2. Anti-Inspiration: Stop being a legend.

We do it with every client during their initial coaching call: define the outcome. We have aspiring Boston Qualifiers, an epic Colorado 14-er adventurer, 100 mile hopefuls, 10K weekend warriors, the full gambit. It's hard not to start at the end. The more legendary and outrageous an outcome, the more we glorify it in culture and sport. This is one of sport’s gifts in a world with increasingly few opportunities to pursue outcomes that are tangible, measurable, and concrete.

Every spring I watch a growing host of 17 and 18 year olds fight to join the ranks of sub 4 minute milers. Even after this feat has become more routine — I have a feeling we’ll see the day when it’s common for boys and girls do it — we will still watch athletes relentlessly pursue it. How many of these kids will again have opportunities to pursue outcomes so clearly defined in their lives? To circle a track 4 times in 4 minutes is such a clean perfect barrier that it’s hard to think it will ever cease to capture our imaginations. I live in the hometown of Jim Ryun, the first ever high school miler to do it, and there are legends of the East High track lit up after sunset, a handful of cars pulled up to the outside lane, as Jim cranked out 20 x 440 yard repeats at 59 seconds, headlights glaring across the cinders. This kind of image elicits emotional reactions from us because it is easy for us to understand and access such a visual. Even if you aren’t a runner, even if it sounds more like insanity than it does legendary, you can still sense the magnitude of it.

Legends are divisive because all sides understand the absurdity of their desired outcomes, and that’s what keeps us talking about them for generations. Love them or hate them, you’ll be talking about them. Because we live in a modern world of abstraction, where even physical feats are manufactured and are not often required for our survival, our obsessions with sport will only become more pronounced.

How many high school sub 4 milers will someday sit on a Zoom Call discussing how to reach a target sales number, raise students’ test scores by 2 percent, or bring a product to market while daydreaming about that day they crossed the line on the 4th lap around, a 3 on the clock in the minute position? How many will feel desperate to remove the many layers of abstraction their modern life has forced upon them? While it’s possible for arbitrary and abstract outcomes to capture our attention, a concrete outcome that requires our own physical sacrifice captures our souls. It’s why running continues to boom and it’s why runners spend so much time obsessing over the many personal time and distance barriers we manufacture for ourselves.

But… and there’s always a but… what happens to us when we begin making our modest running goals our own personal versions of the 4 minute mile? What happens when we build our training life around our own version of the legendary outcome? Why work so diligently to manufacture your own myth? I know I have done it plenty throughout my running career.

Here's my hot take:

Being a legend might be one of the worst things you could intentionally do to yourself.

How’s that for a wet blanket on your ambition?

Let me explain…

We easily forget that while legends can be made in 4 minutes (or 2 hours in recent Marathon history), the actual mountaintop legendary moments are just slivers of their lives. There were entire daily rituals that Roger Bannister, Jim Ryun, Prefontaine, Kipchoge, and now Sebastian Sawe (or Jordan or Kobe or [insert personal sports hero here]) went through in the remaining 99% of their lives that made (or make) them happy or not happy, fulfilled or not fulfilled, loved or not loved. Each of those remaining daily moments came with a pressure that had to color every point in their days. You’ve probably felt something similar in the weeks leading up to your big A race (or championship game or job interview etc.), as you obsess about over your pacing strategy or fueling or race day gear while brushing your teeth, eating your lunch, playing with your kids. It is the ever present company that moves in when outcomes begin to feel essential: the weight of expectation.

Expectation is its own form of prison. Elite athletes have no choice but to marry themselves to it. It’s capitalism baby! You want your sponsorship paid? You better mind your metrics. You better hit that next arbitrary time on the clock, that next big podium, that next heroic endurance project. Collegiate athletes and aspiring collegiate athletes are faced with the same pressure, their scholarships and NIL money always on the line if the next recruit or transfer comes in with better and more consistent splits. Any endurance athlete who learns to build a healthy relationship with this constant pressure should count it as a magic trick; a crowing achievement in their careers. It’s the life they signed up for, made possible by their incredible talent, sharpened by years of intense effort and dedication.

But… You probably aren’t an elite athlete.

Do you really need that pressure in your life? Is your 4 hour marathon, sub-20 5K, or whatever time you have written on your calendar really worth the same weight of expectation? Worth the gnawing feeling that if you fail and don’t meet your self-imposed existential win or lose scenario, then you will have wasted your last 4 months of life, training and sweating and chafing for nothing, and you might as well just take up bowling or whittling or stone-skipping because this sport just amounts to a stupid hobby, and it’s never going to be for you because you’re a failure and a fraud with $250 super shoes that were supposed to get you the 10 seconds you needed but now you should just burn them in a fiery furnace like an offering to the past legends and gods of running who have failed you?

Probably not. Stop being so dramatic. Sheesh.

Should we just not set goals then? Maybe learn to wander around in some elevated zen-state bliss of perfect watch-less satisfaction? Maybe for a day or two! But goals are still paramount to our progress and enjoyment of this process of running. The concrete nature of measurable progress in this sport is something we all still need in this life. We still need those mountain top moments when we do get to realize the satisfaction of all we’ve built.

The key here is that setting goals should not involve setting expectations. A goal is not win or lose. A “failed” goal brings disappointment, but it shouldn’t bring an existential crisis with days spent crying on your couch. Your identity is not at risk when a goal isn’t met, instead, a goal is a sign post that validates what you have been working on in the process. Set audacious and wild goals, but understand that the days spent running and training ARE the point. The miles and miles when no one is there to cheer you on are what sharpens us and are where the joy sits.

When a client tells me they want to run a Boston Qualifier, we don’t set a timeline for when it is “supposed” to happen, we set a timeline for the work we need to do to make it happen. This is the subtle secret of elite athletes with long, healthy, and successful careers. They learn how to love the process of training; how to experience the peaks and valleys of adapting their bodies to legendary demands. The joy comes from being present in their progress and learning to know themselves perfectly. It’s personal and intimate and doesn’t come from the shoe brands breathing down their necks or fans expecting that last tenth of a second to pull them to new heights. I'll project here, but my guess is that Jim Ryun wasn’t just toiling away at those 59 second repeats because the world expected him to. There had to be a bit of joy in that suffering as he felt his legs getting closer and closer to reaching a pinnacle. He had to show up and enjoy the daily work. That's what makes legends so fascinating. The absurdity of their feats starts with how they craft joy out of the absurdity of their daily suffering.

So stop fixating on the race day that might (but probably doesn't) make you a legend. Start living in the daily miles that make your life better today. Being a legend tomorrow is not all it's cracked up to be.