Long Run Solutions

(February 2003 RW)

Writing a book is like running a marathon, maybe an ultra. It's hard do and impossible to forget. For reasons numerical or intangible, one race will someday stand out from many as your best or your favorite.

Same with books. I've written two dozen of them, and each had its struggles and satisfactions. I can't name my best; only a faithful reader with long memory can do that. But I can pick a favorite: the 1976 book titled Long Run Solution.

LRS isn't perfect, or even as good as I'd like to remember it. Rereading the book for the first time in years, I wince at its rough and outdated passages.

Beneath the uneven wording, though, stands my truest statements of how I feel about running. For instance, the book tells of reserving an hour a day for ourselves, for the pursuit of happiness as well as health. This I still promote, and practice.

My PRs had hardened into concrete by the time Long Run Solution was published. I'd recently survived my big injury scare (and resulting surgery) that made me appreciate running for reasons other than numbers on a watch. The time had come to decide what to do the rest of my running life.

There is value in keeping going after we've peaked. That's the main message of the book: Do what it takes to run long, not in miles or hours but in years and decades.

The best test of an idea or technique is how well it withstands the erosion of time. Here are my favorite lines from my favorite book. For me at least, they've passed the time-test.

This list is not an advertising ploy to selling the book, now decades out of print. Now I'm selling the book's messages.

-- [Humans] survived these thousands of years by chasing down food or running away from predators to avoid being eaten. We no longer have to chase our food or run down our enemies, but we still need to pursue health and happiness. We have to run after the good feelings and flee the demons.

-- My running is fun. Not ha-ha fun, but a quieter kind of contented fun. Not fun every minute of every day, but fun in the overall effect. Seldom is there a morning when I don't feel better in the last mile of a run that I had in the first mile. Never is there a day when I don't look forward to my run. Sometimes I don't want to go very far or fast, but I always want to GO.

-- Trust your instincts. Do what feels right. And if it doesn't feel right, do something different. The only valid test of a running method is, "Can I keep running with it?" The way to keep going is to eliminate the negatives. If you want to run tomorrow and the next day and as many days into the future as you can imagine, and if you are able to do it, you've already won.

-- Once each day, at about the same time and for about the same amount of time each day, I quietly go out of my mind. It's brain-washing in a positive sense -- cleaning and clearing gummed-up thinking by intentionally not concentrating on any thoughts for a while. Let the mind float or leap at will from one subject to another, without focusing on one or giving it greater value than another.

-- Learn to take pleasure in [doing] less than your best. Ninety or more miles of every 100 have to be at less than full speed. That's the way the pool of fitness fills up. Race-type runs draw from that pool and dry it up when they come too often. A runner's first concern is keeping the stream flowing, filling the pool.

-- The challenge of running is not to aim at doing the things no one else has done, but to keep doing things anyone could do -- but most never will. It's harder sometimes to keep going back over the same ground you've covered a thousand times before than to go someplace you've never been. It's harder to get down to the little, everyday tasks than to get up for the big, special ones.

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