a manifesto of sorts

Today I completed my final two mile run before Leadville, so I thought I’d batter you into submission with some more of my thoughts on running. Let me start off by saying I try to keep running in perspective. If it helps me be a better, healthier husband and father, then great. But it’s a recreational activity. Hopefully, it inspires some people to rethink the boundaries they’ve set for themselves, but it’s not important work like saving lives or serving in the military. I have, however, served the last five years on the National Leadership Board of FCA Endurance, which is the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ endurance sports ministry. My involvement with this ministry has certainly allowed me to use running and triathlon for a greater purpose. It’s been a very rewarding experience as I’ve helped increase the membership from eight in 2005 to over 2100 now.

It’s worth noting that for most of my life I truly despised running, so if it doesn’t appeal to someone, I can empathize. There are a million ways to stay fit—running doesn’t have to be one of them. If someone wants to use running to get into shape, I suggest focusing on shorter distances and running them fast. Performing more intense, speed-focused workouts is simply a much more efficient way to lose weight and improve cardiovascular fitness than the super long, slow workouts that typically make up the training for marathons and beyond. And it’s not terribly uncommon for people to gain weight while training for marathons. It’s easy to think, “Hey, I’m training for a marathon. I can eat anything.” And before you know it, an extra coney dog here and there more than wipes out the calories being burned while training.

When asked why I enjoy running, I usually tell people that for me running kills about ten birds with one stone. I finally decided to list those birds. If I was turning this paper in for a grade, I would probably spend more time delineating these ideas, but this isn’t for school so you’ll have to be at peace with some of the overlap and opacity…

1. Exercise. We all know exercise is important, but for me I like being an "athlete." After my football days, I stopped working out altogether. After a snowshoe trip with Adrienne to Northern Michigan in early 2002, I realized how pitifully out of shape I had become. I joined the YMCA, ran hard intervals on the treadmill several times a week, and dropped twenty pounds in two or three months. I felt like myself again.

2. I get out into nature almost every day. My lungs get filled with clean air, and I get to see a lot of amazing trails in a hurry. It would have taken me several summers of pretty intense hiking to see all the trails I covered in the last few months.

3. It gives me time away from technology. No music, no computer, no television, no phone, and for the most part, no cars. I have many friends that run with music and I know it can provide a significant boost, but unless I’m indoors on a treadmill, I think it muddies the beauty and simplicity of the running experience.

4. Time with God. It would be hard for me not to pray while running, especially here in Breckenridge. Being able to push myself and to enjoy the outdoors is truly a gift, and I enjoy getting lost in prayer in the far reaches of a long run.

5. Stress relief and mood boost. I almost always feel better after a run—the exception would be the rare occasions when I deplete all the glycogen in my body or suffer from blisters. I know it’s the times that I feel least like running that will provide me the greatest benefit. Keeping that in mind, I can usually push myself out the door without too much resistance.

6. Simple and time efficient hobby. Notwithstanding my need to frequently replace my shoes, it’s not a gear intensive sport. As you get into ultras, you need to start worrying about hydration packs, headlamps, and nutrition plans, but that’s about as far as it needs to go. I don’t use my heart rate monitor anymore. If I were doing speed work I would use it, but for my long, slow paced training I don’t see much need for it. If I had all the time in the world, I would also swim several times a week and possibly spend some time back in the triathlon world. But with limited time, I think running makes the best use of my time. I can leave right from the house and even my longer mid-week workouts don’t take much more than an hour-and-a-half from beginning to end.

7. I enjoy working methodically toward a goal. Laying out multi-month training plans and executing on them is rewarding.

8. Running allows me to sharpen my ability to overcome obstacles. Bad weather, blisters, poor course markings, and other challenges outside my control will undoubtedly pop up from time to time. And I know I will have failures and lost battles along the way, but I know I'll figure out ways to make things work.

9. Develops an important but underappreciated skill: knowing when to fold and know when to push on. I know I learned more about this from trading than from anything else, but it’s a big part of endurance sports, especially during training. There are days when things aren’t going well but you keep pushing on and things improve. And there are days when things aren’t going well and pushing on only makes things worse. It’s a very fine line between these two scenarios, and being able to identify which one will play out is exceedingly valuable in many aspects of life.

10. Inspire my kids to set challenging goals and not to fear failure. Hopefully my kids will find professional and recreational pursuits that they truly love, and hopefully they’ll see through my running, or whatever else I’m doing, that with a passion for a pursuit, they can accomplish a great deal more than they might initially think possible. Perhaps they’ll see that when they do something they love, they’ll naturally do it with gusto. And since the journey is enjoyable, if they miss their destination it won’t be earth shattering; it’ll just be an opportunity to rethink their approach and to try again. T.S. Eliot said it well, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

11. Along those same lines, I run to find inspiration from others. Watching people do amazing things, like a 78 year-old running 50 miles in scorching heat, helps me expand the limits I set for myself and others.

12. This isn’t really a reason that I run per se, but it’s one of my favorite things about endurance sports, most especially running. Anybody involved in running should have no illusions about how they compare to the elite runners. It’s an especially interesting sport in that the amateurs get to compete directly with the professionals—same day, same course, same weather. If I trained like mad and had a perfect race, I might be able to run a marathon on a flat course, perhaps the Chicago Marathon, in the low three hour range. That would put me an hour behind the leaders. Not for a single second would I think I could improve upon their efforts. But take almost any other sport, and it’s a completely different story. I was brought up around sports, I love sports, but I don’t love sports fans. Fans pay money to attend games, so I guess they have a right to boo and voice their disapproval. But go to a pro, college, or even high school football game, for instance, and the majority of the crowd acts as if the truly believe they could do a better job than the athletes on the field. The vast majority of fans (I’m talking somewhere up near 99%), especially at the collegiate and professional level, don’t have the faintest clue as to what is involved with performing at that level; if they did, they wouldn’t be so quick to tell a player “you suck.” I could go on at length about this, but you get the point. Participating in a sport without the arrogant fan behavior typical to most sports is refreshing.

I’ll finish off with this. It’s part of a short interview I read with Charlie Engle, a super accomplished ultra distance runner and adventure racer. I found his answers to these two questions similar to my own thinking…

Why do you find ultrarunning so appealing?

With ultrarunning, what appeals to me is that it's a thinking person's sport. You have to plan ahead and know where you're going. You have to have a plan for hydration and nutrition and foot care and survival. If you let anyone of those things go, you're in trouble. You're going to suffer the consequences, and I mean suffer. Anything from blisters to dehydration. I don't mind suffering, but I don't want those things. The running itself is hard enough.

How do you inspire people about ultrarunning?

I spoke at a marathon recently and had people raise their hands based on how many they had run. It came down to one guy who had run 79. I asked him, "Is there any doubt in your mind you're going to finish tomorrow's race?" He said, "No, there's no doubt whatsoever." He said it with a certain amount of pride, and he should have. Then I asked him if he remembered his first marathon and if he was worried or concerned about being able to finish, and he said, "Absolutely. I was scared to death." And I asked, "Don't you miss that?" For me that feeling can only come from finding a new adventure, either from a longer distance or a course I'm intimidated by.

Trust me, I have that feeling right now.