I started running in high school, and am still running today. It’s been around 10 years. Some of my friends and colleagues who are just getting started ask me questions about running, so I’m compiling my thoughts here.
My credentials
I ran 2:43 at the SF Marathon, and 1:13 in the Berkeley half. I will say later why I don’t like talking about my times so publicly, but I know some of you will ask, and I also know these results give me more credibility.
The Hump
I started taking running more seriously my sophomore year of high school, in the off-period between cross country in the fall and indoor track in the winter. My freshman season was pretty successful, so my coach, parents, and most importantly the varsity boys all started pushing me to run more. Without regularly scheduled practice, the off-season was a really good time to build some base fitness and set up well for a strong track season. Unfortunately, at the time I was a lot weaker than the fastest boys on the team, so I really had a bad time during that off season. The winter air was hard on the lungs, and I fell behind on a lot of the easy runs.
What kept me going? First, my parents just wouldn’t pick me up from school until an hour and a half after school ended. And second, I definitely felt a little peer pressured to “live up to my potential” by the faster runners. For example, if someone skipped running after school one day, everyone in the group would say “oh. that sucks.” in a really disappointed way, and I didn’t want them to be saying that about me if I skipped running.
After I struggled through that season I basically never had any serious motivation or pain problems while running ever again. Even today I feel like I can tap into that guilt, and force myself to go for an easy run on most days. Thanks to my effort in high school, I pretty easily pick up my mileage after taking a long time off, without getting too sore or feeling like I’m risking injury. Running is a relaxing activity for me. It’s meditative. I don’t like to bringing my phone on runs, and I feel clear-headed and satisfied when I’m done.
Basically, I think for people just starting out, you probably just need some peer pressure for a couple months to get over this “hump”, and then running will be fun and relaxing. Strava can help with this!
Strava
Strava was a pretty instrumental part of my initial stretch of peer pressure. I think it worked well for me because I really understood how fast my friends were. During the season, we would go all out and race every two weeks. So if someone was a little faster than me, and I saw them running a couple more weekly miles than me, then I knew that if I ran a little more, I might have a chance of catching up to them.
Working adults without a cross country team will probably find it hard to use Strava in this way. A lot of my friends find it discouraging to only see people much faster than them while scrolling on their feed. The only recommendation I can offer is to find people similar speed to you and peer pressure each other, because that’s what worked for me.
Optimization
So basically here are the reasons I am still running.
- I feel better on a day to day when I’m in good shape. I feel stronger and lighter.
- I like racing every now and then. It’s a fun environment, and I like competing.
- I get off my phone and go outside when I’m running.
In San Francisco, people love optimizing everything they can about their training. They stress about their form, buy really fancy shoes, track their heart rate / VO2 max a lot, etc. For me personally, thinking too much about this stuff really detracts from my experience. The main way to get faster is just to run higher mileage without getting injured. If you’re not running at least 6 days a week, this applies to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing really chopped shoes or shorts or whatever. It doesn’t matter what your heart rate is. If you can run more and not get injured you’re going to get faster. That’s it.
Compliments
Let’s say my friend from high school, Colin, was aiming for a 15:30 5k and ended up running 16 flat. 16 flat is much faster than my high school 5k pr. Should I tell him “Hey, don’t worry Colin. You are still much faster than me”? I think that would be insensitive. Colin should judge his performance by his own standards, and reminding him that he’s faster than me wouldn’t make him feel better about my performance.
I don’t like how people treat me differently when they find out about my times. I want to support my friends as they run more and get faster, but oftentimes if I give them compliments they might say “this would have been light work for you, Yuwen”. The only reason this may be true is because I have some more natural talent than them, and because I put in some hard work a long time ago in high school. I give my friends compliments because I admire their effort and accomplishments, which has nothing to do with any difference in natural talent.
In general, most of the reason why I run nowadays doesn’t have that much to do with racing and performance. So, when I meet people who are into running, I prefer that we don’t talk about racing and performance.
Final thoughts
A lot of people think that building discipline for running will help them build discipline in other parts of their life. This hasn’t been true in my experience at all. If you want to start running, I think it should be because you want to spend more time outside and feel stronger.