The Strange Pleasure of Numbers. Or, How Running Makes You Feel in Control
I’d love to say that I run because I enjoy the feeling of power in my body, the air on my skin, a clear mind while I move, and the sense of accomplishment afterwards. These things are all true, but there’s an added element that weaves it all together, and I’ve decided that it’s okay that I seem to enjoy thinking about numbers.
My head buzzes with times, distances, speeds, and calculations back and forth between them, and not even just while I’m running. It happens while I’m cycling to work, waiting for a train, walking to the grocery store. The numbers circle around the goals I’m working towards, which basically means getting a particular time in the next big race.
I love working towards a challenge, and I like to be in charge of exactly how. After doing a lot of research into running training, I’ve realized that part of the fun for me is designing my own training plan for the coming few months leading up to a race, and tweaking it along the way. There’s something very satisfying about devising an overarching structure and mapping out the details of each week’s training.
And there are a lot of details. I know the big goal at the moment is to get 1 hour 48 minutes at a half marathon six months from now. There’s a 10K race soon too, and doing that in 48 minutes has been the goal for the past few months. Those are my favorite race distances at the moment, and I really want to get those times.
Working backwards, my tempo runs need to be at between 4:55 and 5:00 minutes per kilometer, and the shorter sets in the various kinds of interval training need to be between 4:40 and 4:50. When I can’t quite hit my target pace on the tempo runs, those numbers have a way of hovering around in my head like a cloud throughout the day: 5:15. As if thinking about it could somehow make it change. I find myself calculating, yet again, the half marathon times that result from various speeds. And I wonder, yet again, exactly how slow my easy runs should be.
For the most part, I try to keep these numbers to myself. While I’m sure my friends and family want to hear my enthusiasm for running, and how happy I was with the last race, they just don’t need to know the numbers. They don’t need to hear that I’d been running right here in this park just yesterday, that I did 7 repeats of 800m at my 5K pace, timing it on the stopwatch. I don’t want to bore them with the details. But I also wonder whether this kind of information reveals something strange about me: the drive to be better, the self-measurement, the enjoyment I get out of running fast and out of the comfort zone.
Above all, the fixation on numbers seems to be about control. The runs don’t just happen; they follow a meticulously worked-out plan, and I’m supposed to control my body during the run so that it fits the lines of the plan. I wonder if this is all about giving myself a sense of structure. There’s a way in which all these numbers make you feel held in place.
In a world where we’re surrounded with messages that we can do anything, that we’re in charge of our own lives, there’s a lot of pressure to make ourselves better and be more productive. I’ve always felt that drive to be better as if I’m never quite good enough. On top of that, my work is freelance, and so I’m even more in charge. This leaves a lot open. Humans aren’t so comfortable when there are a lot of unknowns, and when you can do anything, there’s a creeping worry that you’re not doing the right thing.
In the middle of all that, my running and my numbers give me a sense of order. When I put it like that, it sounds almost a bit embarrassing. But I’m comfortable with using these numbers to do some kind of psychological soothing. I don’t stick to them blindly. I love pushing myself, but if I’m a bit injured, or for some reason just very heavy and tired, I’ll listen to what my body can handle. I’m not ruled by the numbers. You can’t control everything, even if the attempt feels somehow comforting.
