90 Day Running Reset: Why am I doing this?
I’ve always considered myself a runner. I credit that to growing up in a place where I could run around free and barefoot outside and not have to worry about being kidnapped or abducted. School was the same. Recess was another safe time and place to be able to get outside and get active, and I took full advantage. My favorite part of PE was when we’d have to run laps around the playground and collect popsicle sticks. I’d consistently slack off for the first part, and then haul ass to make laps up towards the end of the class. I’d end up with about the same amount of sticks as the kids who just ran consistently, but that didn’t really matter to me. I just wanted to see how many I could get and not suffer the whole time.
All this running translated when I got to junior high and high school.
I don’t remember how I decided to run track. It might have been pushed on me by the coaches, but I can’t say for sure. The way the seasons worked was the same every year. Football was in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball and track in the spring. If you only did one sport, you were in off season. There would be more sports added in high school, but these stayed the same from junior high on up. In 7th grade I played football. Once the season was over, it was off season for me. I sucked, and still suck, at basketball. So all I did for 4 months, 5 days a week, was lift.
One day in February the coaches took us over to the high school track. They put us into groups and told us we were going to do a series of runs. Looking back on it now, this was the stupidest simple way to figure out who was going to run what race. They put all of the guys that were fast in football in the first group, and then worked the groups down from there. I was in group 2 or 3. One of the guys in group 1 said he was just going to run enough to be able to finish as many of the runs as possible in the top 5. Sounded good to me! We ran 100M, 200M, 300M, 400M and 800M. I learned 2 things. 1. My “fast enough to finish in the top 5” was faster than whatever everybody else in my group was doing. 2. I hated losing. I aced my heats for the runs I was in up to the 400M. After that, I walked-ran the 800M.
My first 3 years in track were my favorite of the 5 that I ran. I didn’t lose 1 open race that I ran, but that wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was the feeling of running. Yeah, I was nervous before every race. But as soon as I was handed a baton, or a starting gun went off, I was who I was supposed to be for a little while. I was running free. I was consistently told how good my form was by coaches. My legs would move in large open strides while my upper body posture stayed upright and unmoving. Every step was an explosion, developed over years of power cleaning, jumping (I also had to practice for triple jump and long jump), and sprinting in track spikes.
As happens with a lot of things that people get good at, expectations started setting in. I was expected to be the best at something year over year. And I could have been! But the work ethic wasn’t there. I was a dumb teenage boy that had been good at something without really trying for way too long. Had I been 1% of who I am now when it comes to work ethic, who knows what I could have developed into athletically. Instead, high school ended. Along with my career as a runner.
Fast forward 7 years…
225 pounds of raw strength. I had been powerlifting at home for the better part of a year. Wake up early, lift, go to work, come home. I wasn’t cut, and I wasn’t a body builder. I was just really strong. I left high school at around 175 pounds, and had been on and off of fitness routines for years. The powerlifting years were the first time that I had stuck with something in a long time. It felt really good to be strong, until I needed to do something cardio intensive.
In January 2016 I decided to set a goal of reaching the highest peak in Texas. It was pretty random, and I can’t explain why I was led to do this. But I set the goal, and then started to train for it. I started jogging after my lifting sessions at a half mile, and then worked up to 1 mile. Jogging isn’t running. I wasn’t thinking about form, or cadence, or anything like that. It was just putting in time for liver and kidney health, and so that my legs would turn over on the trail. I also integrated more squats and lunges into the routine to account for climbing. After 3 months I decided it was go time.
The climb up to the peak was rough. There was a lot of stopping, leg cramping, and pain. Not to mention the fact that myself and one of my best friends geared up like we were climbing Everest. We knew we screwed up when a few miles in we saw a dude in cowboy boots casually smoking on the side of the trail asking if we were alright.
And then I was a runner again…
For the next few years I got more into hiking and camping. I didn’t really do too much to further my fitness. Jogged a little more and lifted a little less. That is until June 2018. I had just gotten back from a trip to west Texas. I’d spent most of the trip winded, and found the experience a little hard to enjoy because of it. When I got home I made the decision that I wanted to pick running back up to become a better hiker. There were a few other things going on in my life at the same time that required some sort of change, but they all pointed in the same direction. I needed to run.
4:00AM every morning. I’d wake up and go run. I’d run until I couldn’t anymore, and then turn around and walk home. On day 1, I could run to the end of the street. That was maybe a quarter of a mile. Over the next couple of months I got to where I could run to the end of the parkway, which was 2 miles. On that day that I ran 2 miles for the first time, I realized that if I was going to get home and make it to work on time that I would need to run back home. So my first day running 2 miles was also my first day running 4 miles.
This continued for over a year. I’d run in the morning before work to the end of the parkway, and run home. As I got faster, I started adding in more segments. I started to value this habit over some of my worse ones. This one positive change started to create more positive change. I started to listen to running podcasts. Started watching running videos online. Followed runners on social media. I became passionate about running, even though I wasn’t very good at it. It made me wish that I had been passionate about it when I WAS good at it.
Born to Run and the first reboot…
By the time September 2019 rolled around I could run 6-8 miles in that time span in the mornings. However, there was a point where the day-to-day of making this kind of progress was getting boring. It fatigued my mind and started making it hard to get up in the morning. I was given “Born to Run” for my birthday, which to this day is still one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve ever gotten. I’ll cover my thoughts on the book in a different blog, but the main thing that I pulled from it were put beautifully by Christopher McDougall:
“Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don't give a shit how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced that so long, that you forget you're practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won't have to worry about the last one - you get those three, and you'll be fast.”
Easy, light, smooth, and fast got me through a running low point, and back to running for fun. I made the switch over to minimalist and zero drop shoes and rebooted my whole approach to running. I couldn’t run as far in these shoes without developing foot pain, but I could feel different parts of my body starting to strengthen up. That is until November.
In November 2019 I developed plantar fasciitis. The pain was so bad in my feet that it became hard to walk day to day. When I started researching the cause of the problem, I came across a ton of possibilities. When I started looking at the problem as it relates to running, the reason for the pain hit me right in the face. I had tried to up my mileage in my zero drop shoes too quickly. I had made the decision to try and double my mileage, and the day after I did that is when I developed the problem. I physically couldn’t run. But instead of waiting for it to go away, I focused on foot strength. The only weight that I had in the garage was a kettlebell, so I grabbed it and got to work. Every morning, for 21 days, I did toe raises. The kettlebell added extra weight, and I kept the workout slow and focused on form. Day 1 was hell. But every day the pain slowly started going away. I would add more sets and more reps as it got easier. When December 1 rolled around and I put my shoes back on, I was ready. I took it easy and gradually worked up my miles, but I never had a plantar problem again.
Lockdown, and The Cool Impossible, and the second reboot…
The Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns started here in San Antonio in March, 2020. This was less than 4 months after I had started my own business. A move that gave me the freedom to run however long I wanted. I had been listening to the “Born to Run” audiobook in the morning. When the book wrapped I was given a short list of recommendations. There were some other books by the same author, and “The Cool Impossible”.
It turned out that the coach from “Born to Run”, Eric Orton, had written a book too. That was a no brainer. I bought a physical copy of “The Cool Impossible” and loved it so much that I didn’t put it down until it was finished. This was the start of reboot 2.
Using that book, I was able to transform my running habits and not only run faster, but run further. I had purchased a GPS watch at the same time on the recommendation of some of the other readers, so that really helped me to develop in ways I never even thought of. I’m in a field where it pays to be a data nerd, and there was plenty to look at!
I worked the plan in the book a few times over from 2020-2021. As my running evolved, so did my gear. Shoes and clothes all changed. Running locations changed. I started spending more time on the trails and less time on pavement.
Running was an obsession. I started setting time goals. Distance goals. Races I wanted to run. I’d considered myself a runner once again!
Let’s get back to the point…
Now, I could cover the events of 2022 in detail, but it was a cycle of training, progress, accidents, and recovery. It has led to 2023 feeling like a year wandering in the desert, looking for an answer. Is this a healthy obsession? Is ANY obsession healthy? Why don’t I love running as much as I used to? Why am I not committing to consistency? Is this the best I’ll ever be at this? Why am I not just happy doing this? What the hell happened to hiking?
Either something is lost, or I am.
The point of this reboot isn’t to answer any one question. I have a few primary goals:
What are my weaknesses with running, and how can I address them?
What does “0 Goal Running” look like?
How can running bring me happiness?
Can anything from a runner’s youth be recaptured in their adulthood?
I’ll be keeping track of all of the resources that I use as I go along, and using this series as a kind of journal to document what 90 days “in the lab” can mean mentally, physically, and philosophically. So everything from books, to gear, to habits, what's useful, and what isn’t, will get equal shine. This is for me, but hopefully somebody else can glean something from it as well.