A Recipe for Rejuvenating your Running

As runners and endurance athletes, we’re programmed to value “progress” and “success.” It’s about being stronger and going faster every single day, and striving for our goals is what makes us better versions of ourselves. 

Or at least that’s what we’re told.  But the progress/success narrative is a slippery slope to the toxicity of comparison. I say that because I’ve experienced it first hand. Instead, it’s worth zooming out and asking ourselves what we’re actually doing.

It’s easier and easier to forget the sound of running water, a breeze in dry branches, or the sound of a cicada years out of sync. Sometimes while out running, I find myself thinking how I’ll take a photo for social media (or even how I’ll caption it), or fumbling with the Go Pro as I patter past nesting songbirds in the cops by the gurgling stream near my house. I get sucked into the Instagram vortex longer than I’m willing to admit, and while I learn and am inspired from time to time, more and more I feel its insidious side effects. While these performative and comparative layers are not new to sport, as a coach and athlete, I am very much ill at ease with how heavily they weigh on running.

It’s all around us. We idolize brands over people, brand culture over the history of running and other endurance pursuits. Instagram and Strava have become ubiquitous tools of comparison. We broadcast our Strava metrics for the world to see. We set films of ourselves to background music and post them to public audiences, as if we were movie stars. We tag ourselves with brands as if we were pros, even if all we got was a few pairs of shoes and a couple of T-shirts, or the “ambassador’s discount code” (a ruse for us to consume more product). With each mid-run selfie, we zoom in further and further until it’s just us in the viewfinder. There is a gaping personal and collective void, and we are filling it with products, self-branding, and damaging comparison.

The events, the new gear, the tasty bars, the live broadcasts, the emotional films, and the magic bullets for “successful” training… they’re fun and exciting – they really are. (As a true student of the sport, I nerd out on all of this stuff!) But fun and exciting as these things may be,  they often mislead us in answering the most basic question: why do we run?

When I catch myself thinking about social media while running, I ask myself kindly: why are you running? For me, running should be joy. The joy of community, learning, movement, exploration, excitement, and challenge. Instead of zooming in, running and outdoor play has the power to zoom us so far out so that we appreciate both our privilege and our insignificance. On the one hand the gear is enabling, the events and people sometimes inspiring – I’m the first to admit that. On the other hand though, we’re often missing the point. 

I listened to Rich Roll’s interview with Tommy Rivers Puzey a while back. (If you don’t know who Tommy Rivs is, look him up!!) One of the things he said, and I’m paraphrasing here, was “Imagine you got to the end [of your life], and all you had to say for yourself was ‘I ran these splits’ or ‘I ran this many miles’… I mean running itself is meaningless.” 

I would go one step further and say imagine if we got to the end of our lives and we didn’t even remember the running journey, but only the photos and the films and the gear and the brands and the discount codes and the CRs and PRs.

Running is both meaningless, and the most profound thing some of us will ever do. But we aren’t our PBs or our podiums, our failures or our gear; we’re not the places we’ve traveled, or the kudos we’ve received. That is a barren road.

So what am I even saying? What I’m saying is, instead of setting arbitrary performance goals, instead of endlessly striving to be a better version of yourself,  try taking your watch off, leaving your phone at home and going out for a run just for the love of it!! You might just rediscover your love for this sport.