Running With Ego

I don’t believe in having regrets. The philosophical underpinnings of determinism don’t really allow me to. What’s done is done and stewing about decisions made in the past is mostly a waste of time. I say mostly, because learning from the past is vital for your future self, but once the lesson is learned and processed it is best to let bygones be bygones.

Before Cocodona I was already thinking a lot about running and ego. My hypothesis before the race was that if you could manage to use ego as a tool, without allowing it to run the show, it would be an effective motivator in hard moments. I was half right; it is effective but it’s not a tool.

I’m not sure that it’s possible to dose out optimal doses of ego without taking on too much risk that it will ultimately take the reins. It’s a proverbial mental super weapon, the One Ring, the Elder Wand. The temptation to use it for your benefit will always be there and maybe someone more disciplined than I am could find the balance. But if there’s a way to do it, I didn’t find it during Cocodona.

While there is something abstractly romantic about the idea that you care so much about something that you’re willing to Swiss-cheese a tendon over the course of 60 miles for it, it’s not sustainable. You can’t and shouldn’t take that experience and apply it to the future.

Perhaps there is an argument that for my career, the decision I made to continue at Cocodona was worth it. In a pure utilitarian calculation, maybe the math adds up.

But I want to be able to run for fun in my 50s and 60s.

Luckily, the surgery I’m looking at to repair my peroneal tendon has a high success rate. Something like 94% of people are able to return to the activity level they were at before the surgery. It’s likely that I will be able to continue to compete in the sport and run the way I want to. 94% is a good, safe bet, but 6% doesn’t mean the bad thing never happens. It just means that a betting man is going to be on the winning side most of the time.

At this point in my process of reflection, it seems to me that there’s not really a way to perceive finishing in the way I did at Cocodona as anything other than an error. It’s understandable why I made the decision to continue in the moment, and I’m not beating myself up for it. But if I don’t learn from this and error-correct immediately, then I’m an idiot.

If you picture getting injured as a kind of limited form of currency that you have, then I “spent” an injury on a race that was more worthwhile than it otherwise could have been. Cocodona is competitive and popular and my I had a lot invested in the event. But spending injuries is a risk and you don’t want to spin the roulette wheel too many times. I’m sure there are other surgeries with worse ratios and outcomes. What if I happened to spend a token of injury currency and the return to sport possibility was 50/50? Ultimately when you are pushing your body beyond its literal physical limits, that’s the fire you’re playing with and I don’t want to roll those dice when I could otherwise make smart decisions.

I’m not a mind-body dualist, but it’s easy to have fun with the illusion, imagining your body as a machine you’re manipulating, adjusting inputs and outputs and seeing what works. Ego interrupts this game when you get sucked into thinking your machine can do something it can’t.

Formula 1 cars are famously fast and capable, but equally are breakable and unreliable, requiring multiple engines just to get through a single season of racing. The machine metaphor for a body breaks down when you realize that you’re made of meat and you can’t just order spare parts. But I still think it’s illustrative when you consider what type of machine you might want to be. Fast and furious, or sturdy and reliable? I think I’d prefer to be operating a Toyota Tacoma (TRD obviously) than an F1 car.

I’m lucky to have a job where I get to enjoy the oneness of experience and the sense of being lost in nature all the time. Like love, it is one of those pleasures in life that is indescribable—ephemeral yet permanent, ethereal and physical. What a gift.

If I want to do this for a long time then I have to give my body the respect it deserves. In my running career, I’d prefer to make mistakes being too cautious, than too reckless. The stakes are never high enough in a single race that I should be willing to mortgage my future happiness and capacity in order to achieve a desired outcome.

I have to face the fact that when I was running the last 4 miles at Cocodona I wasn’t fueled by a “why” or a connection to something deeper than myself. I was fueled by a story. I was thinking about the character I was playing in a narrative that is inherently artificial.

To revisit the body as machine in closing: ego is nitrous - it will get you there quickly, but you won’t like the destination.