GO SLOW TO GO FAR

©Eiger Ultra Trail

How should I run? Where should I start? What’s the secret to sticking with it? As a new year arrives the same question comes pouring in again: How do I run? People never want to hear the simple truth: run slower. Most of us are blessed to move daily in some form, but our ego often is not prepared for the low rate at which our body can stride after time off.

The new runner knows it may have been a while, but they hope running will still be there for them like it once was. Maybe they remember what it felt like as a child, dashing full of exasperation. After all, if even easy running is going to feel hard, we might as well push it, because there is nothing to lose. However, the harsh reality is that running is never easy, and the desire to push too hard, too early, entices us all. Daring to go slowly is part of the sport’s lifelong pursuit. 

I get it that the desire to push beyond the zone of comfort feels synonymous with running. The simple intent of the exercise is the effort. So, no one, after months or years of not running, wants to be told to take it “easy.” Their very question of how to successfully get started is an intent to break free from the laziness of the past. The harsh truth is that easy running is hard. If done repeatedly, then eventually slow running will get quicker. It sounds like an insult, but it is simply the truth and the inevitable path to consistent running. So, the advice given to beginners is reasonable, but tricky to follow, which is why it so rarely results in success, and why it leads to quitting again altogether.

 Tommy Rivers Puzey once perfectly described easy running in an interview. “What I’ve found, from the research that I’ve done, if I run easy, then there’s always going to be stress, but emotional stress is not one of the components that contributes to that total level of stress. Our bodies have a hard time differentiating different types of stresses. Whether it’s physical stress, or work stress, or family stress. Or all the other angst that comes from being a human being. If there’s not emotional stress contributing to that total pool of stress, from my training, if it’s not something that I dread, if it’s not something that it’s like, ‘I have to do go out and push this pace at this zone and this heart rate today,’ then my total overall level of stress is lower, which means my cortisol levels are lower, which means my testosterone stays higher, which means that my body recovers better, and my mood is better.”

It is the simple benefits of not beating yourself up emotionally, while also pacing yourself physically. It demands audacity to shuffle while your ego screams to surge. It requires patience to progress from a speed that at first feels absurdly slow. But with practice, one can discover the truth that there is no need to rush, cause you have got a long way to go.

If you want to improve your running you have to be consistent, and to be consistent you have to not get injured and burned out, and to not get injured and burned out, you have to run easy most of the time. People stop running because it hurts, and it hurts because there is this bad idea going around that running should be hard and painful. Well, there is obviously a misconception with that logic. 

There are days, when you can run yourself into another world, you can blaze and escape into a paradise of painful bliss, but this sensation is rare. Although it is this exact experience, a so-called “runner’s high”, that we continue to seek, we have to be patient. Go easy to go far, and keep going. A minute is a good run, a kilometer is a good run, a mile is a good run, start with going around the block, you can start walking and then running when you can run! Just move, because you are blessed to be able to move, and moving is cool.