Runner’s High and The Law of The Harvest

This blogpost is a response to the request of some students who trusted me, Coach Z, to share their feedback.

There was confusion when I re-started the student option to choose which path (blue or red course) to take for the same subject. I actually did this many years ago but stopped because prior to Canvas, it was very difficult to implement.

This student anxiety and uncertainty is understandable and I am grateful for the opportunity to explain. Let me do so with 2 metaphors.

I am a runner.

Because of the fear brought about by a knee operation in 2016, I did not run a single km for 30 years.

Then from a non-runner, with only 103 days of training, I ran my first marathon (yes that is 42km) in 2016 as a fifty something TRY-athlete. I thought I would just check this off my bucket list, but I realized that running teaches life and business lessons like the ones I teach in the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. So, I ran some more- in 5 years, I ran about 15 full marathons, 6 ultramarathons (50k and more) and my longest distance was 92 km (or 2 full marathons back-to-back, then an 8 km). All these are in Strava, the most popular running app.

Why this running history?

To help explain the 2^nd metaphor, the Law of the Harvest.

The Law of the Harvest is: you reap (or harvest) only what you sow (plant). There is no harvest if there was no seed planted at the start of the season, nurtured, and cultivated by hard work and sun and water months prior. You cannot plant 100 seeds and expect to harvest 900 fruits (the numbers are figurative). To harvest more, you must plant more, work more. The rewards are greater at the end for those who put in more. Those who are truly happy enjoy both the journey and the destination.

You cannot harvest by talking about it in the shade. You must put in the time, under the sun, planting and cultivating the soil and watering the plant not in 1 day or 1 week but during the entire season.

1 – We Reap Only What has been Sown 2 – We Reap the Same Kind as We Sow 3 – We Reap in a Different Season than we Sow 4 – We Reap More than we Sow 5 – We Reap in Proportion to What we Sow 6 – We Reap the Full Harvest of the Good… 7 – We Can’t Change Last Year’s Harvest

Clearly, running is an easier metaphor not just for me, but most likely for the students too.

Runners can choose from multiple distances in races; 2k, 5k, 10k, 16k, 21k, 25k, 32k,42k, 50k, 60k, 100k, 160k. The rewards are greater for the farther distances. There are 2 rewards:

(1) the external (finishers medals, certificates, runners’ shirts, event photos)

(2) the internal (the runner’s high, the mental discipline, a level of mental fitness that allows you to go from a short distance to the next higher distance)

Different distances offer different rewards as shown in this typical running infographic:

What is the relevance of this running and harvest metaphor to the marketing class?

My end goal is this: To achieve the outcomes required by the Ateneo and the approved Marketing syllabus, we can and will not take shortcuts even if it will be very convenient to do so. So, this means reading the book, discussing key ideas of the concepts synchronously and asynchronously, submitting group and individual outcomes to prove that you know the fundamentals and applied it especially in a final marketing plan.

There are several ways to achieve this Z (end in mind). Let me share the background on what I chose these over the other alternatives.