Paul Fitzpatrick’s athletic journey began on the high school gridiron. What he lacked in stature he made up for in speed and strength, allowing him to excel as a young football player. After earning his diploma, Paul, who is now a married 29-year-old Army officer and helicopter pilot living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, went to boot camp, where he discovered that running longer distances wasn’t as bad as he used to think.

Equipped now with some endurance to complement his strength and speed, Paul got into CrossFit and obstacle racing. Yet he’d grown to enjoy running so much by this point that he soon ventured all the way up to the marathon. His training was still all wrong, of course, but this began to change when Paul was introduced to the concept of slowing down to get faster in Chris McDougall’s book Natural Born Heroes, which led him to 80/20. You know what comes next.

“My first two marathons without the 80/20 system were just under the four-hour mark,” he says.” After somewhat following an 80/20 plan, I cut that time to 3:26. In my most recent race, I strictly followed the Level 3 plan using TrainingPeaks and I ran my PR time of 3:09. Along with my marathon PR, I was able to set PRs in all distances from the mile to the marathon during the train up.”

We couldn’t be more proud to have Paul as an 80/20 Endurance Ambassador. Be sure to join us in following his future adventures on Instagram if you’re into that sort of thing.