The last time I ran a full marathon it was awful. I've run a lot of races, but never one that ended up so badly. There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training. That's it in a word. Without knowing it, I'd developed a sort of arrogant attitude, convinced that just a fair-to-middling amount of training was enough for me to do a good job. It's pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride. As I ran this race I felt I never, ever wanted to go through that again. Right then and there I decided that before my next marathon I was going to go back to the basics, start from scratch, and do the very best I could. Train meticulously and rediscover what I was physically capable of. Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane. Still, I certainly don't want to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Best to learn from my mistakes and put that lesson into practice the next time around.