Endurance

In John McCraw’s garage in Houston, there is a wall of medals.

They are the medals you earn by moving your body through water, over roads, across finish lines that most people never approach.

Twenty-two marathons. Fourteen full Ironmans. Nine half Ironmans. An MS 150 from Houston to Austin. John’s is a lifetime and a career built on endurance in every sense of the word.

And in October, there will be Kona.

The Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, on Kona, in the wind, heat, and lava fields, is where triathletes go to find out what they’re made of. You qualify by time, by age group, by speed, by legacy.

Twelve Ironmans and your name goes into the draw.

John has done fourteen.

He’s been waiting for this.

“You talk to any Ironman, any triathlete, and they know about Kona,” he says. “It’s the Mecca.”

He didn’t grow up as an athlete, but remembers, in 2005, standing on the sidelines of a marathon in Houston and thinking, “How do they do that?” And he kept thinking about it and decided to start training. His first marathon was in 2006.

The year after, he did two. Houston, then Austin, six weeks apart. The year after that, three—Houston, Austin, San Antonio—enough to earn a jacket that said Marathons of Texas across the back.

He keeps the race numbers. Some are framed in his office. The first marathon photo is on his wall.

For twenty years, John has trained through Houston summers—the kind where the thermometer hits the high 90s, and the humidity wraps around you like a thick blanket the minute you go outside. He wakes up at 3:30 in the morning to fit in a workout before a full day of work. He swims in the evenings. He rides his bike on a trainer indoors. He runs.

“Your body craves it,” he says. “You don’t feel like sleeping. You’re just going.”

John is in sales at RGP. And he’ll tell you that his earnings have correlated with his Ironman training. When he’s in it—really in it, full training, full commitment—he earns more. He drives harder. He closes more.

It’s not a coincidence.

“In sales, you’ve got to be driven. You’ve got to have goals and a plan to get there. It’s the same thing.”

There is also something he talks about called the athlete’s high. After crossing an Ironman finish line, there is a period—around thirty days—where he feels like he can break through walls. Like the world has no ceiling. Like if he could do that, he can do anything.

And then he signs up for another race.

There is something that happens, he’ll tell you, on a long race when it starts to go wrong. When the body is falling behind the mind. When you hit a wall.

You don’t think about the finish line. You think about the next lamppost. The next aid station. You get a drink of water. You walk for thirty seconds. You compose yourself.

And then you go on.

“You have to be very, very positive,” he says. “Because you’re going to have ups and downs. And you’ve got to know that when you have a down, that you can get through it.”

In October, John McCraw will stand at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Kona, alongside the best triathletes in the world, and he will begin. A 2.4-mile swim. 112 miles on the bike. A full marathon to close it.

He’s been training for twenty years for this.

But really—he’s been building toward it one finish line at a time.

That’s what it means to Dare to Work Differently.