Running as a (playful) discipline

Lessons from George Sheehan + Jerry Seinfeld

I have a confession to make.

Even though I’ve been a runner for a long time, and have trained for many races over the years, there’s still a small part of me that doesn’t like doing it according to a plan.

(Yes, exactly the kind of plan I’ve recommended and that we’ve been following since the start of the year, as we train together for a half marathon distance run later this spring. Don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on me 😃)

I certainly see the value of being disciplined in sticking to a plan: you’re actually ready to run 13.1 miles (or 26.2 miles, or whatever distance you’re training for) when race day arrives — and that’s a huge plus!

But the word “discipline” makes me shudder a little inside whenever I hear it. My adolescence may be long behind me, but there’s still a part of me that hears something vaguely authoritarian in it, and that it’s little more than a synonym for repetitive drudgery.

What I’d rather do is run — or do anything, to be honest — how and when I want to. I’d like to be able to take a week (or two, or three) off, and then pick up where I left off at the same level of fitness, as if no time had passed.

I’d like to be able to show up, unprepared, and run an event like California’s Dipsea Race — a gorgeously scenic yet treacherously grueling trail run through the forests of Mount Tamalpais State Park — and still be fresh as a daisy the next day.

Of course, our bodies don’t work like that. They need the repetitive stress of the training we’ve been doing to get stronger.

What makes me aware of this lately is that I’m seeing the same quality in my 8-year-old. He’s starting to resist structure and planning; with his schoolwork, he’d rather wing it on tests than study his math; with the sports he plays, he’s all up for the games, but he’s not so keen on practices.

(Gee, I wonder where he gets it from… 🤔)

This was all swirling in my head earlier today on my run, when I remembered a podcast I wrote to you about a couple years back — a conversation between author-blogger Tim Ferris and the legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld, in which they discussed exactly this topic.

Seinfeld described his weekly workout routines, why they’re so hard but he still commits to doing them, and how they’ve changed him:

“There are a lot of days where I want to cry instead of do it because it really physically hurts. But I just think it’s very balancing to the forces inside humanity that I think are just, they overwhelm us. We are overwhelmed by our own power. And you got to put that ox in the plow, make it do this stuff that it doesn’t want to do. It just keeps it — what the hell do oxes do in the wild? I can’t imagine they were happy.”

What the routines do for him — as unpleasant as they can sometimes be — is channel the energy in his body and mind that otherwise might overtake him. That goes for the routines he applies to writing comedy, too:

“So put it in the harness. I mean, I don’t know. A lot of my life is — I don’t like getting depressed. I get depressed a lot. I hate the feeling, and these routines, these very difficult routines, whether it’s exercise or writing, and both of them are things where it’s brutal.

That’s another thing I was explaining to my daughter. She’s frustrated that writing is so difficult, because no one told her it’s the most difficult thing in the world. The most difficult thing in the world is to write. People tell you to write like you can do it, like you’re supposed to be able to do it. Nobody can do it. It’s impossible. The greatest people in the world can’t do it.

So if you’re going to do it, you should first be told: ‘What you are attempting to do is incredibly difficult. One of the most difficult things there is, way harder than weight training, way harder, what you’re summoning, trying to summon within your brain and your spirit, to create something onto a blank page.’ So that’s another part of my systemization technique, learn how to encourage yourself.... And be proud of yourself, treat yourself well for having done that horrible, horribly impossible thing.”

All of what he says here, I love. Training to run 13.1 miles — or whatever distance you’re aiming for — is hard. You’re putting your body through things it might not ever have been through. You’ve earned a pat on the back, for sure.

There’s something I don’t want us to lose sight of, however, even as we stick to our plan and get in our workouts — that this is (and should be) a form of play for us, something we enjoy.

Children aren’t the only ones who need play. Adults do too. (Maybe even more than kids?)

When I remember that, I think of the words of a man longtime readers of this newsletter will remember, Dr. George Sheehan, a cardiologist who wrote 1978’s Running & Being, the bestselling book that catapulted him to fame as the philosopher of the running movement that was then just gaining steam.

The book’s sixth chapter is devoted entirely to the idea that running can be play — it can be the place where we can put aside the weight of the world and our responsibilities, and just be:

“In play, you realize simultaneously the supreme importance and utter insignificance of what you are doing. And accept the paradox of pursuing what is at once essential and inconsequential. Play, then, is the answer to the puzzle of our existence. The stage for our excesses and exuberances…

Play is where life lives. Where the game is the game. At its borders, we slip into heresy. Become serious. Lose our sense of humor. Fail to see the incongruities of everything we hold to be important. Right and wrong become problematic. Money, power, position become ends. The game becomes winning. And we lose the good life and the good things that play provides.

Some of those good things are physical grace, psychological ease and personal integrity. Some of the best are the peak experiences, when you have a sense of oneness with yourself and nature. These are truly times of peace the world cannot give. It may be that the hereafter will have them in constant supply. I hope so. But while we are in the here and now, play is the place to find them. The place where we are constantly being and becoming ourselves.”

I’ve bolded the lines I love the most here, because they hit at the essence of what we’re up to when we run, I think.

We need to maintain the routine Seinfeld describes; we need to channel our energies in healthy ways. But it’s so much easier to give ourselves to them fully when we bring the spirit Sheehan describes, and remember that we can be as creative and original and free-spirited with it as we like.

The work we’re doing isn’t really work after all — it’s something we can bring our full selves to, a blank canvas we can paint on any way we like. You can aim for anything you want; it doesn’t have to be rote or boring at all.

I wish I could tell you have an easy answer to how to do this; these things live in a kind of tension in my mind. It’s a challenge sometimes (always?) to maintain the right balance. I haven’t found the perfect way to balance them, but I keep looking.

And maybe that’s all we can ask for, right?

I hope your running has been great this week and you’re enjoying the spring — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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Our training plan for this week

How did last week go? How did that 9-miler feel? We’re going to do another 9-miler this weekend before we move on to 10 miles next week:

• Thursday, March 31 — 4-5 miles/40-50 minutes

• Saturday, April 2 — 9 miles/90 minutes

• Sunday, April 3 — 2 miles/20 minutes

• Tuesday, April 5 — 5-6 miles/50-60 minutes

Let me know how it’s going for you and if you have any questions about the plan, your running, or anything else.

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Discount for the Madison Marathon

Our friends at Wisconsin’s Madison Marathon shared with me a race discount code they’ve created just for subscribers to The Half Marathoner!

Use the code Half15 to save $15 off the:

• Run Madtown Half Marathon on May 29, 2022

• Madison Marathon & Half Marathon on November 13, 2022

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