Women's Running has supplanted comedians as the leading proponent of "What's the point of running?"
Meanwhile, "Do Hard Things" Steve Magness is merely another platitude-merchant eager to cosign butthurt-fueled lassitude
In January of last year, Women’s Running published an article by Erin Strout cautioning against the value of running to help manage stress. Such a bizarre spectacle could be credibly framed as a reimagination of the antics of Latoya Shauntay Snell, who pretends to be a runner as a means of intentionally generating stress. But more likely, it was just Strout ineluctably being Erin Strout.
The lede is a wall-sized window into Strout’s aggressively defensive and pessimistic take on absolutely everything, even during a period when Strout herself—now no longer employed full-time by the publication—was clearly being given free editorial rein over her own claptrap during the “pandemic,” a la David Roche at the second-worst Outside, Inc. publication, Trail Runner.
Let’s face it, we’re living in some historically trying times. We’re 10 months into a pandemic that has robbed us of community and connection with friends and family. Sickness, death, and grief are everywhere. It’s dark and cold outside. The news is violent and scary. Racism and civil unrest are tearing the nation apart. Black and Hispanic women are experiencing extremely high levels of unemployment. Mothers are leaving the workforce in droves, often to care for kids whose schools are closed.
Strout may be incompetent as a journalist, but she deserves credit for successfully doing something I never even thought of doing when I was writing for outlets like these and their predecessors: Earnestly pitching an anti-running article to a distance-running publication. And she gets points on top of that for citing stress as the primary reason a lot of runners run and then dismissing the value of exercise as stress management, akin to not only writing “Don’t get a job” in a brochure from an employment agency, but also adding “Especially if you’re broke” in bold letters throughout the document.
The first subhed in the piece is “6 Self-Care Strategies for Women Runners.” Only four of these “strategies” are actionable and even these are either vague or seemingly generated at random.
Okay, so maybe a few Web-surfers specifically looking for motivational running advice became convinced to stay inside and join the sulking-in-sweatpants, still-got-the-running-vibe crowd. But those who didn’t might not only still be running, but also may even be training for something despite misgivings over their fastest days being far behind them, the world ending shortly, etc.
Strout, now in a freelancing capacity, had an equally projection-rich message in Women’s Running a little over a week ago for these stubborn dreamers: It’s okay to not have competitive goals and to run without a plan, but for that you still need specific guidance.
For Strout, this started with an important discovery:
The part I’ve had the hardest time reconciling is that running doesn’t have to be tied to training. It can also just be exercise. Imagine the epiphany: I don’t have to race to continue running.
Does Strout have any sense of the kind of people who traditionally read running-related stuff? This is like standing in a crowd of marathon spectators and announcing to people that you can yell if you want, but it’s okay to just watch, too.
Seeking validation herself for something she has already declared to be fine, Strout contacted Steve Magness, the author of a new book called Do Hard Things and someone who will defend any already settled conclusion with whatever piffle he believes will most satisfy his audience.
Reading through Strout’s lament about her waning competitiveness—she ran 71 minutes and change for 10 miles at age 40, which ain’t jogging—I can identify with a lot of it. But so can anyone who still runs well past their peak years whether they race regularly, occasionally, or never. I get the sense that at least a part of Strout was really hoping for from Magness to live up to his own billing and describe to her how she might go about the mentally difficult task of trying to train with some oomph for a race and execute that race with the same competitive honor as she would have a younger woman powered by a degree of automatic, unconscious confidence.
Instead, Magness supplied precisely these tips: Lots of easy movement, occasionally moderately difficult efforts, lifting heavy objects or doing things that make you feel fast or powerful (such as hill repeats and short sprints, for example), and working on balance and coordination.
The rest of the piece is confusing because it seems to operate on the thesis that something about running is physiologically different in the absence of competitive goals. That is, “How can I stay fit while running without any races on the horizon?” makes as much sense as, “How can I stay hydrated while drinking fluids without any races on the horizon?”
Since I suspect Strout of being disinclined to perform arithmetic operations, if she asked me for tips in this area, I would shake off my surprise and advise her to figure out how much slower she might expect to be at 48 versus 40 based on the latest WAVA tables, and I would invite her to tack on to this percentage the “penalty” imposed by Flagstaff’s altitude. She might find that she’s not as far from her prime as she thinks, allowing for grading on various curves.
But none of this means anything to anyone so beaten down by life that going running seems pointless, even when it’s perfect outside and you’re dressed for the activity. Because why bother getting fit when everything is dark and hateful and worsening all around? Why even waste the noisy breaths and muscle cells?
People struggling with motivation easily forget how rarely they later regret having started a run no matter how or where it winds up going, or for how long. If you get your ass two minutes up the road and you feel like ass warmed over, then instead of stopping, mentally compare how you feel to the dozens of times you felt even worse further into a run or even a race that wound up being practically magical once you waited out the free-floating ennui.
The worst decision you can make once your legs are moving and you’ve committed to the process is to trust what your inner douchebag tells you about how you feel, how old you are, how short on sleep you are, how much inflation blows, whatever. A big reason most of us* run is to deflect longstanding a calamitous inner narrative or six, like You’ll never run 17 minutes again! or You fucked up your heart by drinking! or Was I doing this all along for some other reason? or Why do most smart people my age quit? Ideas that look like they could be headlines from the The Daily Beast and are just as valid.
I really don’t know what to say about this kind of insistence on taking comfort in seeing more and settling for less. If you choose specific steps toward doing something you see as giving up. you’ll feel as if you’ve given up, and the only satisfaction you’ll take in this is having at least adhered to a plan.