"No Fear! (But Then What?)"

“Run towards your fears.  Embrace them.  On the other side of your greatest fears is your greatest life.”
                      —Robin Sharma

 I was backpacking deep in the Olympic National Park along a highline trail whose eastside cliffs soared a thousand feet above me.  On the other side of the trail was the Quinault River Valley—3,000 feet below. The trail was narrow and at one point was covered in ice and snow.  I had no crampons and no ice axe. To turn around and go back to the car would have meant backtracking 20 miles I had already hiked.  My buddy Matt, who was backpacking with me, scampered across the ice-covered trail.  There are two things I don’t like: one is heights; another is snow. I told Matt I wanted to go home.  He said, “Don’t be afraid.” I yelled at him, “I can’t! There’s nothing to take its place!”  He smiled at me.  “Embrace it,” he said.

 I tell this story to remind myself not to tell others “Don’t be afraid.” It’s stupid advice, because fear is a natural impulse, and in many cases it’s our brain’s way of avoiding an uncertain risk that may result in peril.  As humans, our brains function to maintain order.  We do not like surprise or uncertainty.  We like a predictable outcome to our day so we can move on to the next and be equally predictable in our next outcome.  At the same time, our minds tire of routine—of waking up every day to the same existence, like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day. We seek challenge, growth, newness.  But not at the risk of giving up predictability.  It’s a strange dichotomy. 

 This dichotomy plays out like a great debate in our minds during every race, in every workout.  We even have a name for it: nerves.  We seek a challenge but crave certainty.  We want to chase down that kid in front of us but not at the risk of sending our lungs into what might feel like a complete collapse.  It’s an existential crisis that every distance runner knows too keenly.  And those who are most successful at facing these crises are not fearless, per se.  They feel as much fear as anybody.  The difference is their willingness to live in the moment of uncertainty, to engage with the challenge without knowing the outcome while sustaining clarity of thought.  As coach, I can publish all the targets I want, but the truth is this: I am no prognosticator.  I know not how the race will end up.  And that’s what I love about it.  Because even though I don’t know what will happen, what I do know is this: those who embrace moments of uncertainty, even revel in them, are the ones who bear the most positive mindset when it comes to running a race.  And nothing is more important than that. 

This, I believe, is what my buddy Matt meant when he said the words “embrace it.” As I stared at the ice, I heard him mean, “Feel the fear, and respond to it.” And I did. I crossed the ice carefully, gingerly, on hands and knees for four points of contact. It was frightening, but I did it. And today I can tell you it was the greatest moment of that trip.

On Making It Fun

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.”
—Christopher Morley, American writer and editor, 1890-1957

As a teacher and coach, I’m often confused by students or athletes (and even parents) who insist that a class or a practice be “fun.”  What’s more, I am at a loss for words when students say they learn in my class because I “make it fun.” 

“Thank you?” I say.  “Thank you, I think?”

It’s as if the word “fun” has become an ingredient to make the bland more savory.  Like cheese on broccoli or peanut butter on celery, it makes what is inherently good for you seem, well, good. 

Example: a few years ago, I organized a meeting for parents and athletes to learn about a summer conditioning program.  I provided information about practices and training volume that would progress through the summer and provide an aerobic base for the fall—all of which would lead to a successful competition season.  I was really proud of myself.

When I finished, a mother raised her hand and said, “Are you going to make it fun?” 

I was befuddled, dumbfounded, possibly cross-eyed. 

“Fun?” I said.

“Yeah, kids won’t do it unless it’s fun.” 

At that point, I knew I was living in the Twenty-first century, surrounded by parents who have instilled in their children a deep and undying pleasure ethic rather than a work ethic.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-fun.  In fact, I’m a fun professional.  No matter what I do, I have fun.  I write this blog and have fun.  I could figure my taxes and have fun.  I say this because fun is not an additive, it’s a perspective.  It’s a lens through which we see the world and everything around us. 

Fun is the means to perceive with empathy during an act of misery. 

“Fun is not an additive, it’s a perspective. It’s a lens through which we see the world and everything around us.”

When we say we have to “make it fun” for kids, we do not empower them with the skill of intellectual curiosity.  We teach them that they are powerless to involvement.  As a result, we have taught kids how to be entertained rather than how to entertain themselves. 

This is why I like coaching—particularly in sport like distance running.  Long distance running is, by definition, toilsome, trying, a test of our capacity (physical and mental).  It is hard work—therefore undesirable. 

The challenge as coach is to teach kids how to view distance running through the goggles of fun.  A sense of humor is necessary.  A joie de vivre imperative.  The fun I have is serviceable to myself—it allows me concentrate on what is important and what is not and treat the two as equals.   

I teach kids through analogy.  “Let’s say you don’t like reading,” I say.  “Let’s say you think reading is boring.  Here’s the problem with that.  A book is simply words on a page.  They are fixed and cannot change.  If you say you are bored, the book cannot change and make itself entertaining.  The words cannot jump off the page and do a pole dance on your face.”

Kids laugh when I say this.

“It is not the book that is boring,” I say, “it is we who choose to be bored.” 

Kids don’t laugh when I say this. 

“The words on the page are fixed and unmalleable, but the mind, the perspective, the degree of intellectual curiosity we bring to our engagement with the page is the one thing that is malleable. We can exercise it, or not.  We can choose to have fun, or not.  But it is not the book’s fault, it is not running’s fault, it is not our taxes’ fault, it is not mathematics’ fault for being boring when we do not bring joy.  You put in your backpack everything you need to get through school—your books, your binder, your lunch, your running gear. Do not forget your joy.  It’s with you every day, just like your calculator—and you would never think of going through math without making use of your calculator.  Same thing with your joy, your fun.   Use it to make you work harder.”   

Perhaps I am stuck in the Twentieth century with my Protestant work ethic and dour disposition, but I tell my athletes to never confuse my being serious with not having fun.  Some hear it, some do not.  Some believe me, some do not. 

But those who believe me are the ones who have fun. 

And the ones who have fun like to run.

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On Keeping a Running Journal

“The habit of writing for my eye is a good practice.  It loosens the ligaments.”   
—Virginia Woolf 

Let me start with a basic truth: I learned to write by writing, and I learned to run by running.  I know of no alternative, and I’m openly suspicious of anyone who might be brave enough to claim otherwise—whether it be by reading books, attending lectures, watching others, or listening to podcasts. 

When it comes to reading and writing, there is no better teacher than experience, although as the Norwegian proverb says, “the tuition is high.”   

This is true.  While maybe not in fiscal terms, it is fair to say that some costs prove their worth when paid for with hard and attentive work rather than measly dollars and cents.  And that, in a nutshell, is why I keep a running journal.  It is to my running experience what an account book is to my money: a record of my actions, my habits, my gains, my losses.  It tells me the story of me—of my gloried failures and my failed glories.  It tells me the story that I didn’t know I knew until after I wrote it—until days, months, or even years later, when I revisit my words and read who I was and discover how I made sense.   

I have four different journals—one for running, one for teaching, one for coaching, and one for chronic self-loathing (a.k.a. my writing journal).  When I say the word “journal” I don’t mean a “running log.”  I mean, something with actual words in it—full sentences even.  

“It is to my running experience what an account book is to my money: a record of my actions, my habits, my gains, my losses.  It tells me the story of me—of my gloried failures and my failed glories.”

True, I keep track of the data (which is also recorded with my Garmin GPS watch and stored on the Garmin Connect website).  The data is important—how fast I ran, how far I ran, where I ran, what splits I ran.  It even records my heart rate.

But quantitative data never tells the complete story.  Not even half it.  Barely an inth of it. 

When it comes to the real story, the deep story, the truest of all the stories, I put my trust in words—in the anecdote, the qualitative assessment.

If data consists of facts, words comprise the story. 

And it is the story that most interests me when looking back at a previous experience.  Example: I am coming up on a 5k race, a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot, that I have run three of the past four years.  A year ago, according to my running journal, I was worried about the race because I was feeling like my base was “thin.”  That’s the word I used—thin.  I have no idea what that word meant to me then, nor why I chose to write it (it strikes me as an odd metaphor), but I know what it means now, coming off a spring when I had the greatest volume of training in my life—a peak mileage nearly thirty percent more than anything I’d ever run before.  True, my recovery from this period was troublesome, but six months later I am feeling a base that is the opposite of thin.  I feel a base that is strong, sturdy.  I daresay pretty fat.  

This helps me make sense of the data that I’m producing right now with my workouts and easy runs.  As with anything in our lives—our home story, health story, work story, love story—we move through peaks and valleys.  We have periods where the groove is effortless, the connection with others is real and easy, and periods when we feel more awkward than our junior high days.  As we move into and out of these peaks and valleys, we leave in our wake a storyline, a plot development, maybe even a Shakespearean five-act structure. 

Last year I was leery, frightened, feeling less than confident about taking on a marathon challenge. 

This year is the opposite.  Why?

The answer is in my journal. 

A year from now I may be facing another difficult period of running—maybe an injury, maybe a funk, maybe low self-esteem.  I know that the confidence I’m building today will lead to an eventual fall.  This grace is unsustainable. 

But like what Woolf said, the journal keeps my ligaments loose, literally and figuratively.  It gives me perspective to keep from taking the highs too seriously, nor the lows too sardonically.

I can appreciate where I am today because I recorded where I was six months ago, and I can trust that where I was six months ago will be temporary when it happens to take place again.  I can do this because the evidence of my history is recorded in the words of my journals—and while I would like to say these journals lead me every year to be a better runner, a better teacher, a better coach, and better writer, the truth is that better is relative and it may not be there. 

But one thing for sure, I’ll be wiser. 

And as for me, I’ll take wiser over better any day. 

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What to Say When You Saw Me Running

Like many runners, I’m in a quandary about how to respond to a person who says, “Hey, I saw you running the other day.”  My instincts tell me to resort to sarcasm. 

“Of course, you saw me running,” I want to say. “That’s because I was running.”

“While statements like these may seem hackneyed and worthless, a deeper sentiment lurks beneath.”

It baffles me why someone would say this.  We don’t say, “Hey, I saw you filling up with gas the other day,” or “Hey, I saw you wearing pants.” Pointing out the obvious only magnifies the pointlessness of the action being pointed out.    

And running isn’t pointless.   

It gets even more awkward when the person says, “That’s so inspiring.  I wish I could do that.” 

“Well,” I want to say, “you could do it.”  But I’ve been a high school teacher long enough to recognize when people want to be good at something yesterday that they started doing today.  To say you wish you “could do that” is like wanting to be at the top of the mountain without having to climb the mountainsides.  I, like many runners, have no respect for that.  And I fail to see what’s inspiring about doing an activity that our bodies have evolved to do since the ancients first stood upright.  If it’s so inspiring, why don’t more people do it?  That’s like admiring a Pied Piper without mice, a preacher without congregants, a comedian without drunks.   

Sometimes, I think, it’s better to smile and wave and politely move on. 

Perhaps.   

While statements like these may seem hackneyed and worthless, a deeper sentiment lurks beneath.   

“I saw you running” may as well be another way of saying, I saw you doing something very few people are willing to do.  I saw you upholding a disciplined regimen that sacrifices the comfort of leisure for the discomfort of training.  

And “I wish I could do it” may as well be another way of saying, what you’re doing is very, very hard—even though it looks easy.   

So, I’ve dropped the sarcasm, I’ve eliminated the dismissive shaming and to these statements I have started uttering two humble words: Thank you.

Thank you for noticing. 

Shame is not a motivator, and neither is sarcasm.   

What does motivate us is a story, a cause, a reason, a challenge.  And there are as many different motivations to take up running as there are people who build the habit of doing it.  But they all start with the same seed: the notice of someone else running. 

You cannot emulate what you do not see. 

So I hereby welcome the statement “I saw you running.” Please, point it out to me when you do.  The way I see it, it will do two things: It will reinforce that I am one workout closer to achieving my goal and one person closer to growing the sport. 

But honking at me, that’s completely different. I will always shame you for that.