About Doing Hard Things

Are you still running or are you already training?

It was rather unpleasant

I mean the workout yesterday. Luckily, I had good company. My buddy Leo ran almost the entire session with me minus the tempo blocks. I don't know how he did it, but it felt like we were running together the whole time.

Yesterday's training was really borderline. Marathon training peak weeks. Or “Los Wochos” as I call them. If I had known it was going to be this hard, I probably wouldn't have done it. After the first 5000m, I tried to talk myself into the rest of the session:

"I had a headwind, the next block will be easier."

"You're in it now."

"It's almost over after the second one."

But when I realized that the second 5000m block was even harder than the first, I really had to pull myself together. Not only to keep the requested pace, but also not to give up entirely. And then another 1000m fast. Or as fast as I could with my beaten legs. After that, I was really exhausted. My legs anyway, but especially my head.

(I hardly ever lie on the ground after a race. At Nuts Pallas 2023 in Finland I did and after yesterday’s workout I would have loved to)

The Running Why

Yesterday I wrote that I realized how much I needed a new, different running challenge.

On The Road To New Adventures

(You can regard this as a bonus Das Z Letter)

Today I asked myself the even more profound general question of why. A question I haven't asked myself in a long time.

I'm one of those lucky runners who almost always finds the answer to why in running itself. In my case, not just during a relaxing jog through the forest – no great challenge to find that beautiful – but also during hard, result-oriented running sessions. I recently wrote a fitting Das Z Letter article titled "I Love Speedwork — Life is easy when you run fast". During yesterday's workout, however, that attitude crumbled a bit.

Running or Training?

I realized that you really have to make a consistent distinction between "running" and "training".

Running is everything.
Training is just a part of it.

Even if every run is somehow also always training. I still find it fascinating what a positive effect a few weeks of continuous easy running can have on your endurance and speed if you do it consistently. Eventually, however, you get to the point where you only get better or more results if you intensify your runs and turn them into "training sessions".

Stimulus Payouts

In the end, it's all about stimuli. The way stimuli work in humans is that they are most effective when they are new and unexpected. After a while, however, they fade and become less effective the more often we are exposed to them.

Unfortunately, for the ambitious runner, the pleasurable stimuli that come with relaxed endurance running, for example, are quickly used up, and you have to venture into the less pleasurable stimuli to achieve an effect. Depending on your goals, this could be workouts like my 2x 5000m plus 1x 1000m, somewhere in the gray area of the lactate threshold. Or worse.

But the 100 million mile question is:

Why try to achieve an effect at all? Why create effective stimuli? Why develop, increase, improve?

As always, I can only answer this question for myself. I believe the answer lies in human nature. Our quest to fill our measly 85 years on this planet with meaning and significance is the only engine that keeps us alive. We often confuse meaning and significance with status and recognition. This is because 8.06 billion other people besides us are searching for meaning and significance at the same time. Our natural instinct is to put ourselves in a perceived advantageous position in this race. It seems worthwhile to be faster, better, more visible, more persistent, and more attractive than the rest. But is this really the case?

About Doing Hard Things

That was a good dose of social and self-criticism. And while I believe every word of it, this is only one side of the coin, or part of the answer to why we strive so hard to develop and improve. The other side shows the pure beauty of doing hard things. Simply because they are not easy.

Our lives are designed for comfort and convenience. If we are not too stupid, we can get through our existence without many noteworthy major setbacks or obstacles. American author Bruce Feiler claims that we have an average of 35 defining experiences in our adult lives, but what is 35? That is a serious challenge only once every 2 years. Something hard. In between, we lie on the couch, binge-watch Netflix series, and eat microwave hamburgers. As much as I love celebrating this lifestyle occasionally, I also want more out of life. To experience more, to feel more, to discover myself more. I can get that by doing hard things.

For the record, I don't distinguish between things that are physically hard and things that are mentally hard. Solving a tricky task with my mind – for example, making this text understandable so that I don't come across as a crazy cult guru – can be at least as satisfying as dragging myself up the last climb of an ultramarathon with completely empty legs.

With a running session like the one above (running AND training), I get both. Practicing running like this, as much as I questioned it yesterday, gives my life purpose and meaning. Because it is hard. Through the training stimulus of such a session, I hope to be able to run faster, farther, and even harder. So that running remains hard.

To do hard things just because they are not easy. That's why I run and train.

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Everything Not Running

I'm on a Writecation. Again. My wonderful wife Lisa happened to be here in Innsbruck for a multi-day training course and I joined her.

I love idle time. Whenever I am taken out of my busy everyday life and start to relax, life becomes easy. Most of the day I sit in a café and write. Not even a fancy one. They sprinkle cocoa powder on the cappuccino. The seats are worn and it is noisy. But none of that bothers me. The peace I'm looking for is already inside me, and writing brings it out.

It took me years to realize this, but I don't need much.

I began to understand this when I met Lisa. I went from being a seeker to someone who had arrived. I started to realize how content I was with what I had and how little I cared about what I didn't have. This evolution has gotten worse and worse since then. Or rather, better and better.

I don't know if anything remains. Certainly not this moment. But it doesn't matter when it's so fulfilling.