Four-year journey to find humility in running
This is the story of how I ended up with running as this weird hobby…
I’ve been reflecting on my life a lot recently. Guess it’s one of those things you do every once in a while when things change. It might be that moving to London beginning of this year triggered this round of reflections. Anyway, one of those reflections took me down memory lane of my relationship with running. Thing is — I’ve never been as physically active in my entire life as I’ve been in my late 20s and early 30s. Back when I was a teenager, I’d practice taekwondo twice a week for an hour or so. I got quite far with that — black belt, second dan. But that does not even come close with how much I’ve been investing in running these last four years.
I started running on the first of January 2015, as a New Year’s resolution. I know resolutions don’t stick, but somehow this one did. I am soon starting my fifth year of running, and I’ve never had anything this much a part of my identity as running has become.
2015: I like to call the first year of my running career the “you’re stronger than you ever thought” year.
My first run was a tiny bit longer than a mile. I had to stop after narrowly missing the two kilometer mark because my knees started hurting immensely. Nevertheless, two days later I was back, and this time I ran more than two miles! The day after that I almost ran four miles, and a month later I was able to push my back then chubby body through an ordeal of running a loop around Tiergarten (Berlin) in my first ever 10km.
This was the first time I ever ran this far. I was elated that in just a month this couch potato was able to go from less than 2km (with knees giving up) to such a serious distance!
This was, of course, just the beginning. In two months I would race my first ever half-marathon (in 2:13:50, hating every minute of it). That year I would also successfully break two hours for that distance and run my first full marathon (in 3:58:50).
I remember how hard that first marathon was, how I wanted to throw in the towel after 35km, how I managed to convince myself to run just one more kilometer, then another one, then walk another, and then (after exactly sixteen years of struggle) I could see the finish line. This is when I decided, and I still hold this position, that a person who has finished a marathon — no matter how fast or slow — has an impressive tenacity to their character. This is not just because of the ordeal of running 42 kilometers, but also because of making sure you get to the starting line. Because of all the running you’ve done months before, probably during the warmest summer days. When you had to wake up before dawn to get those tempo intervals in before work. When you stayed at your local track way into the night. Those park loops you’ve done so many times — both clockwise, and counter-clockwise — that you can remember the smallest details changing in the scenery (oh look someone has put a birdhouse on that old tree — it wasn’t there yesterday).
This was the year of many humble beginnings. I’ve raced all the distances for the first time. I’ve tried (and stuck to) a pretty long (3 months) running plan, which made me do intervals for the first time in my life, as well as consistently run 3–5 times a week. I’ve got my first GPS running watch to track my runs. This was also the year I grew my beard out. Yes, my beard is the same age as running is to me. Everything was new and exciting. In retrospect, in a lot of ways I’m trying to go back to this feeling again nowadays, but we’ll come back to this later.
2016: That feeling of everything being possible carried me nicely into the “you can race much faster” year.
In 2016 I started wondering if I could go faster. I signed up for every local race I could find, to improve my racing. This made me total 12 races that year, pretty much a race per month. The highlights of that year are 1:40 HM and 3:30 M, as well as my first olympic-distance triathlon, and some cross-country races. One of those cross-country races ended in me taking 3rd in my age category.
This second running season has been a blessing and a curse at the same time. It did show me that I can dream big and maybe even start considering qualifying for Boston as an archivable goal. On the other hand, it also made me way over-confident. This lead me to the third running season.
2017: The “arrogant runner” season.
By this time I was convinced that I’m invincible. I could go long, I could go fast, I could do everything in between. I was able to take top-10 in local races. I felt that doing my easy and long runs slower than 5 min per km (and then 4:40 min/km, which eventually broke me) was somehow beneath me. I managed to pull through that season, while often running through pain, and missing most of my time targets for the year:
- Half-marathon — wanted to do under 1:30, did 1:31:05, and 1:32:00. I could not believe I was just one minute slower than my target. So maddening. Still, this is my current best time, and I’m pretty proud of it these days.
- Marathon — wanted to go under 3:10, did 3:17:50. Again, this is my current best time. This was the year when Berlin marathon was a rainy and warm ordeal. My quads, and later calves cramped up half way through, and it was just about making myself take another step the rest of the way. Instead of celebrating how I managed to brave the cramped legs and harsh conditions, I was so disappointed!
- The only race goal that I managed to meet was to run an under 40 minutes 10k.
It does not come as much of a surprise that I ended up injured at the end of 2017. Those injuries would follow me into 2018, plaguing my running for at least half a year, preventing any serious racing.
2018: The “injured, searching for that humble feeling again” season.
The first time I got a chance to race in 2018 was end of May. Before that I was so broken (shin splints, plantar fasciitis, torn calf) that I could barely cycle to work. Anyway, my arrogant self was pretty sure I could muster some sort of Goku within myself, and run my last 10k PR time — break 40 minutes. I ran my slowest 10k time since 2016–47:18. And holy crap that was hard.
Somehow I managed to see this race as a blessing though. I’ve diligently put the race time into “current fitness” section in Strava settings, wept at the paces I was supposed to be running, and got to work using the new pace ranges. I haven’t been this slow for almost two years at that point. My easy and long runs often got over 6 minutes per kilometer (around 10 minutes per mile).
In retrospect, I think several things have contributed to this shift. Firstly, I’ve seen Des Linden win the Boston marathon in April, and openly talk about how taking half a year off running completely helped her so much. I thought: this is a person who’s job it is to run, and she’s taking it so much more chill than I am! Secondly, I’ve listened to Rich Roll and his coach dedicate pretty much a whole one hour podcast episode to the importance of slow running.
Something magical started happening. For the last two years I’ve been hammering so hard, that I forgot how enjoyable those easy and long runs can be. I’ve always enjoyed a good track workout, and tried to get my easy runs to feel at least remotely similar, so they’re not boring. But suddenly everyday easy running was not a chore anymore. Those became enjoyable — I’d go out and listen to a long thoughtful podcast (I wouldn’t allow myself to listen to stuff while running — listening to podcasts or music was for people who “don’t run hard enough”), or just enjoy the outside, and would not want the run to end. I’d barely break a sweat at those paces, and it was so enjoyable to just hang in there, in zone 2. I started going out for a run with my partner more often. She usually runs slower and less, and that had always made me think that she’s slowing me down. Now I realized that she’s actually keeping me from injuring myself. I felt like It felt like I’ve rediscovered this sport again!
Another thing happened in 2017, that I had to deal with in 2018, and I don’t think that I could’ve done it without the newly-found chill approach to running. In 2017 I got extremely greedy about running the World Majors marathons, and signed up for a bunch of them. I got lucky with getting in Berlin, Chicago, and New York — all in one year. These marathons are all less than a month apart from each other. I’ve done 3:20:40 in Berlin, 3:19:04 in Chicago, and am currently training for New York in three weeks. I say “training”, but what I’m really doing is recovering. This week I ran twice, totaling 20km. While I don’t encourage this kind of marathon training — I normally run around 80-100km per week to train for a marathon — but having three marathons in three months, I feel like my job right now is less to train for the next one, and more to recover from the previous one. I know that I’m in a ~3:20 shape that I will not just loose in a week or two. I will loose it if I get injured again though, and so I want to make sure I‘m healthy after the marathon in New York. I was sidelined for much more than I wanted to be this last year, and it is very important to me that I can keep doing my enjoyable easy runs at a snail’s pace after I’m back in London.
In conclusion.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering “What did I spend my last ten minutes on? Is there going to be some kind of a payoff?”. Well you’re in luck. Here are four things that I’ve learned during the last four years. You get these told time and time again, and you just ignore them (or at least I did). It seems like the only way you really get to learn these things is by living through them. Anyway, here are the four things about running that I’ve learned the hard way, and that are also “DUH!” and “No shit Sherlock”:
- Run all your easy runs in zone 2, no exceptions. How do you know when you run in zone 2? Easy — your pace feels way too slow. That way you give yourself time to recover for those hard workouts when it really counts. You can also run so much more this way, and the mileage really matters.
- Don’t let anyone tell you about “the right way” to run. “If you’re bored and want to listen to music, you’re not running fast enough” — bullshit. Run however makes you enjoy running.
- Don’t judge a race by how fast you went. A race is a good race if you’ve left it all on the tarmac (or on the trails — whatever floats your boat).
- Injuries can be a blessing in disguise. You get to focus on your weak areas, because the strong areas are currently out of reach. Stretch, do some cycling or swimming events, lift weights.
