What If You’re Not a “Dig Deep” Runner?

Striving vs. surrender, and how acceptance can still lead to breakthroughs.

Some runners suffer willingly for success. They even glorify it, telling us to pull out the stops, give 110%, and leave it all out there. But what if these “outrun the pain” refrains aren’t in your vocabulary? Can you grow without going to the edge? In this 4-minute read, we look at:

• The weird feeling of racing without a “killer instinct”

• The shift that happens when you stop forcing

• A new way to think about competition, effort, and yourself

Welcome to Running Lightly, where I write about running as a practice for growth and transformation: essays, insights, and realistic advice to help you run with more ease and joy. You can support my work for $1 a week…

A Quiet Discord

The Mount Helena Run is a fall tradition in my community. Racers push straight up and down the biggest hill in town, gaining and losing 1,400 feet in just over five miles. The pack separates quickly, and the way it looks at the midpoint is usually the way it finishes.

This year, two miles in, I was positioned in third and running “comfortably hard.” Nearing the summit, second place was twenty yards ahead and I was gaining ground. The internal dialogue went something like this:

Should we go get him? He’s right there.

We could, but he’ll probably pass us again on the downhill.

Maybe, but we won’t know unless we try.

I don’t think we want that fight. Third is good enough.

What do you notice, aside from the fact that I address myself as “we?” The discord between how I was running, and how I thought I could (or should) run caused a tightening. A tug-of-war.

I chose to hold my effort steady and cruise in for a podium finish. During the race, once that decision was made, the tension loosened and I had a blast bombing the long downhill back into town. But afterward, a question nagged:

Was my body capable of more and my mind got in the way?

The Enemy: False Dualism

Philosopher-entertainer Alan Watts would call my schtick misconceived. You are not a noun, he might say, a mind controlling a body. Rather, you are an unfolding of integrated processes. A verb. Dualistic thinking, Watts wrote, is as futile as trying to make a finger point at its own tip.

“Our problem is that our long indoctrination in dualism has made it a matter of common sense that we can control our nature only by going against it.”

—Alan Watts

Pop-culture performance doctrine insists we can overcome our tendencies toward comfort and stasis by pushing. That we can wrest control of our groundless lives and confusing world by defeating instinct. And while it may be true for a time, there are costs.

I spent many years chasing intensity. It led me down a path of addiction and to a running life plagued by injury and underperformance. For me, all the pushing and grinding was a vain attempt to exert authority over the unfolding of my life’s processes.

Now, five years sober and relearning my rhythms, I recall middle school track practice. I was the kid who sat on the curb when we were out of coach’s sight. It was less laziness, more okay-ness with myself. I knew where my natural abilities would land me at the meet, and that felt like enough.

Listen to Understand

Around the time middle school me was warming curbs in my hometown, we moved into an old brick Victorian. In its long life, the home’s floors had sunk, so my stepdad installed tall screw jacks under the beams. Every Sunday, he’d go into the basement and rotate the screws a single turn.

The floors moved only the smallest fraction of an inch each weekend. But, over the course of several years, they were level again.

Could he have turned the screws more aggressively? Maybe, but that carried risk. Could he have torn everything out and started new? Sure, but there were costs there, too. In the end, he listened to the house, weighed what it told him against the risks, then settled in.

Ultimately—and of course we’re talking about running—you can crash into your ceiling of potential with great, dramatic efforts. Big sledgehammer swings, dust flying. Or, you can patiently turn the screws a little at a time, trusting that change will arrive on its own schedule.

There’s no right or wrong… only what’s right for you. The point is to listen.

Accept and Express

Should you realize you’re not a “dig deep” runner, know that you can still have deeply satisfying days and superb racing performances operating not from a place of striving, but of surrender.

Granted, it can feel weird to look around (especially online) and see everyone going full-gas, grunting “go one more.” Some people are naturally driven to win, or drawn to the intense experiences that make good hat slogans. My preferred “settle in and trust yourself” will never sell a hat.

But all my running breakthroughs have happened when I was floating, not fighting. Last year, at age 50, I had my best marathon, half-marathon, and mile times ever… So there’s something to this two-part formula:

1. Accept: Feel what’s actually happening without trying to override it. Notice your breath, your thoughts, each part of your body from feet to head. This is the machinery of your life, churning as it’s meant to. No intervention is needed. The word is patience.

2. Express: Running is a creative act. Once you accept the raw materials of the moment, the effort will take shape on its own terms. Expression is not about manufacturing an outcome. It’s about allowing the energy potential you created in training to reveal itself.

“To become the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing, self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding.”

—Alan Watts

The Finish Line

My favorite allegory on enough-ness is the Roger Bannister story. In 1954, Bannister did what was once thought impossible by breaking the four-minute mile barrier. He knew every stride and split required, and trained for years to that level, and no more. Bannister didn’t break four by setting out to run as fast as possible. He obsessed over one second faster.

Think back to that internal tug-of-war on Mount Helena. The split between what was, and what was possible… That’s tension. Nothing undermines joy and performance more than excess tension.

There’s a better way. You can recognize the enemy, release the pressure valve, and allow your training to express itself naturally. You don’t have to go to war with yourself to grow. Your potential will rise to meet you.

Perhaps the task isn’t to win races, but to discern the race that’s yours.

Run lightly,
-mike

Where do you fall on the surrender-strive spectrum? Leave a comment. Did you enjoy this piece? Please like and share! Thanks for being here.

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