This book was sitting in our large communal to-be-read pile on the dining room table for months before I picked it up; Dan and I both thought the other person had ordered it (so if this is a gift from someone, thanks, and we didn’t get the memo). According to the book jacket, Ryan Holiday is “one of the world’s foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life”, which while impressive, makes me feel a little bit skeptical.
That said, I found the text to be interesting and occasionally insightful. Holiday is not the best writer, but he does a sound job of providing interesting examples of contemporary and historic (though it should be noted mostly male and white) figures who have or haven’t embraced stillness to guide their choices and how that impacted their life’s path. He also gives the reader practical, tangible, and realistic ways (organized as chapter headings) to consider their mind, spirit, and body, and how to honor and nourish the needs of each of those components of your lived experience. The narrative on ritual and the healing power of the outdoors resonated in particular with me, as did his words regarding our inherent connection with all other lives: “No one is alone, in suffering or in joy. Down the street, across the ocean, in another language, someone else is experiencing nearly the exact same thing. It has always been and always be thus” (160).
If you are looking for a tool to help you check-in on your priorities, this one may be a good starting point. The chapters are short, making it easy to pick up and put down within the busy rhythm of your life, and if you are of the journaling sort, I think it would lend itself to prompting exploratory writing.
Ultra Marathon: any running race longer than 26.2 miles (traditional marathon distance). Typically run on trails, ultra marathons may also be held on roads.Also typically, ultras involve a lot of walking as well as running. You know, because they are SO STINKING LONG.
Finn is a writer and runner with a pretty legit marathon personal best of around 3 hours (consider that most marathon finishers never break the 4 hour mark and you get an appreciation for his fitness level). A lifelong runner, he admits at the beginning of this journey to a bias towards fast events (read: traditional track and road distances) vs. ultra and trail events. But a job offer to run and then write about the multi-day Oman Desert Ultra Marathon (just over 100 miles) seals his fate and begins an obsessive dive into the rich history, training philosophies, and interesting characters that populate the sport. This ambitious immersion culminates in completing the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, a trail ultra with approximately a gazillion feet of elevation gain that circumnavigates Mt. Blanc through three countries and is one of the toughest ultra races on the planet.
I would consider this book to be primarily a memoir, and I found Finn to be a likable and entertaining writer with a personality familiar to any endurance athlete or long-suffering loved one of an endurance athlete – Unrealistic expectations? Check. Ability to minimize potential effort/risk? Check. Borderline obsessive personality? Check and Check. As someone new to this type of running, Finn spends a lot of time questioning others as to why they run ultras, and as he struggles with injury and uncertainty, he ultimately decides that “putting our finger on why we do this seemingly mad sport is almost impossible. The real reasons seem to lie just beyond the reasons we give. Sure, we want to win, we want to finish, we want to do our best, we want to find our limit, we want to make people proud…but none of it quite explains it. It’s an unfathomable urge, a deep, primal call, to be out there, to stand facing oblivion, and to come through to the other side.” (228) I totally get this – it’s why I can’t stop myself from finding a new goal each time I accomplish the last one. It’s why I love ultras but also why I love road events – I want to go longer, I want to go shorter and faster, I want to KEEP GOING. I love the work towards the goal even more than I love the actual event I’m working towards; there is peace and joy in the work. There is nobility in the effort. It’s meaningless and it means everything, all at the same time.
As an ultra dork, I was already familiar with most of the people and events that Finn explores (which didn’t make it less interesting to read his depiction, it just wasn’t new to me) with the notable exception of his treatment with NeuroKinetic Therapy (NKT), which I had never heard of. Partway into his ultra career he develops debilitating Achilles tendon pain, which remained unresolved after seeing multiple specialists and physical therapists. After working with an “Anatomy in Motion” provider (a similar approach to NKT), Finn is surprised to learn that breaking his left wrist three times may be contributing to the pain in his lower leg. By incorporating the NKT techniques, he is able run harder, longer, and faster with improved form and no pain. As David Weinstock describes it to Finn, “what we’re doing is essentially rebooting the computer in the brain that controls movement. In an NKT session, we interview people, then watch them move. We want to figure out what’s over-working and what’s under-working. Then you release the over-working muscles, or activate the under-working muscles, which helps re-program that dysfunctional pattern in the brain.” (126) What did not surprise me about Finn finding success with this method was that by embracing a systemic approach that views the body as a complex, integrated organism rather than isolated muscles and joints, he was able to resolve the issue.
This text is an interesting exploration into the foundational theories behind human physical and mental endurance, as well as a detailed discussion of research into key variables in athletic training: pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, and fuel.
One of the benefits of reviewing the scientific literature on athletic training is that you can learn tips and tricks to benefit your own training (smiling reduces perceived effort, swishing and spitting out sports drinks can have a similar effect to actually consuming the drink, positive self-talk can help you push past the wall, etc). One of the disadvantages to reviewing the scientific literature on athletic training is that you may incorporate information that agrees with your current approach/perspective/biases and disregard anything that doesn’t – if I’m perfectly honest, I think I fall into this category a lot. If I read something that tells me that running for a lot of hours is bad for you or that you must focus on only one sport to truly excel or that sleeping less is ideal for performance…I’m going to move right along and ignore it.
That said, I think there’s value for most of us non-professional but still goal-driven real-life athletes in learning more about performance hacks for strength, technique, endurance, and fuel. If you haven’t done much reading in these areas, this is a great book to start with. I also found it easy to pick up for 10-15 minutes at a time, which makes it highly practical for busy, over-extended athletes with day jobs and families and adulting responsibilities.
A couple of quick info hits for you:
“Starting in the late 1990s, a South African physician and scientist named Tim Noakes began to argue that…it’s actually the brain alone that sets and enforces these seemingly physical limits we encounter during prolonged exercise.” (38)
The results of a pain study by Mauger and Marcora “suggested that the pain you experience in the extremes of sustained exercise is fundamentally different, from your brain’s perspective, from the pain you experience while dunking your hand in ice water. All pleasure is alike, as Leo Tolstoy might have put it, but each pain hurts in its own unique way.” (94-95)
Multiple study findings indicate “that the benefits of sports drinks and other mid-race carbohydrates for short bouts [generally 90 minutes or less] of exercise are irrelevant as long as you don’t start out with an empty stomach and depleted fuel stores.” (191)
