Jasmin Guthmann

Last Saturday, I ran my second ultra marathon: a 6-hour timed run on a 3-kilometer loop. That sounds deceptively doable until you realize what it actually means. You run the same bloody loop over and over and over again until the clock runs out. There is no finish line, no end in sight - only the relentless tick of time and the mindfuck that is doing laps on repeat.

The first half went brilliantly. I felt strong, focused, even a little smug. The sun was out, my legs were firing, and I had already nailed down a solid pace. I was on track for a personal best.

Then I blew a fuse. Not physically. Mentally. Somewhere around the halfway mark, the weight of the remaining time landed squarely on my shoulders. I started calculating how many laps I had left, how many kilometers I’d already done, and worst of all - how much time was still on the clock. Three. More. Hours.

And that’s when the voices crept in. You know the ones.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“This is stupid.”

“It’s not even a real race. You’re just running in circles.”

“You could go home now. No one would care.”

“Come on. Don’t be a loser. It’s not that hard.”

I slowed to a walk. And in that walk, I played host to an all-out civil war in my head. Angel on one shoulder, devil on the other. Ego, pride, ambition, fatigue - each shouting over the other like drunk hecklers at a midnight comedy show.

In that moment, it wasn’t about running anymore. It was about identity. Who the hell am I when things get hard? Do I bail? Do I coast? Do I justify mediocrity in a neat little rational package and call it “self-care”?

After a solid thirty minutes of this psychological mosh pit, I found a crack of clarity. I stopped focusing on time - which had become not an aid, but a tormentor - and turned my attention to something simpler: distance.

Just finish this lap.

That’s it. No mental gymnastics. No projections. No self-flagellation. Just the next lap.

And you know what? That shifted everything. That next lap brought me to a mental milestone: only one more lap to complete the marathon. So I did that.

Then I thought - hey, one more lap puts me in the ultra rankings. That’s kind of badass. So I did that.

Then two more, and I’d hit 50k. A nice, round number. So I ran those too.

At the end of six hours, I clocked in 52.5 kilometers. I finished proud, not broken. Not because I had a flawless race. Not because I had no doubts. But because I stayed in the game.

Endurance Isn’t Glamorous. It’s Grit.

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you in business school, in leadership books, or in curated LinkedIn posts with #resilience hashtags: Endurance looks like walking when you can’t run anymore, but refusing to sit down. It looks like staying in the room when every bone in your body is screaming to leave. It’s not sexy. It’s not Instagrammable. It’s raw and sweaty and sometimes very, very boring.

In business, just like in an ultra, we romanticize the idea of “grinding.” We love to talk about pushing limits - until we actually hit them. Then it becomes a question of character. Not capability. Character.

And character shows itself when no one is watching, when there’s no finish line to pose under, when the only applause you’re going to get is the one you give yourself.

Time Is a Terrible Master

One of the biggest breakthroughs I had during this run was realizing how oppressive the concept of time can be. I got caught in a mental trap: no matter how well I was doing, there were still hours left. I wasn’t chasing a distance anymore. I was stuck under the tyranny of a ticking clock.

In business, we do this too. We obsess over timelines, deadlines, and arbitrary time-based milestones. "Hit this target by Q2." "Grow X percent year over year." But time is just one lens, and often the wrong one.

What if we focused less on the timeline and more on the trajectory? Less on “Are we there yet?” and more on “Are we still moving forward?”

When I switched back to thinking about distance, I found joy again. Purpose. A reason to keep going. That’s not just a running strategy - that’s a leadership mindset.

Win the Lap You’re In

If you take nothing else from this article, take this: win the lap you’re in. Stop trying to win the whole damn race in your head before you’ve even finished the next step.

We try to control too much. Forecast too far. Anticipate every possible outcome. And in doing so, we burn our mental fuel faster than we realize. The irony is, the only thing you ever really control is what you do next.

Next meeting. Next decision. Next conversation. That’s your lap.

Focus there.

So What? Who Cares? Why Should You Listen to a Woman Who Runs in Circles for Fun?

Because I’ve built a career and a life on this very principle. I’ve stood in rooms where I was the only woman, the youngest voice, or the one everyone underestimated - and I showed up anyway. I’ve walked into transformation programs, broken projects, hostile clients - and instead of folding, I asked: What’s the next lap?

Whether you’re building a business, leading a team, writing a book, or just trying to survive another meeting that should have been an email - the same truth applies:

You don't need to know how you'll finish. You just need to start the next lap.

And when your inner voice tells you to quit, ask a better question: What would it take to just go one more?

One Final Lap

Here’s what I know: Ultra running doesn’t teach you how to run far. It teaches you how to not stop.

And life? Life is a six-hour run with no finish line in sight. Business is a never-ending loop where the variables change, but the demand for grit remains.

You get to choose what you listen to. The voices of doubt, fatigue, and fear - or the quiet whisper that says: Keep going. One more lap.

That whisper? That’s you at your best. Trust her.