Lessons from Running - What I Think About When I Think About Running

Some of you will know that I semi-stole that line in the title from a quirky and very cool little book by Haruki Murakami called ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’.

It’s not without a sense of irony that I write this post this week. This week has been a test that is for sure.

The decision to run has been about seeing what I can handle, learning to push through pain, and develop mental strength. Yesterday I decided that I would run my local ‘loop’, which is an 18 ? km loop that involves over 400m of elevation. I have only run this loop once before (last Friday was the first time). This loop has been dogging my mind for years.? Last Friday I tackled it, and it went pretty well, and so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to trot it out again. I started easily with heaps of energy. Somewhere around half way I decided that I needed to break the mental barrier of 20kms, and so I figured that I would run past my house for another kilometer and back, adding 2k’s on to the run.

Problem is pretty much as soon as I decided to do this, I hit a wall. My legs became leaden and my motivation sagged. I knew that the hardest hills were yet to come and they loomed large in my mind. It was a damn tough start to the day. Yes, I did do what I set out to do, but it wasn’t easy.

With that in mind, I think that lessons from running can be very easily turned in to metaphors and anecdotes. So here goes.

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Form those Habits. Master the Morning.

The hardest part of running for me is getting out bed in the morning. Once I am out of bed the rest just flows. I get the coffee on, I feed the dogs, feed the cat. I stretch and drink the coffee. I have a mini-meeting with myself (this is new habit I will tell you about another time) and then grab the head-lamp, don the high-vis vest, tie up the shoes and the dog, then I head out.?

I know that if I don’t get out of bed promptly on the 5am alarm my running time will be soon be cut. I want to get on the road by 5.30, then I can run for an hour and a half or two hours, and come back and help get the kids off to school.

My day can too easily go to pieces, so I don’t even attempt to run later in the day. Master the morning, and you master the day.

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And the night before?

Aaah yes, the night before. Its dark and cold in the morning, other people are sleeping at 5am, so I make it easy. My clothes are laid out (in another room, away from my sleeping wife), my socks are on hand – you don’t want to go rummaging around for socks in the dark, and the coffee pot is clean and the beans are ground. A good night sleep makes a difference too!

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Socks Matter. Shoes too.

Do socks matter? I am now a believer in appropriate running socks. My lesson in socks happened when I grabbed a slightly thicker set of Kathmandu tramping socks one morning. They are ankle socks, but maybe three times thicker than the worn-out rebel sport ones I had been using. The thicker socks were much more comfortable, running was less painful. This was a surprise – I would not have really put much thought into socks….

I went to Smiths Sport Shoes when I started up this latest push for running. I run in Mizuno shoes. Nothing sexy about this brand, but my feet tend to tilt inward when I lift them off the ground, so I land back on the side of my feet rather than the ball of my foot. This is not a good thing. Somehow wearing this brand of shoe reduces this effect and helps me to land straight. The guy in the shop who helped me out this time around was a runner and told me to go up a size. He knew what he was talking about, and bonus, it allowed me to get those thicker socks in too.

I think the lesson here is just about getting your set up right. If the thickness of socks and a brand of shoe can make a difference in a run, maybe it’s worth considering other places where a product or set up might improve the way you operate. For me getting a set of headphones so I can walk and talk, or talk and type, might me a good example in a business setting.

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On Pain

This is a big one. Pain does NOT always equal damage. It needs to be repeated. Pain does NOT always equal damage. Don’t get me wrong, pain can equal damage. But it’s not a mutually exclusive correlation.

Until the last few years, I have always believed that if something hurts, you are damaging yourself. This is untrue. I first heard this idea in this podcast with Tim Ferriss talks with Venezuelan power lifter Stefi Cohen. When you are running there will be pain. Pain comes and pain goes often without necessarily creating damage. Often the beginning of a run will highlight some niggles, they tend to disappear after a few kilometers.

If you got inspired last fortnight and grabbed the book ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ you will be learning about pain and what is possible. So, you can run on broken shins, or broken feet. I read a Tiger Woods biography a while back. So, you can win PGA titles with both shoulder and hips half torn from your body. ?

I have spent much time thinking about lactic acid. Lactic acid is produced by your body as cells break down and release energy to fuel your muscles. A build-up of this acid is what causes pain when muscles are used a bit more than normal. Much like a free diver learns to develop tolerance for the feelings of carbon dioxide building up in their lungs, I learnt from David Goggins that you can learn to tolerate lactic acid build up in your legs. This was another tiny piece of information that had an enormous impact on me.

As I tell myself, its only pain.

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On Hills: Attack the Hills

I love this one. My run is just so hilly. I hate the hills on my run. I cannot leave my front door step without encountering a hill. My driveway is a steep 200m hill. I cannot run more than 3 km’s in either direction from my house without encountering a ‘horrible hill’. There are plenty of small rises and even decent hills in that 3k’s, but they have become easy over the years, like slightly annoying friends - you put up with them because they are old friends. But beyond 3k’s from home I get into enemy territory. These hills need to be attacked. If I go into the hills with a weak mindset the hills will get the better of me. They won’t beat me – I won’t stop – but they will get the better of me. Belittling me, and making me feel like crap.

The horrible hills that I go to battle with are .6 – 1.5km long. They are steep – I don’t know the gradient (I’m going to figure this out) but one of them averages out to 8.5% over a kilometre, and I am guessing that it gets to over 10% in the steep bits. To ultra or alpine runners that’s not much I know – but to me it is! I attack the hills on a number of fronts.

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Visualising the goal.

This is visualising myself at the top of the hill. The light is clearer up there. The wind is fresher and cooling. The view is great. The upward slope… gone! I imagine how I will feel once the current hill is out of the way. This is a damn site better strategy than dread, which I confess to slipping in to yesterday morning for a period. Doing that just makes the hill seem even longer.

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Striding.

This is the most bad-ass way to attack the hills. Attack the hill in an upright position with 100% focus on each long, loose stride, each breath, each moment. It’s a taxing way to run, but one of my targets is to be able to attack the 1.5km hill that I have to deal with by striding 100% of the way. I am currently achieving about ? of this goal because I get worn out striding, and while I may keep the visualisation going, I need to change my footwork.

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Nibbling.

Do you remember how the file sharing sites used to work through big files back in the dial up days of the internet? They’d nibble them. Sometimes I have to nibble the hills. Small steps, small gains. But this is a dangerous strategy. It can easily turn into a head down hunched-over pose. I can end up looking at my feet and forgetting the goal.

That is why I developed the next strategy.

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The Task at Hand.

This is opposite to visualising the goal. This attacks the big job by breaking it down to one section at a time. At its most granular, this is one step at a time. Yes, sometimes my run is that miserable that I am literally attacking it step by step. By the time I get to this stage, I am generally feeling a bit beat to be honest. But I think with awareness comes victory. I can tell myself I am still in control. I think that sometimes just focusing on the small steps is what is required. At work it might be a day of small fiddly tweaks in your business after coming off a busy period when you are in flow. It’s the time to regroup, reset your intention, and be ready for the crest of the hill and the downhill that is sure to follow.

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Speaking of Downhills…

Don’t trip yourself up running when you are running downhill. I have used this line in a blog post before, and I have even thrown it into a song that I wrote. I got this quote from Haruki Murakami’s book that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

The downhills that I run are almost as scary the up-hills – think gravel, potholes, steep edges, dark, and road subsidence. But they have the beautiful advantage of gravity assistance. This is just the best analogy for making sure you don’t self-sabotage. This is about using momentum and success and not making a silly mistake that ends up with some kind of painful fall, and sudden end to the good fortune that you have been having.

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Don’t Stop

Just don’t stop. To mangle Dr King’s quote, If you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl. This is not what I do. I keep running. But if I couldn’t run any further, and I am sure the day will come some time, then I will have to walk. But I am not stopping today. No need for me to elaborate this with a business metaphor. Don’t Stop is pretty self-explanatory.

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Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t set the bar low.

This blog post feels like a marathon (did someone say marathon…). Don’t sell yourself too short. You are capable of more. I think that now I am running over 20ks, my bar (which is a half marathon – 21km’s) is set too low. I need to go and enter a full marathon. Because I am capable – and I want to show myself I am capable. How does this apply to life and business? Quite simple. I am capable of more. You are capable of more.

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Start in the Dark. Finish in the Light.

I LOVE this too. When I get up and hit the road I can see the stars and the planets, Matariki is shimmering away in the North East. Some mornings are just stunning. Within a short time, there is a glow in the eastern sky, and slowly the stars begin to disappear, with just the brightest ones and the planets remaining. I switch my headlamp off and allow my eyes to adjust. Dawn comes slowly. At some point, I run around a corner or over the crest of a hill and I am in the morning light.

Just like a seed starts off in the dark, emerging into the sun in the right conditions, so too you, your business, your plans and hopes and dreams. I love this metaphor for dreaming up an idea, and building it, and trialing it and wrestling with it but doing it all in the dark. Out of sight. Privately nurturing. And when the moment it right, this thing that you have cared for from the seed of an idea is out in the world. These mornings, these ‘dawnings’, are the best. They are full of newness and hope.

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Limber Up

I want to make one more mention. The last time that I made a commitment to running I ended up stopping due to pain in my right heel. I had got frustrated during one of the lockdowns and stomped my foot down on the tiles (there’s a lesson there too I think…). I bruised my heel and running aggravated it. This pain started up again when I started running a month or so again but I decided that one way or another I was going to have to deal with it. After hearing the final chapter of Goggin’s book I wondered if I would be able to stretch my way out of the pain. I started stretching my calves, and my foot at all angles. The pain started to ease, and now is almost non-existent. Time will tell on this one, but feels right, and so hopefully it is not going to need medical assessment or assistance.

I am not sure of the business lesson there, but there is a life lesson. It is my opinion that there are two things that are greatly missing from many lives. One is fitness. We are made to move. The other is flexibility. I think if you can get just a little bit more of both going it might just make a difference in your present and your future.

Maybe the lesson is strength, resilience and flexibility go hand in hand.

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Finally, Finish Strong.

Well I enjoyed that. I have been writing it in my head for the past month as I run, it’s been great to get it out on paper. This kind of running is new territory for me, I will keep you posted with how I get on, and I hope that you got something from this rather long account of what I think about, when I think about running.

You have to finish strong. I try and run the last kilometer or so pretty hard. The purpose is to empty out anything that is left. I had to run back down my steep driveway on way too wobbly legs yesterday morning, I will be honest, I felt pretty unwell doing so. But the great thing is that our body soon recovers and I promise you, this is a great way for me to start my day. Long may the running buzz continue. ??

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