The Art of Taking Running Seriously, But Not Too Seriously

When I think I’m taking my running too seriously, I remind myself that I came for the hush puppies.

You’ve heard of the infinite multiverse theory.

The idea that every decision, no matter how insignificant or consequential, creates a fork in the metaphysical road, sending two versions of you into separate, equally real universes. In one, you order an oat milk cortado. In another, a pumpkin spice latte. Both of you believe you have exercised free will, despite having been heavily influenced by seasonal marketing.

I realize this is an imprecise explanation of a complicated theoretical framework, but I have an English degree, and this is about running.

If this is true, I do wonder about the Zoë living in the other universe. Specifically, the one where, when offered a free bib for a 50K in Arkansas 10 years ago, I did the reasonable, smart, sensible thing: said no.

She drove home. Slept in. Had an oat milk cortado instead of spending all day traipsing through the muggy Arkansas backwoods having a life-changing, transcendent experience she would subsequently feel compelled to make everyone else’s problem.

I hope she’s doing OK.

I imagine she has all her toenails and a working understanding of how to spend a Saturday. Perhaps she can encounter a beautiful mountain without immediately wondering how long it would take to run up it. Perhaps she simply looks at it. An intriguing possibility.

My life would be unrecognizably different had I not pinned on that bib. So much of what I now think of as my life began with a decision I made in the hopes of missing work and getting free hush puppies and beer, apparently an Arkansas finish-line staple.

I wasn’t looking for a new identity, a community, or an experience that would fundamentally reorganize my understanding of what I wanted from my brief time on Earth. I was looking for fried cornmeal and an excused absence.

Unfortunately, I got all of it.

So, before you accept a free bib, a few things you should know.

Time and Space

While we’re on the subject of ideas you’ve probably discussed while high in a dorm room, your entire understanding of time and space will change when you become an ultrarunner. Distances once understood as “far” become “a pretty reasonable Saturday,” and durations normally associated with international air travel become something you voluntarily spend doing laps of a forest.

Only thirty-two miles? Is that a warm-up? I have literally had the thought, Only eight hours left in this race. That’s just one workday!  You start adding “only” before numbers that should never have an “only” in front of them.

For those of us whose races take approximately the same amount of time as Priority Mail delivery (looking at you, Cocodona), it’s important to stay grounded, and to be gracious when friends and family gamely say, But I don’t even like to drive that far! They are trying to relate to us. We should encourage this while they’re still willing.

The downside is that when I tell my partner, “I’ll be back in two hours,” I am describing a theoretical possibility, rather than making a commitment. It generally means three to six. We now have an agreement: six hours late means I’m making apology dinner; 12 hours late means he’s calling search and rescue (this has happened only once. Sorry, hun). Between those two thresholds, I am presumably alive, but definitely going to have to make a lasagna to save the marriage. 

The upside is that you start to believe you can do almost anything. I still remember my first double-digit run, the sheer improbability of having moved my body that far under its own power. Thirty miles would have sounded absurd. Then it became possible. Then doable. Then something I needed to fit in before brunch.

Running for 10 hours sounds crazy until you do it, have fun, and begin wondering whether 20 might also be a nice time. Your legs eventually recover, but your sense of proportion may never return.

It doesn’t happen overnight, although you might spend more than a few nights investigating that possibility. It happens gradually, through the accumulation of experiences you once thought you were incapable of having. Something feels impossible, then possible, then you’re standing on the other side of it, drinking a recovery shake.

And the horizon you spent so long trying to reach has become the place you’re looking out from.

Everyone You Know Will Be Amazing

I have met most of my friends through running, which is fantastic in that I know people who understand that u up? means “Are you ready to meet at the park and ride at 3:40 a.m. so we can summit that thing that probably shouldn’t be summited?” 

My partner is an ultrarunner. My best friend is an ultrarunner. My boss, and the person editing this so that it’s at least somewhat legible and coherent, is an ultrarunner. I am surrounded by people I admire, who do extraordinary things and then apologize for being a little slow on our recovery run.

The downside is that this will recalibrate your understanding of what constitutes an ordinary human accomplishment. I imagine if your group chat were entirely astronauts, you would eventually start feeling a little embarrassed that you’d only been to Portugal.

Your friend casually mentions running 40 miles over the weekend. Someone else is recovering from a hundred. A third person is “taking it easy this year,” by which they mean they’ve only entered one race requiring a passport and GPS tracking sophisticated enough to belong on ARTEMIS III. Meanwhile, you had a lovely three-hour run, which suddenly feels like something you should have done on your lunch break.

You can be proud of these people, love them dearly, and still find yourself quietly converting their accomplishments into evidence of your own inadequacy. 

You could, I suppose, make friends who don’t run. Branch out. Develop interests. But then who would you discuss that thing on the Javelina livestream with? Who would understand a community equally scandalized by mandatory layers and OnlyFans? You can’t expect someone to walk into your life fully prepared to have opinions about poles.

Remember that the people making you feel unremarkable are, in fact, remarkable. That’s probably part of why you like them.

And somewhere in this deeply skewed social ecosystem, you are the friend casually describing a run that someone else cannot believe a person would do.

You’re amazing, too. Your friends have just made it very difficult to maintain perspective.

Work and Play and Play and Work

It’s weird that something I didn’t know existed 10 years ago is my job now. It makes me wonder what my next job will be. Asteroid wrangler? AI court jester? Something else I will initially agree to do for hush puppies and morning beer?

I feel incredibly lucky to work in running as a writer, podcaster, coach, and someone occasionally compensated in minute amounts of money to actually run. You know what they say: do what you love, and you’ll spend every weekend for the rest of your life working.

But even when running isn’t your job, there’s a strange negotiation between work and play. This is something we do for fun, which apparently involves spreadsheets, scheduled suffering, and occasionally telling someone we can’t go out because I need to recover REALLY hard for my hobby!!!

I think there is real pleasure in allowing yourself to take something seriously, and in caring enough to work at it. In finding out how much you can improve, getting absorbed in the minutiae, and developing an opinion about lactate meters so specific that there are perhaps eleven people on Earth qualified to disagree with you (and they will all find you on Reddit).

You’re allowed to want to get better. To have ambitions that feel slightly embarrassing to say aloud. “It’s just for fun” doesn’t have to be a disclaimer you attach to everything you care about, in case someone catches you trying.

Working at something can be part of playing. There’s satisfaction in practicing a skill, solving a problem, or finally running up a hill that has historically made you question everything.  Sometimes the fun is discovering what happens when you give something your full attention.

Of course, full attention can become a little too full. You can start treating every run as a performance review and every race as a binding verdict on your character. At some point, it’s worth remembering that you chose this activity. Presumably because you liked it. There may have been hush puppies and beer on offer.

It should still be fun. That doesn’t mean every minute has to be a good-time extravaganza. There will be discomfort, boredom, plateaus, setbacks, and heartbreak. Some of those experiences make the satisfying parts richer. Some are simply miserable, and you’re allowed to want fewer of them.

The paradox, I think, is that you can take running seriously without requiring it to justify your entire existence. You can work hard at it and still change your plans. Want something badly and still laugh at the circumstances in which you’re pursuing it, which may involve crying in a folding chair while someone feeds you tater tots. 

I want to keep finding out what I can do. I also want to enjoy the life I’m rearranging to do it.

I came for the hush puppies, after all. I’d hate to become someone who forgot to stay for them.

I still wonder about the other Zoë. I hope she’s happy. I hope she found something worth taking a little too seriously, and people willing to do it with her. I’m sure she has a perfectly good life, with considerably more opportunities to sleep in.

But if the universe offered me that free bib again, knowing everything that came after, I’d still pin it on.

I would, however, tell my partner I was going to be late.

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