For most, the act of running is an activity often associated with stiff muscles, burning lungs, and unending, unyielding pain. As a current collegiate soccer player and longtime athlete, it would be nice to say I disagree with these common sentiments. Perhaps because of the physical demands of my sport, I’ve grown accustomed and attached to movement. Maybe the countless full-field sprints and 400-yard repeats have cemented in me a deeper connection to and love for running.
Ha, wishful thinking. After more than ten years of doing it, running still sucks.
At first, the act of running feels right. In the beginning, everything clicks into place: a natural arm swing followed by a leg pushing off the ground as you gather speed. The gentle give of softening dirt on a trail or the unmoving road that guides you forward. The sunset on an evening jog, bleeding light through the trees while strangers on their own adventure stroll past.
Then, at a certain point, this endorphin-filled feeling dissipates. Foreshadowed by a slightly-pounding heart or the quiet pleading of sore muscles telling you to slow down, this is when the idea of running morphs into the reality of it. On a steamy summer day, your lungs choke on the humidity of the air, but you can’t stop. Coach has a watch and a whistle, yelling the seconds we have left to touch the endline and back. If you stop the sprint, you’ll never hear the end of it. Other times, even when your body is screeching for mercy, you don’t give in an inch because you’re stubborn and have already committed three miles to the run.
Beep tests. Timed runs. Sprint repeats. Fartleks. Long runs. Slow. Fast. With friends. Alone. There are so many different ways to run, and yet they all end in hurt. It’s in these moments of sheer pain that running reveals its deepest beauty and simple ability to ask why. Why put on those sneakers when you could use a rest? Why leave the air-conditioned room to run sweaty under the sun? Why schedule a ten-miler on what could be a lazy Sunday? In other words, running confronts you with the question, why do hard things?
To be honest, I am not completely sure of the answer. But by repeatedly doing a difficult task, I know I’m getting closer to it. To me, at the end of the day, running is an act of perseverance that tests my mental ability to push through the stuffy, thick air of difficult tasks. In order to get out of this fog, I have to keep running; if I stop, I’ll just waste more time stuck in it. With every additional step I take, I am reminded that I choose effort over comfort, growth over stagnation. With that knowledge comes a kind of meditation I practice to control the pain that overwhelms my body when I take the extra stride. In reflection, running is a confrontation against toleration, an exercise to regulate the voice in your mind telling you to take the easy way out. Running is physically demanding, but through self-affirmation and pure grit, it becomes just a little easier and less daunting to continue.
As endurance athlete David Goggins once wrote in his autobiography “Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds,” “Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence.”
Although you don’t need to be a Goggins-type to reach this moment of struggle, the lessons taken from it also build into day-to-day living. Life may not be as linear as the trails we run on, but the hard bits of it often parallel the awful parts of running. Difficult homework? Stuck in traffic? Unlucky happenstances? Given that the world will inevitably throw you a problem here and there, you’ll be better equipped to resolve them by learning how to. What better way to start than to lace your sneakers and run hard?
