Philosophy In Running!

#392 - Recently, I was inspired to dig deep into the thinking part of running. I read the book "Running & Philosophy" by Wiley Blackwell. It's a great look into how we can view running from a different perspective. So this week, I give my take on philosophy and running and how we can make it work for us and our runs. 

Running & Philosophy is available on Amazon. 

Transcript

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Hidden West share stories you might not hear anywhere else. Want to know why the last chance grade might be the most dangerous bit of highway in California? Why did the Japanese drop bombs on the western part of the U.S.? And where is the state of Jefferson? All these stories and more about what makes the Western U.S. so great are here. There's a new story published every week. Check out Hidden West on YouTube. Welcome to Martha Runs the World, a podcast with a new take on running, fitness, and all things health oriented. I'm Martha Hughes, your host, and each week I present a new topic that is of interest to all runners. Hi, and welcome to episode 392 of Martha Runs the World. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it each and every week. I read a slightly older running book recently and it got me to thinking. I wanted to talk a little bit about the subject in the book and make that the subject of this week's episode. It's nearly 20 years old, so it's not a new book, but there are ideas and thoughts in that book that withstand the test of time in running, and we can all learn from them. And that's the really nice thing about running books, is that most of them, unless science is proven otherwise, they are timeless. You can read a book from fifty years ago and it still makes sense. And this book is called Running and Philosophy, and it's written by Wiley Blackwell. It's a very good book. I like it a lot. I thought I would like it, but I didn't realize I would like it as much as I do. And although I don't agree with him on everything, I love the idea that thinking while we're running and thinking about running in a philosophical way is another means of us to learn more about ourselves and about our running and about running in general and our lives in general, actually, because running is kind of like a microcosm of our life, I think. That's one of the things I love so much about it. I love the idea of thinking about our running on a higher plane. Um, because we all know that so much of our running is mental, and thinking about that higher mental side of us couldn't hurt, could it? No, it couldn't hurt at all. It can help make our running better. And I'm gonna take some themes out of the book and give my spin on them. They may be not be exactly the same. There may be some changes of how I see things, so that's just a little bit of difference in between the book and myself. And then after that, I'm gonna give you a bit of my own philosophy that I think of um in running and in life. And of course, all these things are running related, of course. What we do in running, we can use in our lives. And just a short note. I'm gonna use a quote or two uh from the writers and philosophers, and I'll try to keep it short and to the point because they can sometimes get long and a bit wordy, and we don't really want that. I started reading Blackwell's book and I found it interesting from the start. He brought up some thoughts and ideas that I had only casually thought about and others that I had never heard of. This was bound to happen because he's an assistant professor in philosophy, so philosophizing is what he does for a living. Now one thing I did enjoy is that one of the first quotes that he had in the book was by George Sheehan. And Sheehan, I did an episode all about George Sheehan. He's one of my favorite runners in history. He was a prolific runner and writer. And the thing with Sheehan is that he didn't start running until later in life. I don't think he started running until his sixties. And when he did run, he was fast. I mean really fast. I mean faster than I'll ever hope to be ever in my history of my life, fast. Like I said, I talked about him in a previous episode, so you can look that up. This quote from George Stean comes out of the first part of Blackwell's book. There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So too are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be. Isn't that beautiful? I love that. That's the kind of writing that Sheehan does. And I love that quote in there because it makes you understand what running really is. It's more than just going out and doing something and getting your training done. It really is more than that. And I do highly recommend George Sean's book, Running and Being. It features all his newspaper columns, because I believe he had a I know he had a column in um Runner's World back when it was a great magazine, but I think he also had a column in the New York Times. I may be wrong about that, but I think he did. And each chapter is a quick read, but there's a lot in each chapter, so you can read it quickly and go back and look at it because it it's very worthwhile. And that's what this episode is about. We run, but we also think. Sometimes we think before our we run, sometimes during, and sometimes after. The only time we don't think, it seems, is when we're signing up for a race. I think so. I think so. Only time we don't. One of the first topics Blackwell tackles is running friendships. What is a real running friend? Is it someone you go out once in a while with for a run, maybe a couple times a year? Or is it someone much faster than you who takes off once you hit the road or trail only to wait for you at the end? Or is it someone who stays with you the whole time because you're a slower runner and they want to respect that and they want to stay with you and talk to you? I really like the description of a true running friend as someone you can trust. Granted, I don't ask faster friends to stick with me. I don't think that's fair with them. And if we make a if I actually run with people and they want to go faster, I say sh and we make an agreement, sure, you go faster and I'll meet with you, then that's fine. Then we stuck to the agreement and they did that, and that's all cool. But um if you have running friends who aren't reliable or dependable or don't do what they say they're gonna do, then um that's not really a running friend, is it? And he goes into all the different things of what a true running friend is, and it's kind of interesting. Blackwell also quotes a philosopher Tom Morris's seven C's for success, and this is what uh it can be put into running, and I like that condition one. We need clear conception of what we want, a vision, a goal. Runners run for many reasons, and it's good to have at least one or two reasons in the forefront. And you don't have to run for a race. I don't think you do. If if your vision of what you want to do as you're running, you just want to be a better runner, you want to become fit, you want to go farther, these are goals, these are visions, these are reasons. But you do have to have some reasons. You just I think if you just want to go out and run, that's have have a vision and goal of what you want to achieve. I always usually have to have a goal because I won't do it otherwise. It might be different, but that's how I do things. Condition two, we need a strong confidence that we can achieve our goal. How much confidence you have in yourself determines how you'll finish a race or a long run even. You've done it, I've done it, we've all done it, we've all signed up for and run a race, we had no business running, and then the whole time we're on that course, whatever course, road or trail, whatever distance, we haven't had great self-confidence and it showed. We have to have the confidence that we can do it, and that has to be backed up by the training, I think. If you don't have the the proper training, you're probably not gonna have the proper confidence. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, self-trust is the first secret of success. And you have to have that trust in yourself because you have to have the means to back it up. If you don't trust your training, there's two ways to look at this. If you have done all your training you can and done as well as you can, then you have to trust yourself. Let go of that self-doubt. You say, Yes, I've done as much as I can, I've done everything that I could, I'm good. And then you have to really tell yourself that and convince yourself. On the other hand, if you haven't done that training and you haven't done the proper buildup for that race, then there's a reason why you have don't have the self-confidence, is there? No, there isn't. We've all run races where we had no business running. I mean, come on, every person has done that, I believe. There's just two sides of it. You should have the confidence because you're already untrained, and if you don't have the self-confidence, well, there might be a reason for it. All right, condition three, focused concentration. It isn't enough to have a goal and go out and run. Sometimes you may need to make a training plan and figure out how you'll run the longest distance you've ever run, or maybe get a PR on your next half marathon or something like that. You have to have concentration in what you're doing. You have to be focused. You can't be pulled in five different directions because everything's going on. If you want to achieve something, you have to put that time aside and it has to be important to you. No, you can't go out with your friends, you have to do a training run. No, sorry, you can't stay out too late because you have an early morning run the next day. You really have to have that concentration, and that's what that means to me. Condition four, stubbornness towards your vision. When that alarm goes off at 4 a.m. for a training run and it's dark and freezing outside, are you getting up or are you turning off that alarm? You have to have stubbornness. Again, it goes, it's kind of the concentration thing. You have to have focus, you have to be stubborn. It's 4 a.m., you're getting up, you're going to run. Or you have an 18-mile run, but you're at mile 14 and you feel like slogging off and going to do something else. You got four more miles. Finish those four miles. Condition five, we need emotional commitment too. It is not enough to be determined to run your next race, but your heart has to be in it too. How do you keep your heart in it after weeks of training? Your body and mind are tired and you just don't want to keep at it. On that next run, which you will do, you have to imagine what you're doing. You have to think of it ahead of time. Think of what the race finish will be like in your head if you've done all the training, all that hard work and training that you've gone into. If you finish this run that you're on that's really hard and you're having a really tough time, finish it and see how much that will go towards your your final goal. And that's called hay in the barn. Put the hay in the barn. Put as much hay in the barn as you can. If the barn is full, then you should do okay. It's all concentration, and this is where your heart comes into it. You have to imagine this. Another way to keep your emotions in it is to sign up for another race. Now, understand this is not to push aside any sad feelings you may be having if you if you did had a terrible finish in the last race or you or you DNF'd. We runners like to do that, obviously. It isn't saying, oh, you're feeling bad, you know, dot not feeling good about this race. Sign up for another one. Well, it isn't kind of like that. Hopefully, you're not hiding from those feelings, negative though they may be, it's important to feel the negative along with the positive. It's all part of running. But signing up for a race in the future may keep your eye on the prize better. Even if you have one coming up currently and you have one far off, you can kind of see the line on the road, saying, okay, I have this one and then I have that one. I have to keep focused. And that can keep your heart in it, that can keep your brain in it, and hopefully that can help your training. Like I said, it's not there to put aside anything that you haven't done and to make up for hard feelings. It's there to keep you focused. And sometimes we need focus. We need to focus in our heart, we need focus in our brain, our bodies. Everything needs to be focused. It's it's difficult. It really is. Uh condition six. We need a good character to help us and guide us on the proper trail. Most of us have at least one person we can turn to help or questions. I certainly don't expect everyone to have a running coach. Running coaches are expensive, and some of us can't afford the added expense. Lord knows I can't afford it. Well, not having a job doesn't help. But there should be at least one person that you know, one runner that you know that can answer some basic questions, or if you're stuck in a pickle with your running, you can turn to. Even if it's an online friend, running friend, sometimes those are the best. I have so many running friends in Facebook that I can probably turn to if I have a question. And I have real life friends too that I can turn to if I have a question about running. I have many running friends, and and running friends are very, very generous with their knowledge. They love helping out each other. So if you have any questions, I'm sure there's someone. And if not, join a running group in Facebook. They're really, really good about it, and there's some really nice people, and you can make some friends because I've made some amazing friends through through the running groups there. You will get new friends right away, and then you can meet up at races and you can make new friends there, and then you'll have a whole whole plethora of new friends that you can ask questions from. But it's really, really good to have those kind of people that you can turn to if you need them. Condition seven. We need a capacity to enjoy the process along the way. On my show, when I used to do interviews, I interviewed all sorts of runners. The vast majority loved running. But once in a while I'd come across a guest who ran, but admitted they didn't like to run. This is just such a strange concept to me. I understand brushing one's teeth and not liking it, or vacuuming and hating it. Housework is awful, but you gotta do it, right? But how can you run regularly, enter races and all of that and hate it? If I hated running that much, I'd find another sport personally. I would be wasting my time with it. The people who run and say they hate it, I'm thinking there's actually part of them that loves to run, but they don't want to admit it to themselves. Maybe in high school or something they were forced to run when they were growing up, and they have bad memories of it, so if they admit to liking it now, they're going to uh erase all those bad memories that they're holding on to. I don't know, but there's something going on that keeps them running, and if you hate something, why would you do it? Yeah, it psychologically doesn't make sense to me. I'm not the type of person it there's things you have to do. Yeah, there's so many other activities and physical sports and things you can do other than running if you don't like it. I mean, running is a difficult sport, and if you hate doing it, why would you do it? One of the areas that I disagree with Blackwell on is the term jogger. I'm not training for a race. I'm training to get my endurance up and running, but it's nothing formal. So Blackwell will call me a jogger, and I'd never use the J word. I will never use that term because it was derogatory in the 80s and 90s. I am not going to use it. And I don't think I'm a jogger anyway. I continue to run regularly, just not training for a race because I don't want to spend the money on a race right now. But he explained that joggers don't care about racing or competition or pace and they just want to run for fun. Whatever, dude. If you want to call us the J word, that's fine, but I will never call anyone the J word. Just not gonna do it. Nope, nope, not gonna do it. And I don't fully agree with him when he says that running can be a religion. I have a religion and that's not running. But okay, I don't talk about religion here because it's a running podcast. As much as I love running, it's not as important to me as my religious beliefs. However, I do believe that everyone has the freedom to believe or not believe the way they wish, and that's their business. So I do, however, believe that running can be moving meditation or prayer. So it can't be part of a religion if you want it to be. I think it just kind of strange that it goes into this whole thing about how running can be a religion, and it just kind of strange to me. Um one thing I really agree with him about is that running is fun. Okay, now hear me out. Non-runners don't understand how much fun running really is. Sure, it hurts. It really hurts, and it's hard. It's hard a lot of times, but it's fun most of the time, unless you get hurt. Then it's not so much fun. But it's play for us adults. How often do us we adults get to play? I think if we're having a hard run and think of it more like play, maybe than hard work or really something that that really hurts, maybe it will help. Or not, but you try it out. I'm gonna try it out today when I run. Say I'm gonna sit push myself and going, Yeah, this is fun, Martha. Yeah, this is great. This is really fun. I'll try it out. I'll see how it goes. And the last thing the author talks about that I wanted to mention is that pleasure is not something that we should strive for as a lifetime goal, but as a short-term goal of a training run or a race, it's a good thing. So that's part of your playtime. Make your training runs and your races pleasurable, and maybe it won't be so hard. Maybe it'll still be hard, and you won't fool yourself. I don't know, but it's a I'm gonna try it. Now that I've gone over all of Blackwell's running philosophy, I thought I'd share some of my own that he doesn't have in his book, but this is Martha's philosophy. Everyone is different. Don't carry the negative feelings left over from your last bad run into the next one. Clear your mind and prepare yourself for a better run. It's a clean slate. You had a bad run last time, that's fine. Put that away. It's a clean slate. You're gonna start over and clear everything out and just make sure that you're starting good on a positive note. That's really important. I think positivity in running is as in life, is really important. I mean, don't be a Pollyanish, don't be silly about that, but be realistic. But be positive, don't always think that negative things. You can experience a rock bottom in a run without actually experiencing it in your life. If you're on a long run and you feel like you just can't go on, that you're completely out of energy and no matter what you try, you're down in the depths in that run. You can think of that as an example of the low point in your life and learn from it for your future. Maybe this can help you from actually hitting the bottom if you run into tough times later on. It can help you deal with the emotions that you're having, and so that when if you happen to run into a rough spot later on, it'll make you stronger so you won't go so far into the depths. And I think that's really helped me actually. I used to be before I got back into running seriously, because I was I used to run occasionally in my 30s, and um I got back into it much more seriously in my 40s and 50s, but in my 30s I and 20s I started running, but in my 20s and 30s I would run, but it wasn't so serious now. And I had some really, really hard times, and really hard times in my 30s, and I don't think I would have had those tur well, I was also drinking too, so there's that. But I would don't think I would have had those tough times as much had I learned how to deal with the tough times as I have now. Not now being sober and understanding how to deal with things that isn't the end of the world. I can handle bad news and bad things when they come. I can deal with it much better now. I I don't fall apart like I did back then. That makes sense. I know I'm rambling a little bit, but sorry. If that doesn't make sense, I apologize. Do you look forward to the thinking that you do during long runs? I do. On my long runs, I start thinking of things that I never would have thought of anywhere else. I ask myself questions, mull over those questions, think of solutions. Okay, sometimes the solutions are silly, sometimes the questions don't need to be asked, but sometimes it really helps me work out things in my life. And it just is is a time where I can talk to myself silently, of course. I don't talk to myself out loud, but I can think to myself and think over things that I have uh problems with in life. Now, bargaining. Bargaining is a tough part of your training runs. Bargaining is really, really tough. And racing too, of course, obviously. But this is when you try to bargain with yourself to keep going or cut your run short. This is tough. This is I've always had a problem with this. So you tell yourself, if you finish this long run, you can have a cheeseburger afterwards or a pedicure if you're into that, or something like that. Or if you don't think you can finish, you tell yourself, I'll make this run short and do my long run in a few days. Just make sure if you're saying that, that you're telling yourself the truth, that you're not lying to yourself to get out of the run you're on, because we all do that. Most of us do anyway. I have done that. I've talked to myself and convinced myself that yeah, I'm gonna do the long run in a couple days. Then, of course, something comes up and I can't do it. So don't be me. And I know that. I know that is a weakness with me. That is a weak point that I have. So I have to really watch that and be careful with that. So you just bargaining is is is tough. Um, it just really is. And just a note about my training these days. One thing that new runners and runners who have been away for a while have trouble understanding is that it takes quite a bit of time to get good at running, even just being proficient at it. And that I'm finding out for myself as I get older, it takes me a lot longer. And I'm gonna do a whole episode on older runners. Um, again, I've done one before, but I'm gonna do an unupdated one in in the near future. I took a couple weeks off running um last month, and uh was it last month? Month and a half ago, and I'm getting back into it, and it's much harder than I thought it would be. It's much harder. It hasn't stopped me, but I'm still getting into the rhythm of running and trying to be a better runner. And the thing is, I haven't done any serious training in in over years, so I really want to do that. It's hard when you're kind of in limbo. I'm I gotta get out of this limbo stuff and and get some reality and get some cemented things down first before I can get out of this limbo mode in my life, which is kind of frustrating me, but it'll happen. All right. Well, that is it for today's show, and uh thank you so much for joining me. I truly appreciate it, I always appreciate it. And um the emails Martha Runsworp at Chimbo.com. And until next week, let's tie up a shoe laces and go for a run.