Fun Runs
Day 14
September 30, 2006
Seafair Marathon
Seattle, Washington
Elevation: 50'
Weather: 58 degrees; overcast
Time: 4:07:52
Net calories burned: 44,618
Number of runners: 48
Running is not fun. It’s too hard to be fun. Even the most devoted runners would not describe the experience of performing a typical workout—let alone competing in a race—as fun. I love running as much as anyone on earth, but I am no more inclined to describe the running experience as “fun” than any other runner, unless I’m with other people, in which case the fun isn’t about the running, but the people.
I’m not saying that running doesn’t feel good. It does feel good, in the way that any form of hard work feels good to those who have a taste for it. Running feels good to me the way writing feels good to a writer and operating feels good to a surgeon. A skilled surgeon does not smile his way through a tricky operation. He knits his brows, grunts terse instructions, and is exhausted afterward. Likewise, even the most passionate writer dreads sitting down in front of a blank computer screen some days. But a skilled surgeon wouldn’t trade his post-operative exhaustion for anything, nor would any passionate writer give up her dread of the blank screen, because the surgeon is a surgeon, and the writer’s a writer. As challenging as it is, the overall operating experience just feels right to the surgeon—like an expression of who he really is. And the writer feels the same way about writing.
And runners feel the same way about running. A hard run leaves you exhausted and glad to be done with it. Some days you dread even starting a run. But the overall running experience just feels right, like an expression of who you really are.
When I was in college, a world-renowned psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced me-hi chick-sent-me-hi) from Claremont Graduate College visited a class I was taking and talked about a theory called flow, which he had developed. Flow, he said, is a state of total absorption in a challenging activity—an enjoyable but serious state of absolute immersion in some goal-directed task. It’s usually experienced when you’re testing your limits in a favorite skill, which could be anything—delivering a speech, making a sales pitch, playing a video game, cooking, you name it. Flow is what athletes are referring to when they talk about being in the zone. It’s somewhat different from fun, in most cases, because it entails hard work. In lots of ways, it’s better than fun.
At the time I heard this lecture, I wasn’t running, but this concept of flow resonated with my experiences in other activities, such as surfing. When I started running several years later, I began to experience flow at a whole new level, however. Surfing felt great, but it was also fun. Running was not fun, yet on my best days, it felt perfect.
A Mug of Stamina
Caffeine has been shown to enhance running performance. It does so partly by stimulating the central nervous system in ways that make exercise feel easier. A cup of joe allows an athlete to run harder with equal effort. Careful, though. Caffeine is a diuretic and can cause dehydration.
One of these days was the day I ran the 2006 Vermont Trail 100. Everything about it was wrong. I flew in from California the day before and was already fatigued and jet-lagged from the trip when the starting gun went off. The weather was hot and humid, the trail a muddy stew from recent rain. Horseflies ate me alive the whole way through. I should have had a terrible day, but instead it was magical. My body felt infused with superhuman endurance. One hundred miles was not far enough. I wanted to continue around the entire earth. After ninety miles of running I actually increased my pace, because I had so much left in the tank. I made a wrong turn and had to backtrack at one point, which is usually a spirit-killing disaster in an ultramarathon, but I couldn’t have cared less. I won the race by nearly half an hour. I had won other grueling competitions before, but never with such an effortless feeling.
Running teaches you that there’s a difference between working hard and feeling bad. Consumer culture tries to teach us otherwise. How many television commercials talk about “making life easier”? If everything you knew about life came from TV, your goal would be to live the easiest, most comfortable and unchallenging life you possibly could. You would believe that the only good feelings are sensual pleasures such as the taste of a good soft drink and the fun of driving an expensive car and lying on the beach.
But it’s just not true. Challenging and testing your mind and body, even to the point of exhaustion, failure, and breakdown, can feel as wonderful as anything else life has to offer. I suppose the enjoyment of hard work is more of an acquired taste than the taste for pleasure and fun, but once you’ve acquired it, you’re blessed with more ways to feel good, and life is better. Harder and better.
A greater number of people signed up to run with me at the Seafair Marathon in Seattle, Washington, on Day 14, than had signed up for any preceding event. Not surprisingly, then, it was the most entertaining run in the entire first two weeks of our cross-country adventure. Forty-eight people started with me, and I got a chance to meet and chat with each of them. A contingent of women from Team In Training, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s national fund-raising/marathon-training program, ran in pink mini skirts. Koop took music requests in the SAG wagon and played them loud over some external speakers he and Garrett had mounted on the roof, sending waves of energy into an already energized group. A young woman with long blond pigtails ran in a T-shirt that read I DO ALL MY OWN STUNTS, a motto that was a perfect match for her effervescent personality, I soon discovered.
One of the most memorable participants was a woman named Kris Allen, a thirty-seven-year-old mother of four, who struck me as the consummate “hip mom.” She told me she had started running five or six years earlier as a convenient way to improve her health and get leaner, but had since fallen in love with the activity. I asked her what it was about running that appealed to her so much.
“Running is my time,” she said. “It’s one of the rare things I do just for me. The rest of my day is completely devoted to my kids and husband. Running lets me leave everyone else behind and recharge my batteries.”
That’s another thing about running that makes it different from activities that are intrinsically fun: It makes you feel good, or at least better, not just while you do it, but for the rest of the day.
“My kids can always tell when I need a run,” Kris said. “If they see that I’m acting kind of cranky, they’ll say, ‘You haven’t run yet today, have you, Mom?’”
Words to Run By
While running a race in Portugal, I noticed that spectators along the course kept shouting the same phrase over and over: “Quem corre por gosto, não cansa.” Afterward I asked someone to tell me what it meant. “Who runs for pleasure never gets tired,” I was told. How true!
How to Run with Flow
The flow state is special. You can’t achieve it every time you run. But there are certain things you can do to facilitate it. Here are some of them:
• Run with a specific goal—for instance, by going for a certain amount of time, though with no particular distance in mind.
• Eliminate distractions, such as listening to music while you run.
• Race only when you’re fit and ready to race. (Flow starts with the body being capable and rested.)
• Believe in your ability to achieve your goals and push all doubts and fears out of your head.
• Be in the moment. Don’t think about what’s still ahead. Just take it one step at a time.
About halfway through the Seafair Marathon, I got to meet Kris’s kids. They were standing alongside the course and cheering for us. I stopped briefly to chat with all four of them. I could see from just the few moments I spent with them that they knew they had one hip mom.
As we resumed running, I looked around at my fellow runners and marveled at what I saw. Every single one of them was engaged in a conversation with at least one other person. The group was broken into clusters of two to four men and women, all of them swapping stories, smiling, and laughing. If I hadn’t been wearing a heart rate monitor and sweating, I would have thought I was at a summer cookout.
As much as I enjoy the flow of running one hundred miles as fast as I can, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s something to be said for this kind of fun.
Kris and the others motored through the last few miles, and we all locked hands and crossed the finish line together. But Kris didn’t stop. She kept right on going until she arrived at her car, got in, and zoomed away to host a birthday party. “Her time” was over.
Only later did I find out that this event had been Kris’s first marathon. What’s more, she had decided to do it only a few days earlier, and her longest training run had been thirteen miles—merely half the distance she ran with me.
Upon receiving this information, I found myself wondering why so many people like Kris are drawn to marathons and other such challenges these days. I can’t help thinking that the phenomenon is in part a largely unconscious backlash against comfort culture and the easy life. Heated seats and online shopping and robot vacuum cleaners have created a void that we’re all sensing. Our modern comforts and conveniences have accumulated to the point that they have stopped making us feel better and started making us feel worse. Some primal instinct lurking deep inside is trying to tell us that what is needed is a good, hard sweat—some struggle in our lives; some physical challenge.
Kris says she does not plan to do a second marathon. She claims it’s because she was spoiled by the first one. Most marathons aren’t as much fun as our romp through Seattle was—in fact, they’re sometimes not fun at all. She says that it can’t get any better, so why bother. She maintains that she is content. But I have my doubts. My sense is that a fire has been ignited.
My hunch seems to be correct. Last I heard, Kris was training for a long-distance triathlon.