Week 7: In the middle of the journey
Learning from John Bingham and Robert Pirsig
Sometimes, life throws us curveballs. Usually, I have an essay for you each Wednesday, but this has been one of those weeks that made getting it down a lot more difficult than I anticipated.
I do have some thoughts I wanted to share with you, though, especially if you’re following one of the training plans here in the newsletter each week. Now, we’re about at the half-way point of the training — just past it, actually, if you’re following the 12-week plan — which means we’ve reached a moment to take a step back and reflect on how far you’ve come.
By this point, you’ve pushed your body in a way it may not have been pushed before. You’ve run farther (and probably faster) than you have in a long time.
Your body might be saying to you, “okay, I’ve had enough — let’s dial this back a little.” (I know that voice too!)
It’s a question author John Bingham, in his wonderful book The Courage to Start, asked himself at a moment when he was trying to determine whether he was trying too hard, or not hard enough, with his own running. Whether he was pushing himself too much, or if he had more effort to give.
That’s when he remembered a passage from Robert Pirsig’s famed novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.
What I think he means by that is, where are we in any given moment? How are we feeling? Do we have the emotional and physical energy we need to actually do what we’re asking our bodies to do in any given moment?
Bingham continues:
I started every run not with a precise plan, but with a question. What is real in my life today, and what do I really need from this run? Like Pirsig on the mountain, when I start with that question, I find that how fast I run is always somewhere between restlessness and exhaustion.
By giving myself permission to be myself, rather than a dot on a training graph, I discovered it became much easier to find the point of equilibrium. By giving myself permission to be the runner I am every time I run, I found that the answers to the questions “how fast?” and “how far?” were obvious. I simply ran so that every footstep was an end in itself, not a means to an end.
If you’ll allow me, Bingham continues further with something I think is really essential:
How do we find that balance? How do we, like Goldilocks, find the point that is “just right”? How do new runners know when they are doing more than they should? How do experienced runners know that they have gone beyond training? It’s easier than you think. We listen to our bodies.
Our bodies have a built-in system for telling us when we have done too much. It took me years to figure this out, but now that I have it seems remarkably simple. When we have pushed our bodies beyond what they are ready for, we experience pain. It’s as simple as that.
Pain, or aches, or tired muscles, are the body’s way of communicating with our brain. When the brain decides to double the weekly running mileage in order to become a better runner, the body sends a message in pain. When the brain decides to run too far or too fast, the body reacts with pain.
When he took up running for the first time, Bingham tells us in the book, he thought he needed to run through pain. To go out and get his runs in no matter how he felt, and to give each run the maximum effort, every time.
It wasn’t until later that he learned what a recipe for injury that was, which of course means no running at all, for an extended period of time. That’s when he learned that allowing himself to recover in small ways, allowing himself the right amount of rest, was a much better long-term strategy than pushing himself to the maximum each time he laced up his shoes.
I’d love to know how these weekly plans are going for you — are you following one of them, and if so, which one? How is it working for you, and how are you finding the mileage?
You can answer here 👇 or in the comments.
Your answers are much appreciated! As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life/etc. is going.
Your friend,
— Terrell
Our training miles for the week
So, how is the training going for you?
If you’re following either of the half marathon training plans, last week you ran between 20 and 26 miles; if you’re following the 10-miler plan, you ran 18 miles — seriously impressive mileage all around.
Here are our miles for the upcoming week:
For the 12-week plan:
Thursday, Oct. 13 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes
Saturday, Oct. 15 — 9 miles/90-95 minutes
Sunday, Oct. 16 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes
Tuesday, Oct. 18 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes
Wednesday, Oct. 19 — 6 miles/60-65 minutes
The 16-week plan:
Thursday, Oct. 13 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes
Saturday, Oct. 15 — 8 miles/80-85 minutes
Sunday, Oct. 16 — 2-3 miles/20-35 minutes
Tuesday, Oct. 18 — 6 miles/60-65 minutes
Wednesday, Oct. 19 — off
The 10-mile training plan:
Thursday, Oct. 13 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes
Saturday, Oct. 15 — 7 miles/70-75 minutes
Sunday, Oct. 16 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes
Tuesday, Oct. 18 — 4-5 miles/40-55 minutes
Wednesday, Oct. 19 — off
Let me know how it goes! — Terrell
Terrrell, you have provided us with great quotes by authors who are basically telling us to re-claim our own sovereignty and take responsibility for our own training by listening to our own body as no one training program will or can work for everyone. “Bio-individuality” rules and maturity says experiment, experiment and experiment until you can create your own training program. There are many “gurus” out there but if you break the word down I think it really means... “Gee , You Are You”. That realization can go a long way in allowing us all to grow up and claim total responsibility for our actions, on the running trails as well as off them.
This is so interesting. It took me several injuries in my thirties and early forties to realize that rest is one of the training intensities. It's so hard at first to realize that simply "doing nothing" on a rest day is actually training, and is actually something that will make you stronger and faster. But to respond to your very interesting quotations about pain, it's interesting to me that in certain sports, like rowing, or any similar endeavor where the duration is fairly short, athletes are taught to ignore those pain signals. In rowing sprints, the people who go fastest tend to be those who push themselves that extra little bit past the point where the body's safety mechanism says slow down. It's an interesting dilemma--balancing (perhaps?) the pain-signal response in training against the pain-signal response in competition of a certain kind.
And lastly--because your piece is really thought-provoking!--the idea of each step being taken for itself rings very true. I was just backcountry skiing in Chile and our little group of nine skiers talked about how you don't do this for the downhill only. You have to love the uphill for itself, taken one stride at a time.
Thank you for writing!