Last Saturday, a friend sent me a picture of a 15 mile run he’d just finished. It was a screenshot of the route he’d taken, along the water in San Francisco, that included the duration of the run and his average mile pace. An equivalent for non-runners might be a photo of a tee card after a round of golf, or maybe a video of squatting a lot of weight in the gym. Having never filled out a tee card or squatted heavy weight in a gym, I can’t say for sure.
Screenshots like this are a fundamental piece of the sport as I know it. They’re at least part of the reason why apps like Strava and MapMyRun are so popular – beyond the analytics and tracking, people want to see their accomplishments. They also want their friends to see them. And while team sports, like basketball, or even group sports, like golf, have a built in social mechanism, running typically does not. If you dominate a game of pickup, you’ll hear about it afterwards at the bar, or wherever people go after playing basketball. But if you knock out your final long run of marathon training, who’s there to see it? Typically it’s just you, flush in the face and shuffling your way towards the closest place to buy a Gatorade. Accomplishments in a lonely sport are, not surprisingly, pretty lonely themselves. Early in my running career, I drove myself to a half marathon in Annapolis, Maryland, and then sat in a Wendy’s parking lot, eating a Baconator and chocolate Frosty by myself after the race. Those are the solo moments when you feel the urge to send a text to your running buddies: Just finished a half!
Let me clarify: This is not a criticism of my kick-ass running friend or the sport’s propensity to mile-signal. I send him pictures of my runs all the time, and that back and forth is an integral part of my own training process. It makes the sport far less solitary to know that on most days, without needing to confirm, I have a handful of friends around the country who are lacing up and getting out there, same as me. Even better, knowing that someone else is ripping off 15 mile runs on the weekend pushes me to do the same.
I wrote briefly about my run last Sunday, but I left out the fact that it was directly inspired by this friend. Until that point, my running in 2021 had been purely utilitarian: I am less happy on days when I don’t run, so I made sure to run every morning, even through winter. My longest of the year was 13 miles – a friend’s first half marathon – and I’d been taking it easy otherwise.
But that changed in the span of two weeks, all thanks to a screenshot. Energy is kind of strange that way. And the run last weekend that it inspired reminded me what I love about the sport: the hours of solitude, the bruised toenails, the sore thighs. The human body is a machine that works astonishingly well most of the time, and nowhere is that more obvious than out running.
Now I’m back to planning out my weekend long runs. Laying my clothes out the night before (or tossing them in a pile by my bed). Early bedtimes and early mornings. A coffee, a piece of peanut butter toast and two trips to the bathroom. Some Curb Your Enthusiasm while I digest and wait for the sun to come up. Things I didn’t realize I’d missed so much over the past year. As Paul Flannery put it this week in Running Probably:
“I’m going on a long run tomorrow. I can’t wait to get out there and be free for three whole hours. I probably won’t sleep much tonight because I’m so excited.”
Last spring we went headfirst into this pandemic and I was enthusiastic about writing and losing interest in distance running. Now it’s spring again and we’re exiting the pandemic and I want to run. Not only that, but I’m tired of the flexibility of the past year and loving going back into the office. I’ve even been wearing button downs. I can’t keep up! But times are strange, and there’s no point fighting it… I’m just going to do what I enjoy most in the moment. Which is runs like these:
Where I stumble upon churches like these:
The next logical step is to zero in on a new race. I’m revisiting the idea of a 100 miler, something I bailed on last year that is starting to appeal to me again. More to come on that, but I’m thinking of organizing something on my own, in the city. I’ve found the key to reaching any new distance is to seize inspiration when it comes and to tell as many people as you can about your plan. So don’t be surprised if a future edition of this newsletter includes a commitment to all of you.
Have any runs or other accomplishments you’re proud of this week? Send me a picture – brag a little bit!
Before I go, three Simon and Garfunkel songs I’ve been listening to on repeat:
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Spotify, Youtube)
When you’re down and out
When you’re on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I’ll take your part
Oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
The Only Living Boy In New York (Spotify, Youtube)
Half of the time we’re gone
But we don’t know where
Now the years are rolling by me
They are rocking evenly
And I am older than I once was
And younger than I’ll be
But that’s not unusual
No, it isn’t strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same
– Emmett
Recent Posts:
Friday Ramble, April 9th – A broken watch and a Zoom trick.
What I’m Reading:
Boston in the 1970s – The Atlantic (So cool!)
“Images of the blizzard of 1978, a victory parade for the Bruins after they won the 1970 Stanley Cup, enforcement and opposition to school segregation by busing, a Celtics game in Boston Garden, urban renewals and restorations, a St. Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston, anti-war protests, charm-school lessons, and much more.”
Don’t Be Better… Be “The Only” – James Altucher
“Think about where you can be ‘the only.’ I promise it will change your life, save your life, ruin your life, and transcend your life.”
China Is Not Ten Feet Tall – Ryan Hass
“Any attempt to use the China threat to spur domestic reform or overcome domestic division is likely to do more harm than good. At home, inflating the China threat will encourage the political weaponization of the issue, with China serving as a tool for ambitious politicians to discredit opponents for being weak. Abroad, such an approach will widen divisions with allies and partners, almost none of whom share Washington’s view that China is an existential threat.”
What I’m Listening To:
Balaji Srinivasan – The Tim Ferriss Show
“When the journalist interviews the subject, the journalists can edit, they can pull whatever quote they want, and they have the distribution that the subject doesn’t. They have millions of folks who will read their thing, the subject can just squeak and can’t get a word out edgewise. They can yell all they want, but it doesn’t do anything. No one will listen to them. It’s just boom. That’s why people used to say, ‘Never argue with the man who buys ink by the barrel.'”
Mark Messier: Leadership, personal growth, and performing under pressure – Peter Atia’s The Drive