Heya and welcome back to Five Things Running!
This week I finally reached my 50km goal again, after months of not running as much as I wanted. I attribute this to the new Hoka Mafate X that I got last week and which are soo much fun to run in. Amazing shoes!
Also, it is getting cold here in Northern Germany and I switched to wearing tights again. It’s so wonderful to come back inside after being out in the cold.
And as the black Friday week approaches and every running store is offering crazy deals, here is my advice: run in what you already have, it will probably be just fine. You really don’t need more than two pairs of tights for the colder season. You only need shoes for your rotation. And also you need Waldlauf apparel, that’s for sure!
Here’s this week’s Five Things Running!
Running Isn’t Cool
As I sat on my bench in the cafe car, pulling together a game plan to get my steps in traversing all the activations in SoHo, I was struck by a realization.
Running isn’t cool.
And no amount of sleekly branded pop-ups or Instagram accounts cultivating running culture can change that.
“But, Lee!” I can hear you thinking. “Running has become so cool! Diplo says so.”
And to that I say, “Thanks for proving my point.”
Running is inherently cringe. That’s what makes it so wonderful.
Exactly.
‘A drug that’s very safe and healthy‘: what ultrarunners can teach us about life
Some say ultrarunners are a little kooky, a little out of the box. In truth, they probably are, but perhaps they can also teach us a thing or two about life, and how to live it.
Jennings dismisses the idea she is any kind of superwoman. Sure, the thought of running 100 miles felt a bit crazy at first, she says. But, as an experienced runner, why not probe the boundaries of the possible? So she trained before work and during her lunch breaks, as well as running 48-64 miles every weekend, to ready herself for what lay ahead.
I find 100 miles a bit excessive, but being able to train for one is making your body and mind so much stronger over time.
The Mountains Are Getting Crowded
Or think of what happened to skateboarding. Once a bunch of punks celebrating a counter-culture, then a youth movement, now a global industry with coaches, academies, Olympic medals, and million dollar brand partnerships. Nothing wrong with that. Growth is not betrayal. In fact, it’s the most natural process of all. But it changes the emotional geometry. When something expands, the space between its people rearranges too.
Trail and ultrarunning feel similar right now. The thing that used to feel a bit quirky and nerdy, misunderstood by many, loved by few, is suddenly everywhere. More visible, more accessible, more structured, more commercial, more crowded. Not worse. Not better. Just different. A niche discovering it isn’t a niche anymore.
Luckily, I don’t live anywhere near the mountains. Run in the forests instead, they are empty!
Instead of an AI Health Coach, You Could Just Have Friends
Someone needs to say it. Someone has to speak up in defense of being mid. I am a mid runner. Most of us are, as that is the definition of being mid. I work out every day, but I have a full-time job, two kids, a dog, and a spouse. I volunteer, and I have dinner with my parents. I’m aging. I’m not going to knock anyone’s socks off with a crazy 100-miler anytime soon.
So what do you do if you don’t want to collapse into a bag of dust, but you have no time or incentive to work with a personal trainer? One option is to do what Atlantic CEO and incredibly fast runner Nicholas Thompson does, and use a custom GPT. Or, you can use Google’s new AI health Coach in the Fitbit app, which is a part of the $10/month Fitbit Premium service.
I collect all sorts of training data and run without a plan. Balancing running with family and job is stressful enough and I don’t want some AI telling me what do, either.
Training Is a Hopeful Act
Hope enables us to walk — or run — toward worthy objectives, and it makes us more resistant to despair. It “builds the capacity … to envision a better world and act towards it (4).”
Hope has special relevance for runners. It permits us to choose something hard, set our will on it, and work toward securing it. But hope is a virtue we often get wrong. Here are three reminders about a critically important virtue.
Hope can be so powerful.
Thanks to COROS for supporting this publication!
If you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here:
Now, go running!
— Nico
🏃🏻♂️