The Story Arc

reading the run as a story.

Any run, but the long run in particular, unfolds like any other story.

With any story, we choose to read it.

We don’t have to run, but whether it’s 36 degrees at 615am with a slight sleeting drizzle, or 90 degrees with air feeling like cotton candy hands, we get to lace up our EVO SLs and start our watches.

With any story, we must listen for its signal.

Running draws on all five senses. Listening to our breath, the cadence of our stride, and the wind moving through the trees is essential to the process of feeling the runner’s high we subtly long for.

With any story, sometimes we have to step back to move forward.

We feel that runner’s high and settle into a flow where there’s no resistance to lacing up our shoes, and mile after mile feels effortless. Inevitably, there are moments in the arc where we have to slow down - walk, stop on a run, take the mid-block taper week or face the dreaded “day we skipped a workout or long run.” More often than not, those moments of stepping back become the very reason we move forward with greater progress.

With any story, we highlight the hell out of the good pages.

Remember the good runs. Celebrate them. They’re often what draw us to the sport in the first place. Know that it won’t be every time, but they’re something to return to when we turn the page to a bad run.

With any story, when you turn onto a bad page, often there’s one after that.

Running quietly teaches this lesson week after week, and it’s one of the reasons I continue to fall in love with it. We feel everything about a bad run, and more often than not, it stays with us longer than we’d like after we hit stop on our watch.

But just like a bad day in life, the sun rises and sets, and nature offers us a chance to learn from the day, or that meh run.

And with each sunrise, we’re given a clean slate: endless possibilities, and another chance to return to a run we highlight in our story.

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run log —

distance: 12mi

type: easy, fun, 1mi hard