Born to Run

Let’s start with the Tarahumara (pronounced “Tara-oo-mara”).

A hidden tribe from the Copper Canyons that can run a very, very, very long time.

We’ve talked about them a few times now. In her great book Mindfulness, Harvard professor Ellen Langer uses them as the #1 example to prove the point that our upper potential is unknowable (not unlimited per se, but *unknowable*—and certainly much more expansive than most of us give ourselves the opportunity to believe!).

Langer says: “Research like these vision studies highlights the dangers of setting limits for ourselves. For instance, I’ve asked my students: What is the greatest distance it is humanly possible to run in one spurt? Because they know the marathon is twenty-six miles, they use that number to start and then guess that we probably haven’t reached the limit, so they answer around thirty-two miles. The Tarahumara, of Copper Canyon in Mexico, can run up to two hundred miles. If we are mindful, we don’t assume limits from past experience have to determine present experience.”

So, the Tarahumara are pretty awesome.

Their secret fuel?

Love.

They LOVE to run.

Which reminds me of Steven Kotler’s great wisdom from The Rise of Superman where he tells us similarly shocking stories of extreme athletes pushing unfathomable boundaries.

What drove them?

Same thing. Love.

Here’s how he puts it: “When doing what we most love transforms us into the best possible version of ourselves and that version hints at even greater future possibilities, the urge to explore those possibilities becomes feverish compulsion. Intrinsic motivation goes through the roof. Thus flow becomes an alternative path to mastery, sans the misery. Forget 10,000 hours of delayed gratification. Flow junkies turn instant gratification into their North Star—putting in far more hours of ‘practice time’ by gleefully harnessing their hedonic impulse. In other words, when it comes to time perspectives, flow allows Presents to achieve Futures’ results.

On the other side of the coin, flow pulls Futures into the present. Because there is no time in the zone, there’s no way to worry about tomorrow. There’s literally no tomorrow. Flow provides Futures with blissful release from all that endless striving. And since the release is autotelic, Futures who find themselves in flow don’t need to find new ways to slog toward the future. The state is intrinsically motivating so the slogging takes care of itself.”

Check out those Notes for more.

For now, what do YOU love?

Are you doing it?

P.S. Check out Are You Fully Charged? and Born for This (and Purpose 101) for more on all this.

Deepak Chopra shares nearly the exact same wisdom in Creating Affluence. Here’s how he puts it: “And the spiritual master replied, ‘There are two Goddesses that reside in the heart of every human being. Everybody is deeply in love with these supreme beings. But there is a certain secret that you need to know, and I will tell you what it is.

Although you love both Goddesses, you must pay more attention to one of them. She is the Goddess of Knowledge, and her name is Sarasvati. Pursue her, love her, and give her your attention. The other Goddess, whose name is Lakshmi, is the Goddess of Wealth.

When you pay more attention to Sarasvati, Lakshmi will become extremely jealous and pay more attention to you. The more you seek the Goddess of Knowledge, the more the Goddess of Wealth will seek you. She will follow you wherever you go and never leave you. And the wealth you desire will be yours forever.’”

Which Goddess are you chasing?

Go for Wisdom.

Let Wealth pursue you.

P.S. Carol Dweck echoes this wisdom in Mindset where she says: “The growth-minded athletes, CEOs, musicians, or scientists all loved what they did, whereas many of the fixed-minded ones did not.

Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.

This point is also crucial. In the fixed-mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome.”

The Beast.

Yours may not come in the form of extreme fatigue at the end of a crazy-long run, but we all have our form of discomfort.

How do you respond to it?

Do you flinch/avoid/withdrawal/resist?

Or do you accept the pain, befriend it, and gently lean in?

It doesn’t matter whether we’re training for a race or getting ready to launch our business, start a new relationship or whatever—we need to practice getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

When we’re at our edge and testing our limits, it’s helpful to remember that a) it’s SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable and b) as Steven Kotler said in our interview: “No pressure no diamonds.”

If we aren’t willing to embrace the pain, we’re NEVER going to see what we’re capable of. As we’ve discussed many times, this is why The Tools guys tell us we need to *reverse* our desire— rather than try to avoid pain, we need to say: “Bring it on!! I love pain!! Pain sets me free!!!”

Our infinite potential?

It’s on the other side of our pet named the Beast.

Let’s learn to love it.

P.S. Dean Karnazes echoes this wisdom in The Road to Sparta where he coaches us on how to play the pain game: “‘Does it hurt?’ … ‘It used to, but the pain’s gone away.’

Over the years I’d developed a means for overcoming pain. Instead of attempting to suppress the pain or trying to cast my mind elsewhere, I delve into it headlong and focus with all my concentration on the point of pain, trying to decipher the origins of the sensation at its core. Pain is ephemeral and fleeting, and the more I focus on the impulse at its roots, the more it dissipates and dissolves away. …

People think of pain purely in terms of a physical sensation, but there is also a very deep emotional connection to pain. Pain makes people uncomfortable. It hurts and is therefore viewed as a negative thing, as something that must be mitigated and cured. I’ve shifted that viewpoint and instead assigned positive feelings to the sensation of pain. Pain is good. I welcome pain, because it makes me feel alive. I like feeling alive, though I can’t lay claim to being the first to play the pain game. After all, Odysseus’s name in ancient Greek means ‘man of pain.’”

Now, I’m not a running biomechanic expert and walking you through all the lessons Chris shares in the book is outside the scope of the book, but here are a few things worth considering:

First, don’t land on your heel when you run—that’s a great way to get injured. The only reason you can even get away with that heel strike is because you’re wearing overly protective shoes.

Get this: “What surprised Dr. Marti, as he pointed out in The American Journal of Sports Medicine in 1989, was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn’t training surface, running speed, weekly mileage, or ‘competitive training motivation.’ It wasn’t even body weight, or a history of previous injury: it was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40. … What a cruel joke: for double the price, you get double the pain.”

Fascinating.

God Bless Phil Knight and Nike (check out our Notes on Shoe Dog) but Christopher shines a very compelling light on the escalation of injuries that went with “better” shoes.

Fact is, our feet are perfectly designed to run on natural surfaces. All that walking on perfectly flat surfaces in super padded shoes creates problems. Of course, we can’t just go straight to bare feet or minimal shoes—we need to be smart about it.

For now, quit landing on your heel. Get your feet out on varied terrain (like hills!) and think “quick and light” with your stride.

P.S. This book helped kick off the whole minimal-shoe running phenomenon. For curious souls, I hike/run in these Vivobarefoot shoes. Our family *loves* Vivobarefoot. Emerson has a couple pairs and so does mom. We also dig Skora.)

P.P.S. Katy Bowman has some good wisdom on all this as well.

Welcome to Leadville—home of one of the most intense races in the world.

How about some wisdom from Travis Macy, the guy who won the Leadman, which is: “a sort of six-week Grand Prix of Ultra Endurance that starts with a 26.2-mile trail marathon, followed by a 50-mile mountain-bike race, and then—in the course of seven days—a 100-mile mountain-bike ride, a 10k foot race the next day, and, in the grand finale the following weekend, the famed Leadville, Colorado, 100-mile ultramarathon. All of these events in the Leadman are contested at altitudes between 10,200 and 13,186 feet. The fastest overall combined time wins—which I managed to do in the summer of 2013 when I set a new Leadman record of 36 hours, 20 minutes.”

Travis wrote a little book called The Ultra Mindset where he walks us through how he thinks.

Here are two of my favorite gems from that book.

First: “Simply put, the choice to quit has been categorically removed as an option, so all I have to do is keep on going until I finish.”

Second: “People often quit endeavors in which they really should persevere because they’re afraid of the enormity of what lies ahead. If you want to achieve a goal, and you are ready to commit, break the process into manageable steps.”

So, think of something that stretches you that you’d *really* like to make happen.

Got it? Willing to commit? You sure? Have you identified the price you’re going to need to pay and decided you’ll pay it? (No stress if you’re not willing to pay it but get real about what it will take!)

If you’re ready, let’s commit.

The secret sauce? CATEGORICALLY REMOVE THE OPTION TO QUIT. Period.

Then break it down into the smallest little chunks you can and go rock it day in and day out until you finish.

Travis quotes Leadman creator Ken Chlouber who tells us: “We started these events in Leadville based on two principles. The first is, ‘don’t quit.’ That same principle applies to your work and your family and those brutal races and whatever else you do in life. The second is ‘do more.’ I’ve said, ‘You’re better than you think you are, you can do more than you think you can.’”

Again, we don’t need to go out and run 100 miles.

But, we do want to remember that we’re better than we think we are and we can do more than we think.