Running as a Service. Beginner’s Guide.
From couch to half marathon. A story of definite hate, probable love, and career advice in between.
The hate
I’ve hated running all my life. Running for more than 10 seconds non-stop, that is. It started in middle school where they make you run 2 or 3 or 5 or some other prime number of kilometers to pass a physical education test or whatever it is called. Nobody ever teaches you to run (more on that later), they just blow the whistle and wait for you with the stopwatch at the finish line. And you run for your life. OK, maybe not you. I did. I’d start strong, then accelerate more, then spill my guts out, then die, then resurrect, then die again, and then finish in second place. I’d always finish second. There was this guy, Dennis, a natural-born runner. You know the type. The annoying skinny kid who can run for ages. I couldn’t. Luckily, I was even skinnier and stubborn enough to always keep his back in sight. I’d hate every second of this torture but I’d keep pushing as hard as I could. Each time I would pass the test with distinction, behind the uncatchable Dennis, ahead of the rest of the pack. Middle school ended and I had not been running [more than 10 seconds non-stop] for the next 30 years.
I’d run less than 10 seconds millions of times though. Throughout childhood, I was forced into a somewhat chaotic set of sports activities: chess (not really a sport — I lasted for 1 day), gymnastics, swimming, martial arts, and ballet (not really a sport — I lasted for 7 years). Many years later I found myself enjoying bouldering, table tennis, and alpine skiing. However, preferring team and ball-centric sports over individual ones, I’ve spent the most time on various volleyball, basketball, and football teams. With all this heterogeneous athletic background — I never ran more than 10 seconds non-stop. Sad but true. Well, once I strip-sacked the opposing QB in the middle of the field and ran with the ball all the way to the endzone. It may or may not have taken more than 10 seconds. The stupid referee threw the stupid flag on some stupid grounds and they cancelled the best and only touchdown I’d ever have, so it doesn’t count anyway. Never run more than 10 seconds non-stop.
Oh, I also have been lifting weights on and off since I was 13 or 14. On my 40th birthday in June 2019, I reached my maximum (thus far) and completed the 1000 pounds challenge (Google it; if you do, be ready to absorb yet another useless fact — Hugh Jackman did this at 46). Buff dude, I am. I was.
Then Covid-19 happened. Football season stopped. Gyms got closed. In March 2020, I found myself completely and utterly sportless. For the next seven months, I did nothing about that and felt bad. Then I remembered that I’d hated [distance] running. On the verge of a global apocalypse (little did we know), it seemed only logical to close that gap. Step out of your comfort zone, the voices in my head said. Leave me alone, I replied. Seek discomfort, they insisted. I don’t have either running shoes or a fancy Garmin watch, I tried to argue. Didn’t help. On November 1st, 2020, I went for my first-ever adult life run. Three and a half months later, in February of 2021, I completed my first ever half-marathon — 21.1km, finishing under two hours.
How I did it, what emotions for running I have now, and what software engineering has to do with all this — sit tight, here it comes.
The secret
I am not alone. Many people hate running. There’s a greater chance that an average Joe hates running more than he loves eating. The only real reason for such hatred is that no one ever teaches properly (or anyhow) him, her, them, and us to run. Best case scenario — they tell you to warm up. It is assumed running is natural. It is. And it is not. The secret that was revealed to me both externally and internally — through my own experience — is so simple and obvious that it literally hurts. The feelings and intelligence.
One word. Slow. S-L-O-W. You have to run slow. Like really sloooooow. If you think you’re running slow enough, run even slooooower. It can be slower than you walk. Actually, at first, it should be slower than you walk. Once you get used to running slow, it hits you that you can run virtually infinitely. This revelation is liberating. The fear has gone. The discomfort may stay. It will bug you more and more as you progress through the distance but that point at which you start feeling real pain in your legs or back or whatever weird muscle you didn’t know existed moves further and further away with each consequent run. I couldn’t run more than 10 seconds non-stop for almost thirty years. Twelve days into my new running life, I ran for over 90 minutes, covering 12 km. Slow. Seven weeks later, on New Year’s Eve in the midst of yet another lockdown, I ran to my parents' place in another town, making 24 km in a bit less than three hours. So, it took only two months from complete hatred and total inability of distance running to finishing a half-marathon while staying alive and even a bit kicking. Why and how did it happen? Why — slow. How — slow.
The same stands for your engineering career. You don’t have to outrun anyone. No need to hurry. Young people coming out of universities (or being self-taught) are often blinded by the shining lights of high salaries, various perks, and the immense amount of possibilities that seem instantly reachable. They jump out of the start arch and push as hard as they can, only to soon find out that they ran out of fuel even before the first aid station. So many distractions, so much noise from co-runners, and so much motivation to get ahead of everyone and get to that golden exit gate. Goals are fine. Healthy ambitions are great. Unrealistic tempo is not. Chances are you are going to hurt yourself, lose motivation at one of the earlier checkpoints if your intermediate result is behind what you hoped for, and eventually quit in one form or another. Run slow. The usual career span is from the early-mid 20s to mid-late 60s. It’s 40+ years. Marathon distance. Treat it as such. Keep your pace steady and your heart rate in check. You’ll get the money, the respect, the recognition, whatever you’re after. As long as you keep running the distance. Do you know something else? You can walk too. You can even pause for a minute, grab a banana, sip some water, and then start running again. However fast but surely slow.
Another thing about being slow. It is everyone’s personal slow. We’re built differently. We live in different places on Earth. We come from different backgrounds. Do not compare yourself to anyone else. Run your race. There is nothing wrong with being a 10x programmer. Nothing wrong about 1x one either. The most cliche thing of all and thus so true — be the best version of yourself. Someone running ahead and chasing his back motivates you — fine. Use it. Do not let it control your pace though. At the end of the day, you’re always running alone. It is your personal race, run it on your terms.
The caveat
Running slow is good. It is even great. Does it mean it is easy? No. If it was, everyone would do it. People love easy. People adore comfort. It is a survival thing. A man needs to preserve the energy to have it available when it’s time to chase down an animal, fight an intruder, build a shelter, or wait for his significant other in a shopping mall. Therefore, he wouldn’t run willingly. He may understand and acknowledge the benefits, the couch is just a better place to wait for an existential danger to appear.
I had my food, nobody in the visible vicinity was going to attack me, and my landlord just prolonged the lease, so I was all set energy-wise and left that couch with confidence. Fast forward three and a half months — I’m dying on the 19th kilometer of my first semi-official half-marathon. Semi because they made it solo runnable and self-measurable due to Covid-19 restrictions. This is where the Garmin watch that measures the distance comes in handy and the running shoes come ... footy? Anyway, it is the 19th kilometer and I’m dying. For my own reasons, I set the goal of running 21.1 km in under 110 minutes. Severe arithmetics laws translate this into a pace of 5:12 minutes per kilometer. I am able to keep up with it for the first half of the distance. Then it starts to slip away. 5:20, 5:16, 5:30, 5:28, 5:44… The 18th is a glimmer of light — 5:22. The 110 minutes mark has long become unreachable. The new goal — 115 minutes.
Wait. Haven’t you just nagged us all with this slow, slow, slow thing? I have. Guilty as charged but hear me out, your honor. Slow is awesome. And it works perfectly throughout your training routine. Game day is another story. There are these moments in sports and in life when it’s time to shine. To give it all out. To dig deep within yourself and find those resources you have or haven’t known about. Pain becomes real. So does the urge to stop. What do you do? You keep moving your feet. You set your eyes on the nearest tree and tell yourself to get to it. Then to the next one. Then the next.
You have to meet a critical deadline for the project to succeed. Your manager is pushing you hard and your resources are limited. There’s another mandatory meeting that you don’t see any sense in. Your code has crashed the production, everything works absolutely fine on your local machine, and the remote debugging is a mess. Your next task is a mundane repetitive thing you cannot automate. The company is restructured and your team is rebuilt. Something hits the fan. Multiple rocks can fall upon a programmer, an engineer, a developer, a-whatever-they-call-you. When and if it happens you can complain, feel sorry for yourself, blame whoever you want to blame, or do anything that your level of training and maturity tells you to. You just cannot stop running.
The 19th kilometer — I feel really bad. It’s the worst lap at 5:48. The 20th kilometer— I don’t remember who I am. 6:08.
No thinking about anything. No nothing. Or you do nothing. Just keep moving. Before you know it, you’re either dead or alive again. Or both.
The 21st kilometer — 5:22. “Finish strong!” is another mantra that American football is known for. The 100 final meters — I give one hell of a sprint. Only in my mind though. In reality, it took 27.9 seconds. In high school, I did it in 11.9 seconds. Who cares. This game is over. The race continues.
The joy
It’s not about the finish line. We run because we were born to run. I wish I came to realise it earlier. All the numerous sports I have ever touched are fun. Each has its own appeal, its own characteristics that attract me but have no effect on somebody else. Unlike them, running is the simplest and the most universal physical activity. It is also the perfect analogy for your career. You choose to do it, you do it continuously, and you get rewarded for it. Just like software engineering, it is mainly monotonous (which many people confuse with boring) with not so many highlights throughout its course. It also is never really easy, no matter what the start conditions are or how equipped someone is. Again, if it was easy, everyone would be a runner, and everyone would be a developer. You need to obtain resilience and perseverance and put in constant effort in order to run the course.
Therefore, it is extremely important to enjoy the process. To grasp these little happy moments along the road. Whether it is nature around you or the people you share the way with or just the state of your clear mind. After you put enough miles under the belt, everything slows down for you (we touched on it before), and you’re able to appreciate experiences while on the move.
Obviously, different people enjoy and appreciate different things. There are different stages too. There will be times when you’d love the total quiet, there will be times when you’d need the cheer. Once in a while, you would look back to see how far you’ve gone, sometimes you’d anticipate the intriguing path ahead. One day you would feel weak and slow but privileged to be moving at all. The day after — strong and fast and privileged to be moving at all.
Do I love running now? Maybe. Maybe not. Will I ever run the full marathon? Maybe. Maybe not. Will I do software engineering for living till I retire? Maybe. Maybe not. Does anything matter as long as I keep moving?
You know the answer.
