Run With Ease

Since I began running ultramarathons, I’ve heard people questioning why we do it. The most common sentiment goes something like this, “I run ultras to learn about myself, to discover what I'm capable of”. At first, I liked that idea. 

When I started running ultras, I had never run a race longer than 5K which I did just once, 20 years earlier. I also ran a few 500 meter races in high school winter track between soccer seasons. I had become relatively unfit and wanted to know if I could get into the super-fit state I had enjoyed during my glory days of playing soccer. After deciding that the crush of participants in marathons and triathlons wasn’t for me, I discovered that there was a trail race in my home town with three distances: 35, 60, and 100 km. I signed up for the 100 km event because I knew that if I ran one of the shorter two distances I’d wonder how I would have faired at the longer distance. Since then, I’ve run quite a few ultras.

In the later stages of a race, I can feel so depleted of resources that there is no energy to be someplace else with my mind. I’m fully present because that’s required to continue moving forward, and I experience a profound awareness of now. The juxtaposition of this moment being all that exists and yet meaningless at the same time is a profound experience that becomes available. Watching that sense of now transition into the very next moment is all that really exists. 

A couple of years ago, I learned about meditation and it almost dissolved my interest in ultramarathons. That’s because I came to question whether everything I thought I was getting from running ultras could be explored deeper, richer, and fuller in meditation. In meditation, we come to know the substrates of consciousness and self, see the interconnected impermanence of life, and achieve a sharper level of attention for the present moment. 

In this way, the fruits of meditation practice are useful in the rest of my life. I don’t find ultramarathons useful in the rest of my life in nearly as comprehensively interwoven a fashion as I do meditation. Honestly, as much as I agree that a 100-mile race can be a metaphor of life, I don’t find that I learn much in a 100-mile race that helps me in my non-running life.

Should I run less and meditate more? I wrestled with this question for more than a year before realizing that I didn’t really understand why I feel a need to run really long distance. The question 'why do you run ultramarathons?’ sounds like the setup of an overused knock-knock joke. There is improved physical and mental health. There is the camaraderie that many, but not all, enjoy. There is communing with nature for those who run among the flora and fauna. There is the capacity to explore more terrain in less time. But all of those things can be achieved in other ways. 

Many people run their first ultra, as I did, to see if they can. But, ultimately, we continue to run ultras for something else. Most people who continue to run ultras will talk about how they learn about themselves through endurance pursuits. But what do you learn from ultramarathons…that you can persist, that you can overcome, that you're determined? I came to the conclusion that I don’t need to run ultras to know those things. There are so many stories of people walking for days through the desert or wintry mountain passes to survive after an accident. Given the right circumstances and the right motivations, we’re all capable to doing extraordinary things. We don’t need to run a relatively safe, organized ultramarathon to show us we’re capable of getting from point A to point B in a given amount of time - when it really matters, you can do it. Of course there are exceptions. The first time or two you run an ultramarathon, for example, it may be mostly about developing the fitness for it or proving that you can. But after that, we continue to do them for something else.

There is something rewarding about experiencing discomfort and being okay with it, without suffering. My guest in episode 21, Sam Marcora defines effort as 'the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop.’ Our purpose when training for performance is to develop both the mind and body to either reduce the struggle or reduce the mounting desire to stop. Physically, we do this by becoming more fit, so there is less pain. Mentally, we do this by dissolving the desire for different circumstances, so there is less suffering. It’s in the struggle against remaining in our current state, which comes from the desire for an alternative state, that we suffer. If we didn’t think we had a choice, we’d still feel pain, but we’d suffer less.

Consider these words, "What I always try to do through injuries is not think about it because when the game itself is more significant than the injury, you don’t feel the injury. The injury won’t get in the way because it’s not important to you." - Kobe Bryant   Now let’s be clear. Kobe was specifically recollecting an experience of being injured in an important game. I am not advocating running through an injury. If your pain is a true injury where continuing will cause long term damage, you should stop.

Stamina increases when we learn to minimize or dissolve suffering, to minimize the pressure created between the opposing psychological forces of our own creation. Almost anyone can cross the finish line with enough physical training. Most will feel some pain. But not everyone can or will finish an event without suffering. It is not our goal to learn to suffer more or handle more suffering but rather to become better at minimizing or dissolving the suffering that might arise when we are in challenging situations near the limits of our capacities. 

We sometimes hear a person say, “I run ultras to find my limits". Limits are a form of boundary. Limits - perceived or observed - become places to attach labels and judgements about ourselves. By seeking limits we seek labels. And don’t think that 'seeking what you’re capable of’ is any different; that’s the inverse of the same formula and produces definitions, labels, and opens the door to judgement. Unless…unless the purpose of finding either a limit or a capability is in the service of growth without judgement. The phrases I’ve used here are fixed in their wording - you have a limit, you have a capacity. The change to make is to insert the word current. Seek your current limit or your current capacity, without judgement, purely as a way of re-calibrating your approach for the next steps in continued growth. Nothing, especially not a performance in an event, defines you in any fixed way, even when the outcome is deemed a success.

I climb to the top of a mountain, not to see the peak but to see the horizon. I run toward the horizon, knowing full well that it cannot be reached, and I embrace that reality. It’s running toward it that is my objective. Some games are designed to have winners and endpoints. Others are designed with the purpose of keeping the game going. I run to keep running, because it brings me joy and shows me how far I can still go and how far I can still grow. I do not run to cross finish lines, create labels, or show toughness. Tough things break when the winds are strong enough. Resilient things weather the storm and even do so gracefully. 

How can we learn to be more resilient? By cultivating the mindset and mental skills to minimize or dissolve suffering. We can do this by appreciating all of our sensations with full awareness, such as sadness, fatigue, grief, joy, anger, fear, and pain among many others. Suffering is a clinging reaction to the perception that our attachments with objects or ideas are at risk. We dissolve suffering by letting go of those attachments.

My wife asked me why I like running 100-milers and I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t have a satisfying answer. And it may be that looking for a satisfying answer is keeping me from knowing the answer. The buddhist word ‘dukkah’ refers to the reality that life is inherently unsatisfying due to the impermanence of everything. It seems that there is something in discomfort that makes seeing and embracing dukkha easier. In meditation, impulses, reactions, attachments, desires, and judgements fade as the nature of consciousness becomes clearer. A purer mental space is revealed. In running through exhaustion, a purer sense of physical being is revealed. The only miracles that I’ve ever witnessed (mind you I’m devoutly atheist) are the times when I’ve been utterly exhausted and then risen like the Phoenix, feeling amazing again for no apparent reason. 

For now, I see meditation and ultramarathon running as complements and not as redundant as I had begun to do. One of the most useful observations I’ve come to appreciate in these practices has to do with why we practice at all. It comes in the form of a question. Did you think you could plan and train so that nothing would go wrong and it would be comfortable? This question reveals the irony of struggling to attain comfort. In other words, are you training so that your experience becomes easier or so that you may continue with greater ease? There is a difference, a very big difference. People generally don’t find deep meaning or fulfillment in things that are easy. The deepest sense of meaning and fulfillment, however, comes from being at ease through challenging situations. Training to make something easier, if that is the primary goal, leads to diminished happiness and fulfillment. Through training our minds, we develop the ability to experience challenges with greater ease, with less suffering. So, I think that finishing faster in a race is wonderful but it’s running with greater ease and less suffering that we are training for. 

Seen through this lens, we can go beyond the physical training and re-evaluate the totality of our training. Remember, I define training as everything you do in life that contributes to your abilities as a runner. What can you do to improve your sleeping, thinking, eating, and moving? Can you improve your sleep quality with a small improvement in your pre-sleep routine or making the room a little cooler, can you make a better choice at your next meal, can you change your relation with your thoughts, can you add a little something into your day to cultivate a more resilient mind? Improving those things a little bit, every day, will not only improve your running but your overall quality of life.

I’ve previously recommended that you spend at least 10 minutes on every run to practice being fully aware, completely present, by giving all your attention to the soundscape or your visual field or how your body feels. You do this without identifying or associating or judging any of the objects in that attentive field but rather experiencing them and nothing more.

Today, I’m adding a practice for developing the capacity to suffer a little less. Each time you do something that is difficult in your workout, such as going up a steep incline or running fast intervals, relax the mind and observe the sensations of your body as if they belonged to someone else. Experience your body's sensations as if they are in a movie. Your mind does not receive suffering, it receives information. What you do with that information determines whether you suffer or merely experience the sensations. It’s your interpretations, perceptions, and desires for the sensations to be different that produce suffering. Practice the skill of observing information about discomfort without suffering but rather with interest and curiosity. 

This is not learning pain tolerance. Tolerance requires an underlying conflict; it is the container that encloses true desire for something to be different if you could make it so. To tolerate is stop fighting against the existence of something you oppose or with which you disagree. We do not want to tolerate pain because pain tolerance requires the existence of suffering that we simply try to ignore while allowing it to exist in the background. Instead, we want to minimize or dissolve suffering, not hide or ignore it. Through this practice, we’re learning to experience pain or discomfort as a sensation, without suffering arising at all because we no longer desire to control the experience. 

Practice that at every opportunity. Every time you notice your thoughts going to a place such as “I can’t wait for this interval to be over”, be aware of the physical sensations with curiosity and without attachment to them or a desire for them to be different. Notice what happens to them when you simply observe them. As this practice becomes more natural, you can turn your awareness to your visual field or the soundscape in the midst of the physical discomfort. In this way you take the next step and allow the pain to become a sensation no longer in the forefront but now in the background. You aren’t ignoring but rather giving it less importance.

Give this a try. When you really give it a chance and you’re consistent with the practice, I think you’ll find that it makes a difference in your enjoyment of running, especially when the conditions get very challenging. Then, when you are in a long race or a very long run or you have some other endurance-related fatigue, draw on these nurtured skills to turn your curious attention to the sensations, and even thoughts, that you're having that call you to stop. See them as objects and let go of any associated desires for things to be different. You will find that the effort contains less struggle. Our goal is never to get good at suffering. Our goal is to suffer less under the same conditions, not to make running easier but to run with greater ease.