This post is about a 5-year journey that changed everything—and what it taught me about resilience, strategy, and becoming who you thought you couldn't.
The Impossible Beginning
In 2020, I was that guy: an ITB alumnus running a creative digital agency, completely sedentary, leaning hard into unhealthy habits. I wasn't sick, wasn't in crisis (yet), but I was fractured. The pandemic hit, and something in me broke open—not dramatically, but quietly. I hit Obese level 1. My cognitive function tanked. I remember calling it "slow thinking"—like my brain was running at half speed. I'd sit in strategic meetings and feel... foggy. Unreliable. Not myself.
In August 2020, something shifted. I decided to run 5 kilometers.
I remember telling people: "I'm going to run a marathon one day." They laughed. Not unkindly, but the kind of laugh that says sure, buddy. And honestly? I didn't believe it either. A marathon felt like claiming I'd climb Everest. A 100K? Laughable. Impossible.
But here's what I didn't understand then: impossibility is just a lack of systems.
By July 2023, I was running marathons with the ASICS Marathon Team. By 2024, I was a Pocari Sweat Marathon Pacer. And in 2025—just 5 years after that first terrifying 5K—I ran not one, but three 100K ultra-trail races in eight weeks.
When I delivered this presentation on October 30, 2025, I had already completed two of them: BDG Ultra and Trans Jeju by UTMB. I was mid-mission, riding the momentum toward the third race (BTS Ultra), still processing what was happening.
Now, writing this in January 2026, with all three finishes behind me, I can see the full arc of what happened.
100+ km. Done.
The journey wasn't about getting faster or stronger (though both happened). It was about discovering that the person I thought I was—sedentary, undisciplined, limited—was a fiction. And once you see through that fiction, you can't unsee it.
Along the way, I learned seven fundamental truths. Not secrets, exactly. More like operating principles—frameworks that work because they're rooted in how humans actually function, not how we wish we functioned.
These aren't just running principles. I've watched them reshape how I lead Suitmedia, how I make decisions under uncertainty, how I handle the scaling challenges of a growing business. They're transferable. And I think they might work for whatever your "100K" is.
Secret #1: The Power of Showing Up (Consistency Beats Intensity Every Time)
The Real Problem with Motivation
Let me tell you about motivation: it's a liar.
Everyone approaches running (or fitness, or any ambitious goal) the same way: they wait for motivation. They imagine themselves as the kind of person who loves running. They picture early mornings, sunrises, that runner's high. They motivate themselves into a frenzy and commit to running 5 days a week, 10km per session.
Then Tuesday comes, and they're tired. Wednesday, it rains. Thursday, work runs late. By Saturday, they've missed three sessions, feel like failures, and quit.
This is the motivation trap. And I fell into it hard in those first months.
What changed everything was understanding BJ Fogg's Behavior Model: Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Prompt. You can't rely on motivation because motivation is volatile. It spikes and crashes. But you can control ability and prompts.
Here's what I did differently:
I started absurdly small.
My first running routine wasn't 10km, 5 days a week. It was 15 minutes of walk-jog, 3 times a week. That's it. Not impressive. Not Instagram-worthy. But doable. Even on bad days, even when I was tired or stressed, 15 minutes felt achievable.
The magic wasn't in the 15 minutes themselves. It was in building the habit first, the pace later.
I treated running like a professional appointment—non-negotiable, scheduled, the same time each week. Not because I loved it, but because it was on the calendar, and I show up to calendar items. This sounds obvious, but most people don't do this. They think discipline comes from feeling like it. Discipline actually comes from removing the decision.
By month three, running 15 minutes 3x a week felt as normal as brushing my teeth. My brain stopped negotiating it. Then I extended to 20 minutes. Then to 5 days a week. Then the distances grew. But the foundation was the habit—showing up, even when it sucked.
The "Good Enough" Run
Here's something they don't tell you: not every run needs to be great.
In October 2025, I had completed a 266-week running streak—5+ years without missing a single week. Some of those runs were transcendent. Most were forgettable. Some were genuinely ugly. I remember a 6am run in Jakarta heat where I barely made it 5km and felt like I'd been hit by a bicycle. But I showed up. That run counted the same as the perfect long run on a cool morning.
The breakthrough moment came when I stopped chasing the perfect run and started celebrating the completion of effort. Some weeks, "showing up" meant a slow 8km jog in humidity. Some weeks it meant a brutal 30km weekend run. Both counted. Both built the streak.
This is counterintuitive but critical: Discipline is built by showing up on the bad days, not the good ones. The good days take care of themselves.