Running is Life
Three Things #57: February 26, 2023
I’m on the road this week and will be for the next few weeks. It’s difficult to write about deep tech, or really deep anything, while traveling, so I’m going to keep things light for the next few weeks. This week I want to reflect on ways in which running is a microcosm of life.
Thing #1: Hard
I nearly always run first thing in the morning after waking up. I do this because running is hard, and I like to do something hard first thing in the morning. It makes the rest of the day much smoother.
Running isn’t meant to be easy. I run for the challenge. In the summer it’s too hot. In the winter it’s too cold. In the morning it’s too early and I’m not awake yet, I’m too busy and have a million other things to do. If I run later in the day, I’m too tired. And all of that is before even actually running! It can be exhausting. It often leaves me sore, sometimes even a little sunburnt or bloody. But I always feel better after I run, regardless of how I felt before and regardless of how hard it was. In fact, I probably feel even better after a harder run.
I wrote previously about how important my first marathon was, not just in running but in my life in general. Running a marathon showed me that I could do anything I put my mind to, since a marathon seemed a totally absurd, unattainable goal until I actually did it. The older I get, the more I run, and the more seriously I run, the more I see that there are other ways that running resembles life, and that it contains other lessons.
Running five miles felt impossible until I did it the first time, then the first ten times, then the first 100 times. Same for running a half marathon or a marathon. Right now, the idea of running speed at distance—say, a three hour marathon—feels absurd and impossible. But I’m training to do exactly that and, so far, while it’s far from easy, the training is fun, feels amazing, and I’m keeping up.
This is sort of how life works. We do best when we set big, hairy, ambitious goals that feel totally unattainable, then make steady, patient, incremental progress towards those goals. Pretty much everything feels impossible until you’ve done it once, then done it again successfully 10 or 100 times. And if you look back, it’s remarkable how much progress you can make even in a relatively short period of time with steady progress and determination. The simple reality of life is: things are hard until they’re not. You can do anything you put your mind to—with enough hard work, patience, and persistence.
Embracing that challenge has been a big part of running and a big part of my life. Before I get dressed and head out the door I always question myself and consider, however briefly, taking the day off. (Which, incidentally, is why committing to simply run every day, regardless of location or season or mood, is just simpler and easier because it removes this element of hesitation and choice.) When I start running I always feel tired and sore and consider whether maybe I should cut the run short today, just this once. Halfway through the run I feel tired and consider whether I shouldn’t slow down. That happens again and again and again, until suddenly the run is over. I’m always second guessing myself. But I never give into the temptation. And then when it’s over and I consider how it went, it never feels bad at all in retrospect! All the insecurity, pain, frustration, fatigue and hesitation are gone, and I have trouble even remembering that they were there moments before.
Identity is often forged through challenges faced and overcome. Facing the challenge of running has caused my identity to develop. I never identified as a runner or as an athlete. In fact, that identity was at odds with other aspects of my identity that felt more “core” and important to me, such as being a software developer. It crept up on me, until I found myself running races, full of joy, surrounded by runners, sharing tips and stories about our running pursuits.
This is how life works. Things are hard in the moment, easy in retrospect. Face challenges, overcome them, and grow as a person. Just understanding this process and its potential gives you a powerful advantage over most people.
Thing #2: Improvement
Runners theoretically reach peak running form in their mid to late twenties. Theoretically. When I was in my twenties I was a complete idiot. I drank a lot, I barely slept, and my running was terrible. I didn’t run very much, and when I did I ran pretty slowly.
Today my running is much, much better. I’ve set personal records at almost every distance up to a marathon over the past year. I may be theoretically past my prime physically but in practice I’m much healthier than before. I sleep better, I eat better, I drink less, and I run much farther and faster than when I was in my twenties. If you look at the complete, holistic picture of health including psychological health, I’m in much better form today than I was ten years ago. And it turns out that psychological health is extremely important for running, especially distance running.
I’m probably at or close to my peak, but for now I’m still improving. I’m sure I can continue to make a lot of progress over the next few years before biological reality takes over and I plateau or begin to regress. Every time before when I thought this was impossible, I proved myself wrong. I did it by accident a few times. I ran more because I had the free time or because I was listening to an audiobook that I was really into and wanted to continue. I ran faster because I signed up for a race and the weather was nice and I was listening to good music and at the last moment figured, “Why the heck not try?” Once you succeed at something accidentally a few times, you begin to wonder how well you could do if you actually put your mind to it. Very recently, I began to put my mind to running better: harder, longer, faster. So far, so good.
There’s a life lesson in here somewhere, too. In theory, once you study something for a few years and earn a doctorate, you know everything there is to know about the subject. In my experience, in practice, most PhDs know almost nothing about the way the world actually works. You can continue to get better at a thing long after you theoretically should’ve already peaked. And you can get a lot better at it than you expected or thought possible. How? Lots and lots of practice.
One example of this, I think, is human relationships. If you’ve been married a few years, you probably feel that you know everything there is to know about marriage in general and about your partner in particular. In practice, you know next to nothing about either subject and could learn 100x more if you put your mind to it. You could be a better partner if you cared enough to try. If you have kids, you probably feel that you know just about everything there is to know about parenting. In practice, you could probably be a much better parent in several ways if you put your mind to it. (Just putting your phone away, turning off the TV and all other devices, and spending a few undistracted hours with your kids would be a good start!)
This is also true of professional pursuits. As a software developer, there have been multiple points in my career when I thought I knew just about all there is to know about designing and writing software. And I knew how to find answers to the things I didn’t know. It turns out I was naive and overconfident. Each time I thought this, I was completely wrong. I went on to learn about a new area of computer science—databases, mobile, blockchain, systems programming, embedded systems, privacy, cryptography, etc.—and I realized that I had previously only scratched the surface, and that there is still so, so much more to learn. The thing that distinguishes a true expert from a novice is that the expert knows how little they know.
I think this is true of just about everything in life. There’s always more to learn. You can continue to learn and improve and get better at something long, long after you thought possible. There’s almost no limit to how far or deep you can go in most pursuits, other than the limits of time and one lifespan. The sky’s the limit.
Running has taught me that I can always improve: harder, faster, longer, more stamina, better form. It’s a long journey. Pick something to be good at and don’t give up improving.
Thing #3: Grit
You can use stimulants or medicines to increase energy or potential in the very short term, but these things don’t work over the long term, and on top of this you always pay a price for them. Caffeine and other stimulants make you feel more alert and allow you to perform better for a few minutes or a few hours, but they leave you feeling muddy and tired, more than you would’ve been if you hadn’t taken them. (If you integrate energy or performance over time, the area under the curve is less than it would’ve been without the stimulant!) You can, of course, follow one stimulant or drug with another, but this gets into very dangerous territory. The only sustainable, safe, reliable source of energy and performance is a healthy lifestyle: healthy diet, exercise, sleep, etc..
Sometimes it seems like everyone is looking for shortcuts: to health, to wealth, to love, to fame, to success. But life works a bit like health and the body. In the same fashion as stimulant drugs and supplements, there are metaphorical “stimulants” that allow you to temporarily achieve a boost in health, wealth, fame, or success, but you also pay the price for all of these and none of them work safely or reliably over the long term. You can lie, cheat, or scam people, you can manipulate and take advantage of people, and you might get away with it for a little while, but over the long term life catches up with you every single time. There are no true, sustainable shortcuts in life.
And there are no shortcuts in running. Running keeps me honest because the only way to improve sustainably is through determination and hard work. You can artificially, temporarily boost things that are abstract and rely on storytelling like wealth or fame, but (short of dangerous drugs) you cannot boost your physical performance without putting in the hard work. The rubber has to meet the road, literally. The only way to become a better runner is to run, a lot. That’s it. It’s that simple. There’s beauty in that simplicity.
Of course, even runners chase shortcuts. The most common one is probably running gear. You can easily spend hundreds of dollars on a fancy new pair of running shoes. And there’s some evidence that they might help you shave a few seconds off your marathon time, if you’re already at peak performance. But this is absolutely dwarfed by the improvement you’ll see if you just put in the hard work and engage in a proper training regimen. Yes, it’s difficult. It’s time consuming and exhausting. But it also makes you feel amazing and brings you a great deal of joy when you see your own improvement. Oh, and it doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars and it doesn’t wear out.
The only way to become a better runner is to get out and run, day after day. Everything else will offer tiny, marginal improvements at best.
This is also how life works. If you want to get better at something, you have to do it a lot. You have to engage in serious practice. There’s no way around it. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat less and exercise more. There’s no miracle diet pill or drink. If you want to get over your fear of heights, you have to face that fear, again and again, until you’ve conquered it. No shortcuts. We all tend to be lazy and gullible, and lots of marketing takes advantage of this, but at the end of the day it doesn’t change the reality that the only way to reliably achieve something is through regular, patient, persistent practice.
Understanding this lesson through running has made me a better person overall. I’ve seen the gradual, steady progress I’ve made in running and I’ve sought to emulate this in other pursuits and other areas of my life. Once you’ve successfully run a marathon, through steady, patient, persistent training and sheer grit, you begin to understand that you really can achieve anything if you dedicate yourself to the task and put in the time and hard work to do it.