times, she eventually finds a way out of this destructive cycle and focuses her life on doing what she does and helping other people do what they love.
In the chapter, Mind the Gap Please, the author talks about being present and in the moment:
I had a little mantra I used when my mind started to wander towards the next day: Don’t count the days, make the days count. And I did, finding a little bit of joy in every single one of them.
Don’t count the days, make the days count, really resonated with me. I, like many others, sometimes lose sight of what I am doing. I focus on future events that I want to be doing rather than focusing on making the most of where I am and what I have now. When I look forward to something, I am still able to enjoy what I’m doing without slipping into that counting down zone. When I start to count down I end up hyper focusing on not enjoying the present by telling myself that everything will be much better when a chunk of my life has disappeared and I reach a new destination. This is something I really don’t want to be doing because I know that time is precious.
I have openly said to people that I don’t want to wish my time away. But how many times have I said to myself that I’m looking forward to something when really I’m counting down? Hearing an idea expressed in a different way can be a really good way to realign and rethink how we approach life. I really need less counting down in my life and more making it count.
Final thoughts and take home messages
The more you accomplish, the more you want to accomplish. There doesn’t seem to be any end to it. I’ve done more in the past six months than I have in the past few years, but there is always the temptation to try to pack more in and get more done.
There are some events that I really look forward to. When an event that I’m looking forward to is coming up, I do my best to prepare for that, enjoy my time getting ready, and then enjoy my time on the day. But the more anxiety inducing the event is, the more likely I am to just want to get the waiting time over with.
If I find myself suffering through something I’d rather not do in order to get to a point that I want to, I sometimes find myself counting down the days until I get there. “Just another day/week/month/year.” This kind of thinking robs us of happiness.
After listening to There Is No Wall, I really want to try and put this into practice:
Don’t count the days, make the days count.
This is of course not the only good lesson in this book. I recommend you give it a read/listen. I promise you won’t be disappointed. (And if by any chance you read this, Allie, thank you very much for sharing your story).
Stay on the grind. Make the days count.
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Osu!
Anthony