What I learned about running in 2022

That extra gear is inside all of us, waiting to be unleashed

When the world is quiet and there is time to think, my mind often flashes back to the moment at the Vermont 50 when everything I had trained for was on the line. If I was going to achieve my goals, I would have to push beyond my limits and place my trust in an inner source of strength waiting to be tapped. Other than surrender, there was no other option. 

“Make it hurt,” is what I told myself, and what I repeated over and over again for the final 12 miles. A touch masochistic, perhaps, but so is running 50 miles over 9,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. If you’re going to do something big and bold, you might as well take it all the way. 

Besides, as mantras go – make it hurt – is pretty tough to beat. Just three syllables containing zero ambiguity. No equivocation, no either-or. There is pain and there is acceptance. To compete in endurance sports, that’s really all you need. 

Sometimes when I reflect back on that moment, I kind of chuckle and think, “Yes, you did that, you sick bastard.” Other times I shudder and remember how my muscles ached as the cold wind lashed across my body. In truth, they’re both good memories because they signify a turning point in my evolution as a runner.

What I experienced that day was the difference between achievement and potential. Had I given in mentally, I would have failed in my year-long quest to run my best on that specific day. The time (sub-10 hours) and place (top-25) were critical motivating factors, but waking up every day knowing I gave everything I had in that exact moment is the lasting reward. 

The biggest thing I learned about running in 2022 was how to cultivate those inner forces and when to unleash them. As it turns out, that extra gear was within me the whole time, just as it’s within all of you reading this. 

All of us have untapped potential. All of us can dig deeper, run faster, and achieve more than we thought possible. We can all make it hurt. It’s not easy, and it’s not always clear when we should summon those forces, but we can all get there if we try.  

You don’t have to do this, of course. You don’t have to run like me, or anybody else for that matter. Just do you, but why not make an effort to do it to the best of your abilities.

Consistency + Time = Success

Breakthroughs don’t happen overnight and they’re rarely unexpected. They’re the product of running with purpose day after day, week after week, and month after month. 

What constitutes purpose? It can be any number of things from maintaining consistency to finding joy. Sometimes, at least once or twice a week, it can mean challenging yourself to achieve a performance goal. 

Over time, those purposeful runs are reflected in data trends. It can be hard to see the progression amid the squiggles going up and down. When you zoom out and examine the big picture, however, the lines become clearer. You’re getting somewhere. 

More importantly, you begin to intuitively sense that you’re becoming a better runner. Your runs become easier, or at least more manageable. You feel stronger, tougher, and a bit smarter. Your confidence grows, and so does your enjoyment. That’s when you start thinking big. 

Ambition isn’t enough

One of the great things about running is it teaches us the difference between dreams and goals. All of us would like to run faster or longer, but until we make the effort to learn how to run faster and longer, those dreams will remain unfulfilled. 

My ambition in 2022 was to have the best race of my life at the Vermont 50. To make that dream a reality, I knew I would have to dig deeper and push harder than ever before. It helped that I had a great training plan put together by a coach who believed in me and what I was trying to accomplish. 

At the end of the day, I had to want this for myself. This was something I wanted to experience, but beyond that, it was something I felt like I needed to experience. I owed it to myself to find out just how much I had to give to running. 

As the months and miles rolled along, my motivation grew and evolved. Whether it was summoning the strength to finish a workout, or firing up that big nasty hill one more time, there were ample opportunities to test my limits, if I so chose.  

Some days, it just wasn’t there. No one can run their best every time out, nor should they. You’d kill yourself trying. The key is giving yourself as many opportunities as possible within the context of your plan to challenge yourself on a regular basis.  

The mental piece

Hill strides are nasty, brutish things. The concept is incredibly simple: Whenever you see a hill, run hard for a set period of time, or until you reach the top. There’s a primal urgency in running hard up a hill because it requires quieting down every synapse in your brain screaming at you to stop. 

At first, you charge up the hill full of fight and fury, but you don’t quite have the strength or the stamina to reach the summit. What you don’t realize is that your brain actually quits before your body does. After getting your ass kicked on a regular basis, you start to think there might be a better way. 

Over time, you learn how to read the hill and manage your effort. The goal becomes efficiency rather than raw power, and your mind begins to view the hill a bit more rationally. It’s just a hill. You’ve run it a hundred times. 

And then one day, your brain says, ‘What if we ran up this hill efficiently, but also really fast?’ 

And so you do. Over and over again. You run up that hill whenever the opportunity presents itself and sometimes you do it twice, just because you can. You start to understand just how hard you need to push to get over a certain elevation grade and how to transition down the other side without hurting yourself.  

You train your body to withstand the punishment and you train your mind to stay focused on the task at hand, which is simply getting up and over that hill. And when the day comes that you are faced with a decision of whether to put everything on the line or save your strength for another day, you already know the answer. 

That’s what I learned this year.