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Aug 11, 2026
002 · Day Two
002 · Day Two
00:00
30:34
Transcript
0:00
This is Harvest the Signal, where the smallest signals can change the biggest systems. And now, here's your host, Jody Lynn Owen. What is the system trying to teach us?
0:15
That's the question behind every field note, and this week's is Day Two. I'm Jody Lynn Owen, and this is Harvest the Signal.
0:26
I have been thinking a lot about how to record these field notes because I was offered different options, and one of them was to have an AI read it to you, which I did not want.
0:38
And then I noticed when I was reading it, I was probably even less interesting than AI because I just fall into this situation where I wrote it, and I edited it five thousand times, and so I know the words really well.
0:53
So I'm essentially reciting it instead of telling it to you, and I really wanna tell you these stories and bring them to life and bring to life the ideas behind them and the patterns I'm seeing underneath them.
1:05
So I'm going to give you the field note, and I might just add a little bit in here and there as I'm going down. I'll tell you a little bit about what I'm thinking.
1:14
And then, of course, at the end of all of the audio notes, I offer one more signal, which is an additional drop just for listeners. So I wanted to give you some background on these recordings.
1:24
I'm not gonna say this on every episode.
1:26
This is the second episode that is published, and I wanted to give you a little bit of context here so that as we're going through these and learning about patterns and systems and hearing some great stories, my favorite stories from history, sometimes a personal story like this one, you'll be able to enjoy it a little bit more than just having an AI read it, I hope.
1:51
So here we go. On August fourteenth, twenty twenty-two, I went for my first run. And actually, I'll say it was not my very first run in my life. I had run in college some as part of a swim team requirement.
2:06
But at any rate, twenty twenty-two, I was already older than rocks, and it was day one of a Couch to 5K app that I decided to try because my daughter had started running on one of these apps and was by this time engaged in big runs, marathons and half marathons and all that.
2:25
So I wanted just to connect with her. I wanted to understand something about this thing that she loved. I had absolutely no intention of becoming a marathon runner myself, and I still don't.
2:38
I was a competitive swimmer through college, always athletic, but never a runner. I thought maybe I could learn to run three miles. That seemed plenty ambitious for this Pisces.
2:49
So I downloaded the app, I put on my shoes, and I headed out for day one. And then I got hit from behind by a bicycle. Well, by a human pedaling a bicycle, a rather large human pedaling a rather large bicycle.
3:06
I was running on a sidewalk in Seattle when a teenager riding a bike came from behind. He had apparently moved from the road to the sidewalk because he was texting while riding and thought the sidewalk would be safer.
3:22
It was not for either of us. This reminded me of so many times I've taught very young students, and we work really hard on learning to apply knowledge across settings. It's a developmental
3:37
milestone, and he hadn't hit it yet. So good for him. He was not texting while riding on the road, but he was texting while on the sidewalk. So that was me running.
3:47
I was mid-stride, and I flew forward with tremendous velocity. I had the presence of mind to realize midair that I could lose all my teeth if I didn't land right. So I tucked my chin in and curled my head down.
4:01
And then I remember a jolt and then silence. When I opened my eyes, I was, of course, on the ground, and there was a giant puddle of blood on the pavement in front of me.
4:14
The dog was sitting perfectly still just staring at me. He was already offended that we were running, and now he was mystified by this new development.
4:24
I remember looking at that spreading pool of blood and having the surprisingly very matter-of-fact thought, "Huh, this is not how I thought I would go." Fortunately, I wasn't dying. Faces just bleed a lot.
4:40
A couple of very, very nice moms walking their children came over and gave me a bag of baby wipes. I cleaned myself up the best that I could, got my dog, and then I walked two miles back to my car looking.
4:55
I learned when I got to the car mirror like I had just left a murder scene. Across those two miles, it was a summer day. I passed a hundred people at least, and almost no one stopped me to see if I was okay.
5:09
That remains one of the stranger details of this entire story. Now, it may be related to something we call the Seattle Freeze, where Seattleites are very challenged socially.
5:22
But if you see a woman walking covered in blood broken, just stop and ask if she's okay or if she needs anything. It's a good thing to do. Take care of each other out there. So I got in the car. I drove home.
5:36
I took a shower, and then I took myself to urgent care.
5:40
I had cracked my skull and my nose, and the kindest doctor on the planet spent hours picking debris out of my skin from a variety of locations and did everything he could as kindly as he could before he sent me to the emergency room for scans.
5:57
What I thought would be a few days of bruising turned into years of recovery, physical therapy, retraining my balance, rebuilding strength.
6:08
Learning to walk confidently again and adapting to changes I had never anticipated when I pressed start on a Couch to 5K app that summer morning.
6:21
Now meanwhile, on that exact same day, my husband, my daughter, and my son were hiking The Enchantments, an area of Washington State known for its immense beauty.
6:32
More than twenty miles of elevation and rough terrain exposed to the sun for long stretches. They left before sunrise and did not get back to the car until after sunset. Difficult is an understatement.
6:47
It's the kind of hike where preparation matters considerably.
6:52
There is some ongoing discussion in our family about whether every person on that hike that day was actually as prepared as they should have been, if you catch my drift, but they all made it out uninjured.
7:05
In a heartbeat, my daughter developed a theory about this, that I had taken the family's vicarious injury.
7:12
Everyone else doing this crazy dangerous thing got home safely because apparently I had volunteered to absorb the day's entire injury allotment on a simple sidewalk in West Seattle.
7:24
I am not sure this is how gravity works, but I would rather face plant all day long than have any of them hurt, so it really didn't phase me. I'm happy to take one for the team.
7:36
Additionally, there was something else about that day that stayed with me. Lying on that pavement had delivered a message with unusual clarity. We have much less control over how life unfolds than we like to believe.
7:52
I have learned a version of this lesson in several horrible ways, several horrible times over the course of my life, like most humans have.
8:02
But I never had to learn it by getting my head slammed into cement, so this was new. I did not immediately turn the realization into some inspirational transformation. Quite the opposite.
8:15
I went way down before I came back up. Recovery changed my life in ways I could not have understood that day. But somewhere during those years, something else remained.
8:27
My daughter kept running, and I kept watching her from afar on apps, of course, because she is in New York and I'm in Seattle. Marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, 5Ks, training, discipline, one foot in front of the other.
8:45
Wanting to see her in person rather than just as a little dot moving around the app, however riveting that is, I got myself to New York to cheer her on for the New York City Marathon.
8:58
I will never forget what it felt like to stand there and cheer for thousands of people running past. Every single one of them made an imprint on me.
9:09
Almost as much as the runners, the spirit of the people from all over the world gathering across this beautiful city, standing in the sunshine on a crisp fall day
9:21
in a massive show of positivity is almost impossible to explain in words.
9:29
Now, she had told me there's a little trick where you can buy a ticket to get to those bleachers that you see on TV where you watch the final stretch, right where they cross the finish lines. So I figured that out.
9:41
I got myself a ticket, and I got to the front row of those bleachers just in time for her to turn the corner and head down the home stretch. Watching her cross that finish line sealed it for me.
9:55
What my daughter had called my vicarious injury became something else to me, vicarious inspiration. Day two. Cut to January 22nd, 2026.
10:10
I opened that Couch to 5K app again, and I did day two. Three years, five months, and eight days had passed since day one, and I know because it's logged in the history of the app.
10:26
There is something almost ridiculous about seeing those two things written next to each other. Day one, three years, five months, eight days. Day two.
10:38
We tend to have a very particular picture of progress, especially for folks who I am definitely one of.
10:47
We view ourselves as achievers, as doers, as people with incredibly strong work ethic, as people with the tolerance to work through uncomfortable moments of feeling exhausted, worn out, run down, and we have a sense about ourselves that we can keep going anyway.
11:06
So day one for us should be followed by day two, and then day three. You keep going. You build momentum. You don't break the streak.
11:15
We celebrate consistency because consistency works, but life doesn't always cooperate with our preferred trajectory.
11:26
Sometimes there are three and a half years between two consecutive steps, and the second step still counts. I did not tell my daughter I was learning to run, and in fact, I did not tell anyone. I just followed the app.
11:40
Run a little, walk a little, run again. I made one decision very early. I was not going to fight the process. I wasn't going to prove anything.
11:51
I was going to do the exact amount of running I could do that day, and then I was going to come back and do it again. Little bits would add up. That was the whole strategy.
12:03
Well-researched, of course, but I was buying into it for the first time because I'm more of an all-in kind of girl.
12:09
Well, at the beginning of every run, the app posts this greeting I initially thought was just a tad ridiculous, but then I realized it was exactly what I needed, but I needed to say it to myself.
12:21
So at the start of every run, regardless of who was around us, I would look down at my dog and say to both of us, "Hello, amazing runner." This was objectively generous. Neither one of us were amazing runners.
12:36
[laughs] Week one went surprisingly well, which led me to conclude that this whole enterprise was perhaps most definitely maybe possible. And then week two arrived, and the app changed the game.
12:52
Running got real hard, real fast. I adapted a mantra from a woman's running movement that sprouted out of Kathrine Switzer's historic Boston Marathon bib number. Look this up if you don't know it.
13:09
The story is incredible. Her bib number was two-six-one, so there's running groups that are organized around two-six-one, and you'll see Two Six One Fearless in a lot of places.
13:20
Well, I just adapted that and made my mantra, "Two six one, no fear."
13:26
When I felt doubt show up, when my legs felt heavy, when I didn't think I could do it, I would just stretch my arms out in front of me, make the numbers two, six, and one with my fingers, then pretend to zip the fear up through my body, pulling my fist up over my head, and then I would throw the whole thing into Lake Washington, metaphorically speaking.
13:45
It looks ridiculous. I know it looks ridiculous, but it also worked, and I kept going. And that was the week. Around the end of week two, my husband figured out I was up to something.
13:59
I haltingly admitted I was trying to learn to run to surprise our daughter. He agreed to keep my secret, and he also became my private cheerleader. He's incredible.
14:10
So on week three, I went back for the first time to the actual road where this whole thing had started. I wanted to face down that section of sidewalk.
14:22
I mapped my route so that I could walk for about two miles to just settle into my body, organize my breathing, and try and regulate my nervous system. I said, "Hello, amazing runner.
14:37
Two six one, no fear," on repeat. I came to the street, I turned the corner, and I started my run. I was afraid. I was fighting to stay present. I really wanted to feel my feet run right through that space.
14:54
It is a long road, and I wasn't hit until almost at the end of it. But I ran towards that spot with all that fear and memory, desire and dread.
15:07
And that stretch of run brought back a sentence I've thought about many times since. "Let what's easy be easy, and let what's hard be hard." It's a common coaching phrase.
15:22
I can't remember where I first heard it, but I've used it on hard hikes for many years, and it came back to me in that moment, and I'm so grateful it did.
15:33
Now, the other thing as I read that that I just remembered is I would pair that with near the end of the hike, I would say to the dog, "Isn't it great how you get to the end of the hike and you're almost at the end of the hike?"
15:47
Like we're almost, we're almost at the end. Here we were going and going and going, but now the end is coming, and so we're almost at the end.
15:56
And I would pair those two things, very basic ideas, but they are tricks that help my brain keep my body moving forward. And that is exactly what got me across the few feet I had flown across that last time.
16:14
But this time, I landed on my feet instead of my face. Let what's easy be easy and let what's hard be hard. We waste an enormous amount of energy doing the opposite.
16:28
We make easy things complicated because we don't trust easy, and we resist hard things because we think their difficulty means something has gone wrong.
16:39
Sometimes easy is allowed to be easy, and sometimes hard is simply hard. Keep moving.
16:47
By week four, I discovered that my running outfits could match my shoes, and I realized there could be future shopping opportunities associated with this new identity.
16:58
I'm still wearing sweatshirts when I run, so I'm not exactly very exciting as a fashion icon when I'm running [laughs], but I'm not an icon of any kind when I'm running, which we'll talk about later.
17:09
So week five brought bugs up my nose. Very offensive and very common, or so I'm told. On week six, I decided to work on intentional exhaling, and I just spit all over myself instead.
17:26
Running, it turns out, is deeply undignified. And still, hello, amazing runner. Face plant to 5K.
17:36
On March eighth, twenty twenty-six, I asked my daughter to meet me at the reservoir in Central Park and to wear what she normally wears for light exercise.
17:48
For her, I figured this would be more like a little skip around the pond. For me, it would be monumental. She didn't know why. I was surprising her. I had made us T-shirts that said, "Face plant to 5K."
18:02
I had also learned that two laps around the reservoir in Central Park would get us to 5K. I made a playlist that we could share, and then I told her the story she didn't know.
18:14
I stood at the bottom of the steps that led up to the reservoir and gave her the speech of a lifetime. And I gotta say, I was looking at her, but behind her are all these historic buildings, beautiful architecture,
18:29
people coming out for a run in the morning, the park, the whole ambiance was a great place to give a speech, and I went for it.
18:38
I told her about August fourteenth, twenty twenty-two, about starting Couch to Five K because of her, about January twenty-second, twenty twenty-six, my day two, about the secret training, about the bugs, about spitting on myself, about learning to let easy be easy and hard be hard, and about all the ways I had watched her put one foot in front of the other.
19:06
I told her that what she had once thought of as my vicarious injury had become something entirely different. She had become my vicarious inspiration.
19:17
And then I invited my marathon-running daughter to run my very first five K with me. I did offer one important disclaimer. I had no idea how fast I could run.
19:30
I had intentionally stayed off Strava because I couldn't figure out how to hide myself there, and I wasn't particularly interested in publishing my slog to the world anyway.
19:41
And I had never run a whole five K, so I really didn't know how long it would take. So I warned her, "For me, this might be running. For you, it might be a walk." I didn't know. But she came anyway, and we ran.
19:54
We danced, and we ran, and we crunched gravel side by side, and we finished. It was one of the most joyful runs in my life. What counts as forward? I'm adding mileage, and I'm learning how to run longer.
20:11
I've moved on to the Nike Run Club app, and Coach Bennett has now talked me through ninety-minute runs, sixty-minute runs, five-mile runs, two-and-a-half-mile runs, and all sorts of distances I once would have found fully impossible to even imagine I could accomplish.
20:28
I still dance while I'm running if the music moves me, even in public, and I do something else now too.
20:34
I think about those two miles I walked after the accident and how many people passed me without asking if I was okay.
20:43
So now, when I pass another runner, I try to give them something, a smile, a high five, a woot woot, a you've got this, occasionally a good old-fashioned yee-haw. It turns out there is science behind this.
20:58
Encouragement and social support can change how effort is experienced. And research on exercise and running shows that encouragement can improve performance, motivation, and the experience of the effort itself.
21:12
In other words, cheering for others compounds and grows you. I love that, and I think it applies everywhere.
21:22
So think about work and all the places you can cheer for and encourage others and how that cheering and encouraging compounds. There's a tiny signal between two people when you're running, and you do this,
21:38
smiling at another person or giving an air five. It's a tiny signal, and you're moving in opposite directions. But it changes something about the next few steps, maybe theirs, maybe mine, but probably both.
21:55
So I cheer, and almost every time, someone smiles and cheers back. I still have no intention of running a marathon. I'm also not a particularly impressive runner.
22:07
Nobody sees me coming down the trail and thinks, "There goes an elite athlete." I am slow. Some days I slog. Some days everything clicks. Some days my feet hurt. In fact, this week I got my first blister ever.
22:21
I don't know why, but I did. Sometimes I'm surprised by what my body can do. But somewhere along the way, I stopped requiring myself to be good at running because running good enough is still running.
22:37
That idea has become so important to me that I've started grouping my runs into what I call a meh-athon, like M-E-H, meh, shrug, meh. Not everything has to be a marathon. Not every effort has to be exceptional.
22:54
Not every metric has to impress somebody else. Sometimes the accomplishment is that you moved, and moving forward is moving. So is moving backwards, frankly.
23:07
I've spent much of my professional life thinking about systems, change, improvement, resilience, and what allows people and organizations to become something they aren't yet.
23:20
We love dramatic transformation, the turnaround, the launch, the breakthrough, the heroic leader, the giant leap. But I think we overestimate the importance of intensity and underestimate the importance of return.
23:36
Can the person come back tomorrow? Can the team try again? Can the organization retain what it learned when progress gets interrupted?
23:47
Can the system accommodate a bad day, a disruption, an injury, a change in leadership, a loss of capacity without treating everything that came before it as wasted?
23:59
Maybe resilience isn't the ability to keep moving without interruption.
24:03
Maybe resilience includes preserving a pathway back because sometimes day two comes the next morning, and sometimes day two comes three years, five months, and eight days later. It still counts.
24:17
That has changed how I think about the accident too. I don't believe everything necessarily happens for a reason, and I don't need to turn getting hit by a bicycle into a gift I wouldn't choose the injury.
24:31
I wouldn't choose the years it took from me. But I do get to choose what I carry forward from it.
24:36
The woman who stood up from that sidewalk in twenty twenty-two was tough because she could walk two miles back to her car, literally a bloody broken mess. She was a bit of a badass.
24:47
But I understand strength differently now.
24:50
There is the strength required to push through, and there is the strength required to build, to begin again, to accept today's capacity without mistaking it for your permanent capacity, to do something badly for long enough to get better at it, to let what's easy be easy, to let what's hard be hard, to keep putting one foot in front of the other even when no one else would look at what you're doing and call it impressive.
25:21
I am stronger now, not because I've regained the exact strength I lost. Some of it has come back differently, deeper maybe, less about proving what I can endure and more about trusting what I can build.
25:34
My daughter taught me something about that before I even knew she was teaching me. She leaned forward, she put one foot in front of the other, and she ran on. Eventually, I did too.
25:45
And that's what Harvest the Signal is all about. Forward doesn't have a pace requirement. It doesn't require an unbroken streak. It doesn't require anyone watching.
25:59
And it doesn't require a running app, but I do love them. Sometimes forward is a marathon. Sometimes it's a methon. And sometimes the bravest evidence that something is still moving is simply this.
26:12
Day one, day two, whatever comes next. The question I'll leave you with is this. Where in your life or work might you be mistaking an interruption for an ending?
26:29
And yes, I made t-shirts for that. Get yours at the link. I'll put it below. And join the methon crew. I don't know what we should call ourselves, but it's really fun to wear the t-shirt and get people's responses.
26:43
People are so encouraging and positive when they see that you're working on something. It's really fun. No mileage required. No time limits. Just forward. Or as I like to say, somehow you kept going anyway.
26:58
Twenty-six point two miles in the time it took. One more signal. And that's your cue I'm about to drop something extra for you, the listener.
27:08
While I was learning to run, I tried to make videos for myself a couple of times a week, mostly so I could remember what I was discovering along the way. After many of my runs, I gave myself one more challenge.
27:22
Walk home up one of the longest, steepest hills in our very hilly Seattle neighborhood. At the top, breathless and triumphant, I would turn on the camera and say something like, "Look at that. Look at what I just did.
27:36
I made it up this hill." But when I watched the videos back, I noticed something strange. You can't see the hill. On the camera, the road behind me, it looks almost flat. And there I am huffing and puffing.
27:50
I knew how hard I had worked to get there. My legs knew. My lungs knew. The video did not. The video was not wrong. It just couldn't measure what made the climb hard.
28:00
And that made me think about how often we do the same thing with people, with organizations, and especially with ourselves. We judge progress by what's easiest to observe instead of what's actually changing.
28:14
We mistake visible movement for meaningful movement. We assume that if growth doesn't look dramatic, it isn't happening. But some of the most important progress is also impossible to see from the outside.
28:27
Confidence, courage, capacity, trust, the willingness to come back for day two. A system built for return has to recognize that not everything that matters is immediately measurable.
28:42
Sometimes a person doing the climbing knows something the dashboard or the camera or the people watching can't see. The hill didn't become easier because the camera couldn't see it.
28:56
All in all, maybe we need to ask ourselves, have we built systems that make it easy to come back?
29:03
Because there is a difference between a system that demands perfect continuity and one that makes continued progress possible.
29:12
And three years, five months, and eight days after day one, I am very grateful mine still had a day two.
29:22
If today's field note changed the way you think about how to approach progress or if you are inspired to learn to run, please let me know. I do read every reply personally.
29:35
In fact, the next Harvest the Signal may begin with something you've stopped accepting but haven't yet put into words.
29:43
You can connect with me on LinkedIn by my name or on threads at Harvest the Signal, and let's keep this conversation moving.
29:51
Speaking of moving, I would love to be the voice in your ear while you are walking the dog or driving to work or even running. We can explore patterns hiding in plain sight together.
30:03
So please hit subscribe, and we'll do it again. I'm Jody Lynn Owen. Until next time, keep looking for the signal. This has been Harvest the Signal with Jody Lynn Owen. The smallest signals can change the biggest systems.
30:19
Be sure to like, follow, and share so you never miss an episode or the opportunity to compare your field notes with your colleagues.
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