The first marathon I ran was brutal in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I’d trained hard – or thought I had – followed a plan, read the guides, got a lot of advice. None of it was enough. I underestimated the distance, the terrain, and frankly my own limitations. I had no experienced guide on my shoulder telling me to slow down. It wasn’t one thing that went wrong. It was a multitude of miscalculations that compounded over 26 miles.
The second was better. I applied what I’d learned, chose a flatter course for starters, ran within myself. It went well enough that I started to feel confident and ran a few more. So I decided to push harder. The result: I collapsed at mile 25 and was wheeled off by the St John’s Ambulance team. Next time I backed off again, ran steadily, had a good race. The pattern, in hindsight, was obvious – progress breeds confidence, and confidence has a habit of outrunning preparation.
In 2017 I trained specifically to go under 2 hours 45. I missed it by five seconds. I was also lucky to make it to the finish line at all – that’s me staggering off like Bambi in the video, being whisked off to the medical tent. Five seconds off a goal I’d trained months for, and clearly much closer to a serious problem than I’d realised. And it took me months to recover.
Where AI is right now
This is exactly what I see happening with AI right now. Organisations are sprinting – chasing the pace of others, following what influencers recommend, pushing hard before the foundations are in place. And the consequences when it goes wrong aren’t just wasted investment. Feeding sensitive business data into AI tools without proper governance is a very real risk that too few people are talking about seriously. A data breach doesn’t announce itself at mile 25. By the time you know it’s happened, the damage is done.
The AI journey has the same shape as a marathon. The people who make it look easy have usually been building quietly for longer than you realise. The ones who sprint early often don’t finish well. And the most important thing isn’t how fast you’re moving – it’s that you understand why you’re running, you’re building on solid foundations, and you’re not taking risks that could end the race entirely.
