The truth about running shortcuts: there are none
Acentral, indisputable truth of running is there are no shortcuts. OK, let me clarify. Sure, some people literally cut corners, and some people find other inventive ways to cheat.
What I mean is that if you really want to reach anywhere with running, there’s no easy way to get there.
And that applies whether you’re shooting for the Olympics, aiming to run your best ParkRun time, or even just reach the point where you can go around the block without feeling like you’re going to collapse.
Anyone who tells you there’s some secret to getting better at running is lying. There are no elixirs. There is no magic wand.
You just have to run, even if that means starting out by running to one lamp post, and walking to the next (then repeating, and repeating).
And, yeah, sure, when you start out, it’s hard. It feels like it’s never going to get easier, like your legs are never going to stop hurting, and your lungs are never going to stop burning.
But you know what? They will.
The more you run, sensibly, of course – slowly and not far at first – your body will adapt. As the late, legendary coach Arthur Lydiard once told me, it’s an aerobic sport – the only way it’s going to get better is to improve your aerobic capacity (the body’s ability to use oxygen more efficiently – basically, getting incrementally faster without puffing so much). It’s the base on which you can build other things, like speed.
Lydiard also talked about the approach you have to take when you’re coming back to running after a break, or, especially, after an injury. It’s easy to try to slip back to where you were before, and to quickly get frustrated or, worse, injured.
Instead, said Lydiard, you have to try to forget what came before. ‘‘Imagine you’re an old man,’’ he once told me. In other words, start out slooooowly. Don’t rush things. Improvements will come in good time.
On the Dirt Church Radio podcast this week, we talked to runner and elite rifleman Gareth Morris about just this thing – patience.
He had competed in shooting for about 25 years, eventually reaching the top level, including bagging a silver medal at the
Gold Coast Commonwealth Games (in the Queen’s Prize pairs, with Chris Watson).
A few years ago, he took up running, initially to get fit.
You’d think there are few sports more different. But Morris realised that things he’d learned in shooting applied to running.
Morris says he was never immensely naturally talented at shooting. ‘‘It was only really in my late 20s and early 30s [when] I started to train more that things just started to make sense and crystallise,’’ he says. ‘‘I feel the same way about my running.’’
He says when he started running, he did not have any natural talent either.
‘‘I went out the door and I ran and I sucked. I ran 2 kilometres, it took me maybe 15 minutes, and then I collapsed on the sofa for another 20 minutes convinced I was having a heart attack.
‘‘I don’t have this massive aerobic capacity waiting to use, if I did I probably destroyed it smoking when I was young.
‘‘And so the thing that came to me is, if you want to do this thing and experience some of the cool things that running can bring you, you’ve got to put the time in.’’
That was not going to be a quick process, he realised. And yet, because it was something he really wanted, and that he enjoyed, he stuck to it.
It’s taken time, effort and patience, but Morris has reached a place where he enjoys running, and it’s taken him places he never would have imagined.
And now he’s reaping rewards. He’s knocking on the door of a sub-three hour marathon. And in February he broke 24 hours for a 160km trail race, coming 14th at the Tarawera Ultra. In other words, he’s no slouch.
I’ve never met anyone for whom running comes easy. But it does get easier, the more you run. And the easier it gets, the more you’ll enjoy it.
That’s another truth.
The easier running gets, the more you’ll enjoy it.