On Running

I’ve been running about four to five times a week these days and I think it’s safe to say that it’s part of my routine. My wife and I have made a deliberate effort to make this fitness activity part of our morning routine over the past few years. Up until recently, I had only run periodically -— track in grade school (200m, 400m), on the tread mill at the gym, or an occasional charity 5k — but nothing serious. Last year, I finished my first marathon, this year I ran my second marathon without walking¹, and I feel comfortable calling myself a “runner”². In this process of becoming a “runner” I’ve talked to a lot of people who run about how it appeals to them, and I’ve been reflecting on and why I personally like running.

Finding your pace

When I ran track in grade school, I mostly did sprints and ran as fast as I could for some distance, typically tiring out around 200m but sometimes being asked by my coach to continue for a 400m, despite being out of energy half way through. It’s taken me until now to realize that even with a relatively short distance and time frame, all running is an endurance sport in more than just the obvious ways. Regardless of each run’s distance or time, in order to effectively train you’ll have to stretch your endurance. That might translate to working on your heart rate, muscle fatigue, training frequency, recovery, or speed. Overrunning can mean exhausting yourself early in a run and not having energy for the end. Overtraining can mean pulling a muscle or getting too sore to run, which impacts your recovery and training schedule.

On the other hand, if you don’t push these goals, you’ll have a hard time progressing - you can’t run longer, further, or faster if you don’t run some combination of longer, further, or faster ³. If you take a break from running (say, seasonally) or rest after an injury, you might notice a significant step backwards while you get back in the groove. Finding your pace means maintaining your fitness and staying disciplined to a schedule as much as it does not overtraining - it’s a balance between commitment and setting achievable goals. For under-trainers, often, the most challenging part about running is just going outside and running every day you say you will⁴. Regularity helps build your ability, and helps you find a “macro-pace” for your training schedule. I think this this is actually more important to overall running success than your mile time or how far you can run on a single day. My mantra for finding my pace is, “the day serves the week, the week serves the month, the month serves the year,” to remind myself that you can’t have a good week without good days but also one good day that you overexert might harm your week. I find that thinking like this also applies well to a race, where the step serves the segment, the segment serves the mile and the mile serves the race. If you overrun a mile it can harm your race time.

There’s a zen to finding your pace. When progress seems slow and you want to overwork, you can remind yourself to think bigger and serve that goal. When the goal seems insurmountable and you want to give up, you can remind yourself that it’s just one day but you need that one day to make the year-long goal.

Progression

Before I got into running, I went to the gym and used free weights and did weight lifting. In a lot of ways, progression in running is very similar to weight lifting. Early on, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you progress, but there are some challenges that just prove incredibly difficult⁵. With a good program, you can add distance to your runs pretty quickly, with marathon training programs taking your weekly long run from 6 miles to 20 miles in 18 weeks. That’s almost a mile per week progression for distance. It’s a palpable change that feels extremely rewarding and helps encourage continuing discipline to complete the program.

The pace of progression always astounds me coming from weight lifting, where it feels like progress is slower. Maybe it’s an easy-to-follow program or just the way you count mileage that allows you to account for the change. But more similarly to the pace I felt in weight lifting — its taken me a year to shave a minute off of my average mile pace when running distance. Improving my pace has been a long-term side effect of running, rarely with a noticeable progression. Using apps like Strava or Apple Fitness/Health I can track the trend, but the slope is so gradual, with so many bumps and returns back to a slower pace that it’s often hard to give myself credit. Regardless, I can see and feel the benefit of my effort, which I have applied consistently and regularly to reach my goals. For me, this feels extremely rewarding, even if it takes a long timeline to see.

I have no allusions that progression will continue without increased effort, but I know that I still have a lot of room to challenge myself and stretch my abilities without becoming a professional runner. I’ve recently started training in hot weather and working on improving my heart-rate and that training has felt completely new compared to previous training, with noticeable progression through the continuous application of time and effort.

Comparison - the Thief of Joy

The more you run the more you’ll see other runners and make note of their times and pace. If you run a race, you can run for a time (and ostensibly to win), but unless you’re an excellent runner already (I’m not), you’ll likely have a hard time placing well even in your division. To me, there’s something more zen to this. It becomes a practice of humility and acceptance that others around you are also making an effort and may, by some metric, be better than you. It’s zen because it forces you to rid yourself of the common “all-or-nothing” mental block and accept good even if it’s clearly inferior or imperfect. Even if (when) others run faster or further than you, you can still set your own personal best time. You can still reach your goal and have your achievement. You can still have a good outcome, relative to your own experience, surrounded by people who sacrificed more, worked harder, had more time, had fewer other focuses, or had more to prove. It’s not about them, it’s about you, and finding that peace comes easy when you have many grueling hours of training and racing to think about it.

It’s often said that comparison is the thief of joy, and through running, I’ve found that truth. But more importantly, I’ve begun to find empathy for the effort of others. It’s become easier to consider how impressive someone running several marathons a year or a sub-3-hour (or even sub-4-hour) marathon time is once you’ve put in the work to run one yourself. I always felt like this was impressive, but I don’t think I ever appreciated just how impressive it was. I think that envying accomplishment can strip you of your own joy, but to compare is human and appreciating life’s tradeoffs can help contextualize the effort. Some of the fastest runners that I see daily are often out there regardless of if I start at 6 or 7am — are they running an hour more than me every morning? Once you see what it takes to get to each level, you have to either trade your time and other aspects of your life to get better or you find solace that this isn’t a trade you’re willing to make. Zen is when you’ve found your pace and you accept and appreciate a faster pace that’s within your reach but not your ultimate desire. You might do something that appears similar to olympic runners but your goals aren’t the same. If you want to be in shape and exercise daily, or go outside before working at a desk each day, those things don’t require you to become an olympian.

To others, who run slower than you, your achievement may seem incredible. To the people who won’t wake up at 5am and won’t run in the morning, even an exhausted, complaint-ridden, half-assed run might seem disciplined. It’s all relative, and when you compare upward you don’t give yourself the credit you’ve earned. Zen is remembering the people you pass when you look forward at the people who pass you.

Nobody gives a shit what you do

This may feel contradictory after mentioning that I notice the pace of regulars on the trail, but the more I run the more I notice that nobody else gives a shit about what I’m doing. They don’t care if I’m sweating profusely, running without a shirt and my fat flapping around, running at a glacial pace or alternating between walking and running. They don’t care if I’m late to my run, if I cut my run short, if I swap runs between Monday and Tuesday. Nobody ever notices, because nobody gives a shit. I sometimes notice when regulars have been gone for awhile or when regulars are running with a new partner, but rarely assume that they’ve had a lapse in character or skill because of my observations.

Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, I periodically felt observed or watched in what I did and felt either shameful or embarrassed about it. Running has been one of the most intense sessions of exposure therapy I’ve ever experienced, and has helped me adopt a superpower of shamelessness. I felt like when I weight lifted, a big hurdle was putting aside my ego and recognizing that nobody is at the gym to watch me fuck up or fail. The people who notice only give a shit briefly and it that superficiality doesn’t stay with you.

With running it’s nearly impossible for anyone to give a shit. People who are slower than you are gone because you pass them. People who are faster than you are gone because they pass you. People who are the same speed — they still don’t give a shit. They’re struggling with their own goals and challenging themselves in their own ways. Nobody has the time and attention to give a shit about what you’re doing because they’re paying too much attention to what they’re doing.

This is hugely freeing for people, like me, who feel guilty in being bad at something when you’re get started. I think this is really grounding for one’s ego and like the zen of finding your pace, this is its own peace and freedom from being judged and not meeting expectations. It’s just you. You can run with others and join clubs, but there will always be a quiet and peace with yourself.

Eating the shit

I’m not really sure where I heard this expression originally⁶, and make no mistake about the good things I’ve said above about running - it’s how I often feel. Running is sometimes like eating shit. I understand that the analogy is gross, but for me there’s no better way to put it. It’s unpleasant - often physically repulsive. There’s no good way to do it that’s more pleasant. It’s not complicated, I just don’t want to do it.

I frequently don’t want to run and try to make excuses not to run. I often have an aversion to getting up early and feel exhausted from the day prior. There’s no way to slice it or make it more palatable, I just need to do it. Sometimes you just have to eat the shit.

Some call this “grit” or “discipline” but I think it’s more than that. It’s not about sticking to the schedule or doing something I like regularly. It’s about doing it even when I don’t like it. While I often find running difficult and painful and to be the antithesis of what I desire, I know that doing it is the only path to my goals. Like the exposure therapy I mentioned before, I find that my occasional disdain for the activity itself has been a huge benefit to my own growth and willingness to stick with something.

”Foot”notes:

My first marathon was the Flying Pig in Cincinnati. It’s a notoriously hilly course, it was unseasonably warm and my time wasn’t great (5:30+), but I ran almost all of it, with bursts of walking when I felt like I might pass out from the heat, but I proudly ran the last few miles. My second marathon was the Nationwide Marathon in Columbus, I was aiming for a <5h time and managed to run a 4:53 in a torrential downpour. At least it wasn’t hot! ↩
I feel like this and many labels have their own expectations and even running several times a week I didn’t consider myself a “runner”. ↩
Training programs often integrate a mix of speed and distance work to improve your time on distance runs. I used to believe this was to break up the monotony and give room for rest, but I now know there’s a bit more to this. ↩
I confess, this is me. ↩
For me, this was adding weight to my bench press. ↩
It’s possible I read a variant of this from Mark Manson — 7 Strange Questions Tha Help You Find Your Life Purpose ↩