News came out last week that the U.S. Mint is stopping production of the penny. It costs almost four cents to make a coin worth one. The math finally caught up with tradition.

That got me thinking about all the things we say about pennies:

Stacking pennies.
Pinching pennies.
A penny for your thoughts.
Find a penny, pick it up.

These phrases won’t disappear overnight, but they’ll start to feel like “roll down the window” — something we keep saying in the car long after the thing itself has faded away.

Change works like that. Something feels permanent until the day it isn’t. One morning you look up, and the penny doesn’t make sense anymore.

There was a time when I could run seven days a week without thinking about it. No rest day needed. I could stack hard workouts back-to-back and bounce right back. That was my normal.

But that version of me doesn’t exist anymore. I need a rest day now. Sometimes two. My body won’t let me train the way I used to. It isn’t failure. It’s evolution.

We all have to let certain habits go — even the ones that once worked perfectly. The trick is recognizing when something has stopped serving you. The penny had a long run, but eventually it became a burden to keep making it.

Some running routines are like that. They fit one season of life, then stop fitting the next. Letting go doesn’t make you a worse runner. It usually makes you a smarter one.

Best wishes on chasing your running goals,

George