What Can Trail Running Teach Us About Our Work?
The unthought known, trail thoughts, and the meditative middle distance.
I grew up occasionally running on this little mountain biking trail near our house. I always enjoyed it, but never considered it One of My Interests.
It was just something I did sometimes for exercise. But over the years whenever I visited Birmingham I would consistently take the dogs running there, and when we moved back to Birmingham this summer I found myself running there a few times a week.
This is one of those odd things in life I would classify as an “unthought known.” The psychologist Meg Jay describes unthought knowns as “those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow [...] or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud.” I’ve never considered myself a runner, but I knew I liked running on trails. That fact had just never bubbled up into my conscious awareness in any meaningful way.
Sometime this year though, I had the thought oh I like doing this, I should do more of it. It bloomed into full consciousness and I started signing up to run trail races as a way of trying to invest in the interest just to see what would happen. First a VK (a very steep 5K), then a 10K, and then, last week, a 21K.
There’s something very clarifying about trail running. It takes effort, but it also takes attention. You can’t just mindlessly pound out miles, you have to watch where you put your foot, and in some situations you have to tip toe your way around rocks and roots in order to keep going without falling. Also, sometimes you fall, which at 37 feels deeply humanizing.
What I like about trail running is that this combination of effort and attention seems to be perfect for quieting my mind just enough to wander in ways I find interesting.
A trail thought: During the 21K I found myself consistently thinking, “Ok, how am I doing?” “How do I feel?” “Is this feeling normal?” And then I’d think, I have no way of evaluating these questions because I am in the process of running farther than I’ve ever run before. Prior to the race, the longest I’d gone was an 11 mile training run. So, after I crossed the 11 mile threshold I just sort of trundled along noticing that I was tired and looking forward to finishing, but also thinking “I think I can keep going,” and “I guess this is just what it feels like to run a half marathon.”
Isn’t this same kind of thing true about work and creativity?
If I take on a new project - something that is truly new to me - and doing the work doesn’t feel like I might have expected it to feel, how am I supposed to judge that feeling if I’ve never done that thing before? If I feel a certain way at mile 12 of a half marathon, I can’t exactly judge whether I feel good or bad, because I may simply be feeling Mile 12 Feelings.
Which is to say, it just may not always feel how you expect it to feel to run a half marathon, or start a company, or make partner, or change careers. But that doesn’t mean you’re not doing it right.
Now this idea may not hold in the same way if you have some amount of intuitive expertise that you’ve developed over the course of your career. Say you’ve run 25 marathons or started multiple companies, you may have some ability to judge whether this is feeling right or wrong.
But there are boundary conditions even to hard earned expertise. And, you know, one never steps into the same river twice.
Another trail thought: When you’re running on a trail you can’t look too close to your feet or you won’t see what obstacles are coming up, but you also can’t look too far down the trail or you’ll stumble over what’s right in front of you. When I get into a groove, I find myself looking maybe a body length or two out so I know what’s up ahead but I’ve also already subconsciously processed where I’m going to put my feet. I’ve come to think of this as the meditative middle distance. The posture at which I can run in a balanced way, enjoying the trail without worrying too much about twisting my ankle. When the trail is easy and flat I might look up and out a bit more, and when the trail is hard and technical I look right at my feet so I don’t eat it.
This same balance can apply to how we think about our work and leadership. When things are going a bit easier or slower we may naturally have more capacity for picking our head up and appreciating what we’ve accomplished, taking a bigger picture view, and imagining what could be on the horizon. And when things feel like more of a grind we may tend to bear down, focus on tactics/technique/craft, and just try our best do good work and not get tripped up by our ideas of where we think we should be.
I may want to be running 9 minute miles at Mile 12, but if my average pace is 10:35 the best thing I can focus on is pushing that number down to 10:30 and then 10:25, rather than bemoaning the fact that I’m going slower than I hoped.
Apply this thinking:
The slower pace of the holidays and the end of the year (on the work front) creates opportunities for celebration and reflection. Use that space to pick your head up and appreciate the view - can you experience some gratitude for what you’ve done this year?
And if you’re feeling like things aren’t going well, what’s the closest adjacent action you can take, the easiest possible thing you could do to start pushing things in a different direction?
What truth do you sense about yourself that you’re unwilling to say out loud that may be shaping your thinking?