Hi everyone,
It has been a minute. But I’m back this week and hopefully many more to come. Special thanks to Tristan Wagner to helping me get back on the horse.
Stop Running Too Fast
Takeaway 1: Humans were successful as endurance predators – we survived by running for longer than our prey and so we are built to run long distances, not sprints. Our bodies are, in many ways, different from most other animals in that they were built for long-distance running.
Takeaway 2: Running well looks like running slowly and for a long distance (>3 miles). If you’re running just for exercise you can run at an easy effort the entire time, every run. Don’t worry about paces, worry about levels of effort. If you are doing it right you should be giving an easy, maintainable effort the whole time. Lean your chin just a little forward of your chest and go for it.
When it comes to people who can run there are two types of people in this world,
(1) those who love running and
(2) those who run too fast.
People tell me there are others but I have yet to meet them.
But when it comes to people who hate running, I’ve met more than I can count. And that’s sad for a lot of reasons. Running is good for your health and has been proven to help with a wide variety of conditions, including major depressive disorder. But mostly it is sad because running should be fun.
Running is fun if you run at an easy pace for a long distance. Running like this doesn’t feel like a trade-off between your short-term discomfort and your long-term health. Instead, it feels like something you were meant to do.
This topic is on my mind because I’ll be running a 15k when this hits your inbox. And that’s significant because I, too, used to be a person who hated running.
I used to run too fast. I used to think that a workout was running a mile as fast as I could. And if I wasn’t uncomfortable or exhausted at the end of my runs then it must mean that I didn’t work hard enough.
And (no surprise here) I hated the thing that made me feel uncomfortable and made me exhausted.
It was only a year ago that I learned that there is another way to do things – by going for longer runs at easier efforts. I say “easier efforts” and not “slower paces” because unless you are planning to race pace does not matter. Effort matters. And effort is unique to each person – my 5 out of 10 is not your 5 out of 10.
Running is complicated because even when it is done in this better way it does not always feel good. At the outset of most runs the first half mile might be uncomfortable. And while it will be far less uncomfortable if you’re running at a slow, easy pace you are nonetheless taking a body at rest to a body in motion. You’re going from being relaxed to small bursts of flying across the earth. Running consists of, basically, falling forward and propelling yourself through the air. That is not something to be taken lightly. So, it will be a little uncomfortable at the beginning. You have to invest at the start of a run.
And here the issue arises because if you run too fast you’re going to run too short a distance – you’re only going to get to experience a not-great part of the run.
Conversely, running feels good after some distance.
There’s a simple (but probably wrong) story you can tell here – in the ancestral environment you did poorly if (1) you were spending calories by running unnecessarily and (2) if you couldn’t run far enough to wear down your prey. So your body was not built to run everywhere, always, but rather to run with a purpose. Once that purpose overcomes the initial discomfort your body gives you what you need. You get endorphins (short for “endogenously-produced morphine”) in your peripheral nervous system to numb the discomfort in your muscles. You get anandamide (an endo-cannabinoid) in your brain to make you feel good while running – that is, to give you the aptly-named “runner’s high.”
These are not the only things that made humans successful endurance hunters. Being able to sweat helped. We also have tendons that are better adapted to running than closely-related primates. But these two – endorphins in your body and anandamide in your brain – are what make running a pleasant and meaningful experience once you have run far enough.
So give your body time to catch up. It could make all the difference in how you feel about running.
If you can, try to go for a run of 3 or 4 miles (if you think you can’t, you may be surprised!). But keep yourself at a 4 out of 10 effort for the entirety of the run. Your chin should be a little ahead of your chest. Your body should feel loose and relaxed. Don’t worry about the pace, just worry about how you feel. A 4 out of 10 does not feel hard; it feels easy.
And, after a while, it feels really good.
The Links
The difficulty of making pearl jewelry is not in inducing the mollusks to produce them, but instead in finding ones that match in shape and size.
Balk’s First Law: Everything you hate about the Internet is actually everything you hate about people.
Lagniappe
I read Cal Newport’s A World without Email and could not recommend it enough. Aren Rendell, who suggested it to me initially, put it best: Don’t try to find solutions in the book. Just let the gravity of the problem wash over you while you read it. Then, once you finish, go about fixing the way you work.
Graph(s) of the week
[WSJ] There’s a longer post to be made about the labor force and inflation and what’s happening in the macroeconomy (it has been a minute since the last Reccs!). But for this week I’ll leave you with this graph. There are a lot of folks “missing” from the labor force these days. Something like 2 million of them, though, are people who just decided to retire early.
Keep the faith,
Harrison