by Coach Fouse
As 2025 winds down, I find myself thinking less about what’s next and more about what’s lasted. Not in a nostalgic way, but with genuine curiosity about what endurance actually produces.
This year, I have watched athletes hit their third, fourth, and fifth seasons with Spire, and as with previous “classes,” something shifts. It’s not just fitness. There’s a quiet calmness. They know their bodies differently. They know how to push through things that beginners don’t yet have a framework to understand or endure. They’ve learned that seasons build upon seasons, and great running is learned and developed over time in stages. That’s not just head knowledge; though minds are important for good running. It comes from accumulating mile after mile, season after season, and experience after experience. It’s all stored up and begins to show in the way they think (mind), perform (body), and believe (soul).
We live in a world that celebrates the new. New jobs are exciting and show movement, progress. New training tactics suggest new knowledge and fresh insight. New tools, especially for the apprentice, seem smarter, more advanced. To be clear, there’s real value in the new, sometimes. But I’m finding what really makes the new most valuable is the old, those things which have taken time to know and develop.
Beyond coaching, I’ve been watching this same pattern show up in other places like church, work, and school. AI is a good example. When a new technology like this arrives, there’s a rush to adopt it, and FOMO is real. However, the people who integrate it most effectively aren’t necessarily the early adopters making bold claims about workforce disruption and discarding old tools. Rather, they’re the craftsmen and women who’ve been doing the work long enough to know what problems actually need solving and how the new can help.
In my day job (communications), the people I see engaging most effectively with AI aren’t the novices, but those who know their craft deeply. They have frames for understanding how the technology can serve their work. Their experience isn’t threatened by the new; it’s what makes the new most useful.
You can’t evaluate AI’s output if you don’t know the goal of a client’s campaign or understand the subtleties of their message. You can’t build prompts effectively if you don’t know what you’re actually trying to accomplish. The technology is new, but it needs old soil to grow in. Accumulated wisdom. Pattern recognition. Judgment that only comes from experience.
I see this everywhere now. The coach with a decade of experience can often adapt new training methods better than someone fresh to the scene. The business leader who’s weathered multiple cycles knows which trends matter and which are noise. The athlete who’s trained through season after season has a composed demeanor because they have a framework for running that no amount of reading can replicate.
Of course, I’m not suggesting everything new is bad. Sometimes you genuinely are in poor soil and need to make new changes. But we must also recognize that at times we’re prone to misrepresent boredom and lack of inspiration (Frontier Finding) with bad soil, when really it’s our lack of focus, intentionality, and understanding of purpose.
There’s a difference between enduring and persisting. Persistence is transactional; it’s what’s needed to train for a marathon. Endurance is what’s required to complete it. Both are important, but there’s a reason people are not recognized for marathon training—they’re recognized for finishing. Endurance compounds. It evolves something within us that ignites the soul, mind, and body.
As I enter 2026, I’m encouraged to balance my thinking. Rather than chasing “what’s next?” I want to ask, “What can I do with what I have?” New frontiers are often right in front of us. We just have to endure long enough to discover what is possible.
