If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: Never lie to yourself.
7 things to read before you run this weekend.
Roger Bannister breaks the 4-minute mile for the first time.
I have always loved running, I grew up watching Chariots of Fire, soundtracking my childhood runs around the neighbourhood to the sounds of Vangelis.
Chariots of Fire - Vangelis
I’ve written about running a lot: Running: You’re doing it wrong, How I Run: The Darwin Method, What It Feels Like to Run 800m, What It Feels Like to do a Triathlon, What It Feels Like To Run A Marathon, and Twenty-Five Times Running Shoe Designers Lost Their Freaking Minds.
I started a running club called the San Francisco Hill Runners, with the goal of running every hill in San Francisco.
I even once tried to start a running company: Sessions Before It Was Sessions.
I still run often, though slower now.
Here’s my favourite pre-run warmup.
Here’s a song, called 45:33, that goes for 45:33, that Nike commissioned in 2006 from LCD Soundsystem to be the perfect soundtrack to a 45 minute run.
Here’s Michael Mayer’s Immer, which WITI editor Noah Brier runs to every morning:
“The real magic of the music has been in combining it with a consistent running route. I set out each Saturday morning around 7 am (need to beat the heat) and hit play on Immer. As I run, I’ve come to associate the route’s hills and descents with specific moments in the mix. Right after I finish the biggest climb of the 13-mile route, the beat drops out and gives way to Phantom/Ghost’s Perfect Lovers remixed by Tobias Thomas and Superpitcher. The track starts with two minutes of strings and offers a chance for a deep breath before diving into the back half of the run.”
Small Town Texas Runner Becomes Hero After State Championship
Here’s Flotrack, one of my favourite niche YouTube Channels that documents track meets, and amateur runners. Like, for example, Small Town Texas Runner Becomes Hero After State Championship.
Here’s Malcolm Gladwell talking about running, faith, and failure.
And here’s Will Smith giving you the two keys to life, reading, and running.
Running & Reading - Will Smith gives kids the keys to life.
1️⃣ The Running Novelist - Learning how to go the distance (New Yorker, 2008)
“As a form of exercise, running has a lot of advantages. First of all, you don’t need someone to help you with it; nor do you need any special equipment. You don’t have to go to any particular place to do it. As long as you have a pair of running shoes and a good road you can run to your heart’s content.”
- Haruki Murakami
The making of the ASICS GEL-Kayano
2️⃣ To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet (NY Times, 1999)
“Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms. Ideally, the runner who's a writer is running through the land- and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost in a real setting.”
Deeply moving account of running, depression, and the Grand Canyon.
3️⃣ Reexamining the Mythology of the Tarahumara Runners
“There is, of course, no secret. In fact, the authors point out that similar traditions have existed across the Americas and perhaps around the world. For example, the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, described the running feats of the Narragansett in 1643: “I have knowne many of them run betweene foure scoure or an hundred miles in a Summers day.” The Copper Canyon is so hard to reach that it has simply allowed these traditions to continue for much longer.”
My favourite running video ever - Dave Wottle winning the 800m at the Munich Olympics
4️⃣ How Eliud Kipchoge Broke Running’s Mythic Barrier
“It's December and Eliud Kipchoge is stirring in the predawn gloom, already thinking about the workout—one of his first hard runs since he made history in October, finishing a marathon course in Vienna in under two hours. That achievement—thought for decades to be impossible—instantly made Kipchoge famous around the world. But it did little to alter the rhythms of his ascetic life at the rural training camp where he lives six days a week, sequestered from even his own family. Here the walls of his room are virtually bare, except for a picture of Paulo Coelho pinned above his bed and a quote from the Brazilian novelist: “If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: Never lie to yourself.””
When running was for weirdos.
5️⃣ Sebastian Coe: 'I was prepared to die with blood in my boots for the 1500m'
“I think I lost that race before I stepped on the track,” says Coe. “It was just a suffusion of inexperience and just not controlling my own head in the 24 hours leading up to the race. I found myself in very alien territory. Normally the world can be crashing around my feet, as occasionally it does, and I still sleep. That was the first and only time that I’ve ever had a problem. Then at breakfast I was putting milk on my cornflakes when I dropped the jug. I felt very out of sync. Championships racing is just so totally different.”
The Kiwi Twins in Kenya's Running Capital: VICE World of Sports
6️⃣ To Run My Best Marathon at Age 44, I Had to Outrun My Past
“I used to think of athletic ability as a mountain. You're born at the base, and you'll die there too. In between, you climb higher and higher until you begin to descend. But that analogy isn't quite right, because as you get older you acquire wisdom that can help you train. I've come to realize that a better analogy is of rolling peaks. You go up, you go down. At some point you reach your peak, but there are still vistas as you descend.”
Run The Line: Retracing 43km of hidden railway
“Like most young boys, my Dad was my hero for a long time.
At one point, he held New Zealand records in the 3,000m, 5,000m and 3,000m steeplechase.
When we compared Dads at school, those New Zealand records were my trump cards.
When I was a baby, he’d run me 10kms in the stroller every morning.
He put the wind in my hair before my memories even begin.”
Happy Father’s day for tomorrow. Hope you get a chance to enjoy a run.