It’s 6.30AM in the morning. Your alarm rings. Why on earth would you crawl out of your cozy bed, put on your shoes, and willingly subject yourself to pain both physically and mentally? Yet every day, against all logic, millions around the world do this. This is the puzzle of running. It is one that most non-runners do not understand, and that most runners do not bother explaining. As Murakami writes in his memoir, “I’ve never recommended running to others… If they are not interested in it, no amount of persuasion will make any difference”.
Although I am far behind Murakami in running (and writing) experience, I believe that there is no harm in recommending running to others. So in this piece, I aim to offer my perspective on what running has taught me (an amateur runner). I hope to show that the beauty of running comes not in spite of but rather because of the mental and physical demands it exerts. Which, in fact, extends beyond running and onto much of life, and facing its challenges head-on.
When people talk about what they enjoy from a run, they often list benefits like “Fresh air”; “Runners’ High”; “Clears my mind”; “Keeps me in a meditative state”; “Allows me to explore new places”; “Radiant morning sun”; “Nature bathing”. Or perhaps people run to “Stay fit and burn calories so that we can worry less about how much we eat”. All these are reasons why I love running. I miss the irresistible feeling of returning from a run for a hearty breakfast, while sharing with your friends the new route to Rail Corridor that you found in the morning – all while you bask in the post-run endorphins and the remnant glows of the morning sun.
The indisputable fact
But the truth is that no matter how aplenty these benefits are, the fact is that running is hard. Running is a constant battle within oneself: between mind and body; grit and instinct; fiery will and fickle wants.
Yet in this also lies the beauty of running: Whether or not you choose to run or choose to stop depends on you, and you alone. In a group project you can blame a result on groupmates; in a football game you can give the excuse of the opponent being ‘on form’ – but in a run, there are no excuses. You can blame the weather, or blame your sleep, but in the end you still come face to face with the undeniable, indisputable fact that whether or not you show up and run depends on you.
So every time I drag myself out of bed to run, every time I reject the inner bargain to “cut one lap today”, and every time I put another foot forward in spite of a heavy step and a whining heart… I am showing myself that I am in control of my decisions: I can do what I set out to do, and the obstacles aren’t going to stop me. And so every time I run, I am training not my lungs but my discipline; building not my muscles but my confidence.
Thus, it is precisely because running is hard that pushing through gives one a quiet self-confidence that they can apply to other parts of their life: from sticking to a clean diet, to resisting the urge to scroll TikTok.
It makes you realise: you can do what YOU want, not what your impulses demand!
Month after month
Let’s pause here to consider another element of running: its yardsticks are clear. In a world full of contested benchmarks and subjectivity, whereby sometimes it’s hard to say whether you are ‘improving’ (e.g. Is my writing getting better or worse?), running shines clear with its largely uncontested and easily-measured benchmark: Faster is better. No illusions.
Having clear benchmarks for progress will probably motivate us to stay consistent, right…? If only! Sometimes I still struggle; indeed, there will be hard days and harder days. But keep going, as my TikTok feed likes to say: do it tired, do it scared, but just do it. Just show up. Consistency at 30% every day is better than 100% once a week.
And over time, it does get easier – one day you find that the heaviness in your feet is gone, or that you don’t feel like stopping even after 6km, or that you are able to run at a 4min10s/km pace without panting.
Maybe you won’t improve after one day or one week, and of course there will be streaks where it gets harder before it gets better. But running teaches you to measure progress not in terms of days and weeks, but in months and years. And that if you stick through the course, week after week, month after month, then improvement is a certainty. Slowly, but surely. No illusions.
The taste of an unseasoned avocado
In truth, this is not about running.
We are an accumulation of our actions. When we choose a sweet drink to enhance our unseasoned meal… or when we greytick a friend whom we are lazy to reply to… or when we click ‘Next Episode’ even though we had promised ourselves that that would have been our last episode for the night. We may think, “just this once”, but everything we do is a step towards the person we are becoming. Our actions build habits, habits build character, and character builds destiny.
In fact, I often imagine my life as a graph: every action I do, or don’t do, is a plot point towards the person I become.
Life is like running: it may be hard to do what we know is good for us. And there will be hard days and harder days! But, just like running, the choice is ours. Do it tired, do it scared – just keep doing it! Keep showing up!
And just like running, over time, it does get easier. You find yourself waking up before the alarm rings at 6.30AM, or you notice that you no longer feel the urge to open TikTok on the bus, or you start to enjoy the taste of an unseasoned avocado.
In this way, just as our current self is partially a consequence of our past actions, so too do our current choices become the causes for our future self.
To be sure, this is not asking you to always be hard on yourself, or to never take breaks, or to ignore how your body is feeling and always ‘press on’. Neither is this suggesting that we should follow certain benchmarks set by others and use that to judge our own actions. Our aspirations, priorities, and core values are for us to consciously decide, even if they may seem debatable to others. So be it – but that is a discussion for another piece.
Yet amidst these aspirations of ours, we often find our daily lives punctuated with micro-inertia that pulls us in the opposite direction. My point is that we have control over how we respond to these inertias, and that this gets easier if we keep sticking to the course, and that running is one way to build this habit. Day in, day out.
So perhaps the next time you find yourself facing a dissonance between what you ‘want’ in the impulsive moment, versus what you know is best for you based on your aspirations and values, I hope that understanding the causes and consequences of your actions will compel you to put down that phone, or say that “thank you”, or put on your running shoes – and step towards the ‘you’ that you aim to become.
“It gets easier. Everyday it gets a little easier. But you got to do it everyday; that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.”
from BoJack Horseman
About the Author
Jun Yi is a Year 2 Undergraduate studying Psychology. Before picking up an injury, he used to run between three to five times a week, plus another few hours of cardio from recreational sports like Rowing and Frisbee. Ever since tearing his ACL and Meniscus, he has been faithfully working towards the day he can run again.
Banner and Cover images from Unsplash