What does it mean to run with ease?

Hint: It's not a pace or a heart rate zone.

Merriam-Webster tells us ease is freedom from discomfort, difficulty, and constraint. To run with ease, then, is to run lightly, without physical or mental burden. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But how do we get there? I have some ideas. Read on…

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The Showdown

Two modern-day endurance icons enter the ring. At stake: Bragging rights in the ultimate clash between suffering and surrender.

In the blue corner: He’s a former Navy SEAL, multiple Badwater 135 finisher, and author of the hardman classic Can’t Hurt Me. The Buffalo Bruiser. David Goggins.

In the red corner: He’s an Ironman triathlete, addiction recovery advocate, and wellness podcaster. The world’s best listener. The SoCal Softie. Rich Roll.

Gentlemen, you each have five words to throw your one and only punch. Sell this crowd on your approach to life and sport. Goggins, you’re up.

You gotta suffer to succeed. | Video

Okay, a little intense, but you’ve been through the wringer and we’ll allow it. Rich Roll, deliver your counter.

What if it was easy? | Video

Ah, we might have expected a provocative question from a master interviewer. But, are you evading? Let’s go to the judges for a decision.

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Choosing a Corner

So, who wins? My guess is, most of us idealize the self-compassionate Rich Roll way, while secretly abiding the ego’s call to master our weak minds and force our bodies into fitness, a-la David Goggins.

Endurance culture loves a good binary, but the truth is we need both effort and inertia, difficulty and relaxation. True ease is found in the balance.

So, what seems like a fight is actually a dance. We don’t have to choose a corner. There’s a third way. When we stop pitting opposing energies against each other, we make space for something else to emerge: attunement. Hug it out, you two.

Ease: A Useful Definition

So, ease is not about choosing comfort over effort. It’s also not in the numbers.

Many of us put an outsize emphasis on data to tell us how to feel. But we know ease isn’t a pace, because ten-minute miles can seem effortless one day and frustratingly difficult the next. It’s not a heart rate range, either, because that can vary wildly with everything from work stress to weather. What is it, then?

Finding ease is about encountering the body’s natural rhythm in a given moment, then letting that lead. I love how this article by Joe Uhan puts it, talking tactics for the Western States 100, and how slow does not always equal easy:

Spooked by tales of blow-ups from reckless early efforts, numerous runners adopted overly conservative strategies, tiptoeing through the early miles at paces even slower than their training. While this approach ensured survival and earned them a finish, it caused many to fall well short of their race-day potential in both performance and enjoyment. At worst, it backfired: running too slowly disrupted trained biomechanics, causing muscles and joints to stiffen and fatigue prematurely, while the nervous system, unaccustomed to such restraint, grew frazzled and ballooned fatigue.

Uhan is describing what I’ll call “effortful ease,” in which we force ourselves to run more lazily than is natural. He offers an alternative:

Finding ease is about finding both a sustainable effort as well as the most fluid, light and quick, feel-good stride possible: a stride honed not just the past several months of training, but over years of running.

Ease is a feeling, then… fluid from day to day and even within a run. Attuning to it is about noticing feedback from our body, mind, and environment, making subtle adjustments, then letting go. The process repeats—notice, adjust, let go—and with practice begins to run in the background like our own personal operating system.

In a perfect world, it becomes second nature to run instinctively, without pressure or intrusive thoughts. But…

Why Is It So Hard to Run Easy?

When I took up running as an adult, I did everything medium-fast (the so-called “gray zone”), always pushing. It reflected my mind state at the time: early-30s, career-driven, raising kids in the city, scurrying around to fit it all in.

It’s not unusual to live and run in the push-pull between contentment and agitation. The mind-body machine resists ease because a key feature of human evolution is dissatisfaction. Comfort eludes us because comfort is death. And so, we scurry.

Reformed gray zone runners like myself sense a weird kind of sluggishness when running gets “too easy.” George Sheehan, who wrote the sport’s original mindfulness tome, Running and Being, experienced this malaise as a drive to compete:

We cannot stand for long the slow succession of uneventful days. It is nature that aims to achieve stability, homeostasis. But human beings will not let things rest. We must be in motion. So I take this hard-won equilibrium, this self that I have made, and then establish a vacuum of deeds not yet done, achievements not yet mine. I say nay to all that has gone before, and I come to the race. I impose another test, another trial, another challenge to be experienced before I can claim to be me.

Sheehan hit the nail on the head; running easy is hard when we’re in opposition to nature. The answer is to loosen our grip on pleasure (tough for dopamine junkies) and pain (tough for masochists). We have to be with what is.

How: No Energy

On a recent stay in Hawaii, my wife was hunting for an engraved bangle bracelet. We checked the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet and the jewelry was everywhere. She picked a vendor and began trying on bracelets. Just like Goldilocks, too big, too small, until she found one that should have been perfect… but it wouldn’t slide on.

“Let me help.” The elderly booth keeper took Lisa’s hand. Pushing gently on the hoop but sensing resistance, the woman dropped her shoulders and went limp like a rag doll. “No energy,” she said, and the bracelet slipped on smoothly.

Some tension is necessary to keep us alive, alert, upright, and running. But we all carry a little extra we’re not conscious of. When we notice and release this bound-up energy, we invite ease. We’re more present with what is (bracelet off) and not lost in striving for what we want (bracelet on).

In Stop Missing Your Life, Cory Muscara has a tidy way of describing this state of being with, not in our experience:

Imagine a river going down a mountain. There are two ways you could be in relation to it: 1) Tumbling in the whitewater, crashing into rocks; or 2) Sitting on the bank, watching the water go by. This is what I mean by being with instead of in experience. It reminds us that there is separation between “you” and whatever you’re observing. Most often, we identify so strongly with whatever experience we’re having that we get sucked into it. Once inside, we get thrashed around wherever it wants to take us.

Think of ease in running in the same way. Observe what’s happening (riverbank), allow it to be (no energy), and when things feel natural, maintain just enough tension to keep the bracelet on. Usually, this will happen without much effort at all.

The Finish Line

Between push and allow, toughness and vulnerability, there is a middle place. Here, like a rubber band stretched between two fingers just tightly enough to stay on, we maintain the tension needed for movement without any excess stress.

In this equilibrium, we’re attuned to the natural cycles of change and transformation. There is nowhere to be but here. We don’t force or chase. The body knows what to do, and the mind will follow along.

This is running with ease… not effortless, but in flow. Not soft, but in synch. We don’t need to fight for it, just notice when it’s there.

Run lightly,
-mike

Hey, you. Thanks for being here.