Running ultramarathons changed my life — Here’s 6 reasons why.
It would be a genuine understatement to say that ultrarunning has changed my life.
For some, running might just be this thing that keeps you fit. The thing that gives you a bit of time for yourself, allows you to push yourself, gives you purpose.
For me — running has become a complete spiritual universe-immersed connecting endeavour.
Last year, I was training for my first ever 50 miler and I remember, for the first time in my conscious memory, this complete and utter sense of feeling “home”. The sun was setting, I was running back towards my car after a 20ish mile run up and down 2 of the Yorkshire Peaks, and feeling this indescribable feeling.
This indescribable feeling that I won’t ever do justice with words. But I’d never quite felt it before. It was almost as if something or someone had taken all the sense of “me” away. Like I didn’t exist, nothing mattered, nothing was important but everything was completely perfect and ok. Complete and utter connection with the world.
I remember feeling such intense euphoria, joy, love. It felt like I’d truly come home.
This became a common experience. Practically every weekend, when I’d drive to some desolate beautiful mountains for my long run, I’d just be overwhelmed by this sense of awe, love and connection.
Now, being someone who has lived a lot of life being a high-achieving-self-critical-I’m-not-quite-good-enough-yet-and-I-need-to-change-everything-right now-about-myself-my-life-and-the-world person, beyond the days of childhood flow and lack of care, this was very foreign to me.
But wow — I yearned for more time alone in the mountains. Time I previously would have dreaded — alone with my thoughts, no humans, heights, weather, effort, become my favourite time of the week.
Running a fast 5k never gave me this.
Playing competitive football never gave me this.
Getting a place at a prestigious university never gave me this.
Why?
Well, I think there’s one word, ok, two -
Not enough.
Dictated by the yang, no yin.
Action, direction, purpose, doing, more, achievement, better, faster, forcing, chasing, change.
But completely lacking in contentment, presence and compassion.
You might be thinking — what?
How does running 50, 100, 200, 1000 miles align with being content? To many, it probably sounds like an entire, chaotic pursuit of more that never fills you up. To me, this isn’t my experience.. at all.
Let me use some words.
1- It’s not about going fast.
Ok — yes, sure. People compete. People try and run as far as they can as fast as they can. But it doesn’t matter how fast these distances are ran, relative to the individual, it needs to be somewhat “easy” running. It needs to be smooth, fluid and gentle.
Running for 100 miles — you can’t be going at a 9/10 effort. Or else you won’t get very far. So even those who run it fast, run it slow.
Life in the west for me, and likely for you — is not taught to be slow.
Life is fast, chaotic, busy. A never ending list of — I’ve not quite done enough yet. Of which, tends to lead to a perpetual state of discontentment. So we seek out more, in hope of finding contentment, only to get further and further away from it.
We’re funny things.
Running ultramarathons requires a tame, steady and gentle approach. Those who go aggressively full on, drop out and never make it to the end. They use all their beans, way too fast.
This inability to go fast, in my experience, has allowed me to just really “take a second”. To take in what’s around me, to be present to what’s here and to not be so god damn exhausted.
You have to slow down, to speed up.
And I love that.
It’s spilling over into the rest of my life, too. If I’m tired? I’ll take it easy. Have a nap, reduce my load, take some pressure off.
What I used to do if I was tired, was do my very best to push on through, argue with myself about the fact I was tired and just keep pushing on. But we soon break, burn out and become resentful beings.
We have a finite capacity, and this needs to be respected. If it’s not, we’ll know about it.
But I feel all of the emphasis in life, is on going faster. Do more things, faster. Get to more places, faster. Multitask, faster. Faster faster faster.
Rushing is stressful. Where are we really trying to get to anyway?
To bed? To do it all again?
Running ultras or just long distance or just even RUNNING slowly, is beautiful. There is a gentle flow that can be found, and an overarching reminder to just be here, now.
2 — To be where your feet are.
Simply — to be where your body is.
When running ultras, the second you get in your head and start thinking about —
How long left..
How will I do this?
What if..
That nauseating feeling..
Sore feet..
The woes of life
The past trauma
The worrying future
You’re no longer here.
And running becomes, at least for me, really bloody hard.
I start to suffer, struggle, strain.. and it feels like I’m pushing a heavy snowball made of lead, up a skyscraper, on ice. Only the heavy made of lead snowball also has sharp spikes on it and are ready to gauge my eyes out.
I await my death.
This requirement of being in the flow and being completely present, allows for such a joyful ease to come up. Running becomes effortless and smooth. Life becomes light.
For me, it gives me that feeling I describe earlier, of being so connected to the world — because I’m actually here. I’m not living in some augmented reality I’ve created in my head.
Thinking is exhausting. And it completely removes the selfless fluidity of being in the flow of running.
Running is hard when I’m not present. When I’m mentally arguing, resisting, dwelling, figuring out, analysing.
Running is easy when “me” disappears. My legs just run, I am nowhere to be found. The lights are on, but nobody is home.
Until I run into a tree, and we start all over again.
In life, there is a heavy reliance and normality placed on constant thinking.
Life has become thinking. Most of us live in our heads. When we’re at work, we’re wishing to be at home. When we’re at home, we’re thinking about work. We self measure, analyse, think about how we can change, be different, fix ourselves. We catastrophise, we daydream. So lost in excitement or dread of the future and lost in the regret or nostalgia of the past, we’re never truly alive to life right now.
From a young age, I have been a thinker. A figure-outer. Constant self- analysis, measuring. But be it a problem or an exciting future based thought — we’re never truly here.
Ultra-running, through the necessity of not suffering and also from just being in your body, immersed in nature, moving for a long time, allows this complete and utter state of flow, of presence.
Being truly, where your feet are.
When I started training for my first ultramarathon last year, the contrast of me running in the moutains on a Saturday vs me in every other time in my week, was so sharp.
It was almost like, Saturday mornings I could just let go of everything — but with that, came the best version of me. Light, joyful, gentle, effective and clear with a strong feeling of knowing what’s important and what matters.
All other times in the week, I was tense, self absorbed, judgemental, reactive, exhausted and serious. I was thinking, figuring, analysing. I wasn’t present. I was trying so hard to be good, loved, enough.
But the more I tried, the harder life became. The more I thought, the more confused I was.
This contrast became so clear to me.
So much so, that I booked a course to learn to meditate, and since have done many more and everyday make it my number one priority — to be here. My life is entirely different. Like, completely.
The nature of ultrarunning and just — simply being. Running in nature, in the mountains, beautiful green stuff, with good humans, chats, laughter, support — does so much good.
Gone is the serious woes of trying to “do life right”, and here is just being exactly and completely who you are, and unapologetically so. No effort, no trying.
Nothing to prove and nothing to hide. So lost in being that you forget about doing.
Wu Wei.
Ultrarunning gave me an insight into what life not lived inside your head is like. It gave me a strong desire to seek out more of life.
And that I have done, and continue to do — every damn day.
3 — To run for the sake of running.
I love it when my dog gets the zoomies. When she just randomly starts sprinting, like — everywhere.
Completely out of the blue, no reason, no purpose, other than she just feels like it.
We tend to do most things in exchange for another. We tend to work, to earn money. We tend to exercise, to lose fat, get fitter. We tend to network, to get more business. Blah blah.
Of course at the lowest level, we do everything for something, I’m sure.
To run for the sake of running, is the no1 reason I run.
Like dancing, singing. We just do it because it feels good. Just pure acts of being alive and expressing whatever wants to come out.
To do something because it just feels good, satisfying, like you’re scratching an itch — is so wholesomely incredible.
For me, running is the same. Sure, there is a a goal, a desire, a destination, an “end point” and other things on the way that I’m curious to experience, but to me it always comes back to just the pure and wholesome act of running, just to run.
Like I’m sure all other creative outlets do, it has caused me to realise the stupendous joy that comes from just doing things, for the sake of just doing them. Just being, less doing.
And even in moments, situations — life, where it is a transactional process, my perspective on the meaning is beginning to greatly shift.
To let go of my attachment to an outcome, to something happening, to forcing my way through life — and to just do, for the sake of doing, and letting everything come from that, is certainly different from my normal way of being, but it’s bringing a whole lot of freedom and lightness.
To run for a long time, you need to have some joy in the process of doing it. Even if the joy doesn’t look like joy. Even if it looks like hurty discomfort. Crying. Black toenails. Throwing up. To experience and continue through all that, sure requires a level of running for the sake of running.
I’ve always done some form of physical activity. I grew up playing football, had a few periods of breakdancing (I was not so good), tennis, netball, 100m sprint, long jump, all of this — was the joy of doing. Sure, there was of course a desire to be better, to improve, to see what I could do, where I could go, but with the childlike innocence of just playing.
Then as I got a little older, into my later teenage years, I stopped playing sport, I started caring about how I looked, and I started going to the gym. I wanted to look different. I trained hard, ate like I was being paid to feature in a Hollywood film and was so obsessed with how I looked and improving. I started running, to get faster and faster, became obsessed with splits, time, strava. Slowly, everything became about achieving. There was no more joy to be found in the doing.
I think so much of our modern perspective on “exercise” is like this. I’m a Personal Trainer and I primarily work with women to make them strong, pain free and to invite them back to the world of playing, exploring and seeing what they can do, free of expectation and pressure. Literally everyone I see, is bored, exhausted and fed up with this hamster wheel approach of exercise. Exercising to burn calories, to lose weight, as punishment, and something we just have to do.
No!
We have these wonderful bodies to interact with the world and see what we can do. To see what they can do. To respect them, love them, look after them. It’s so sad that “exercise” is this thing we have to do, this boring, hatred-infused act of painful hurting we must inflict on ourselves.
(Painful hurting inflicted on ourselves, sure — that’s ultra-running summed up lol)
To me, ultra-running was a direct path straight back into that exploration. It’s nothing to do with calories, aesthetics, achievement. It’s about being, exploring and seeing what is possible when I no longer attach to that voice in my head that tells me I can’t.
And to me, that is beautiful. It seems an antidote to many modern life’s antics. All transactional demand for something in return. How refreshingly great it is to just be.
I remember watching a video once where the great Alan Watts talked about Purposelessness. How we all cling onto everything needing and having purpose and meaning, because the idea of it not having any is existentially threatening to our ego.
But the purposelessness of things, when you go beyond your own self-importance, is liberatingly awesome.
To sing, dance, run, express without purpose.
In the west, this seems confusing and contradictory to what life is. But for me it sure sparks something Good.
4 — To dance with fear, doubt and “I can’t do that”.
I always used to struggle to push myself. To do hard things, because mentally — it felt like I just couldn’t do it. So many negative voices, feelings, experiences. All pointing towards “I just can’t do it”.
Then I wanted to prove to myself that I could. And with this, came a forceful aggressive approach of making myself do hard things, all the time. Rigidly disciplined, making me as brittle and fragile as a dead plant.
This had a place, it had a purpose, but it was more about proving, than exploring, than seeing what’s possible.
I feel we do a lot of things to prove to ourselves. To prove to others, and to hopefully silence them thoughts and feelings of doubt and insecurity we carry on our tired minds.
But this, in my experience, is a pointless pursuit. It’s an unfillable void. Them voices, thoughts, feelings, they never go away.
It’s part of being a human with a mind.
But for me, ultrarunning is a beautiful opportunity to explore, truly, what is possible when I go beyond them thoughts and feelings. Not get rid of them, not change them, but to just be with them.
To be capable even without confidence. To dance with fear, doubt, insecurity — but to do it anyway, to make a choice to keep going.
To me, it’s shown me that the “resistance”, the feeling of “I can’t do that”, is one to be followed. That the resistance isn’t a sign that says not for me, I can’t, but a sign that says YES. Not to prove, not to show — but to see.
To see how different life can be when you’re not subject to your mind.
Running is a wonderful way of magnifying these thoughts, feelings, ideas and bringing them into the light.
Your body will keep going. It will keep, keep going. But our beliefs, ideas of what’s possible, what we can handle, cope with, do, achieve — will forever be stopping us before we need to.
I remember running my first 50 mile ultramarathon last year, being 20 miles in and feeling like my quads had actually, exploded. I didn’t understand how they would cope with another 30, I’ve never felt my legs like it.
But, they did. Obviously. The second I engaged in the mental stories, arguing, analysing, it was painful. The second I stopped, it was fine. It was just a sensation, a feeling.
So so so many other moments like this, which have caused an incredible transfer and transformation into the rest of my life.
It’s given me so much light and awareness onto where I’m telling myself stories that aren’t true. Where I’m limiting myself by invented rules and ideas. It gives such excitement to see what happens beyond them.
In life, we’re told and brought up to be good. To do well, be successful, and we’ll be loved and liked.
And so we do. We strive, we achieve, we try so hard. Only to still never really feel like we can never do or be enough.
Them voices of not enough, guilt, regret, worry, self-defeating thoughts take over, and we lose sight of who we are and what our experience of life could truly be like.
We spend so long playing mental tennis. We feel guilty so we try to please. We please and so we feel resentful for our lack of time for us. We don’t feel loved so we seek out love outside of ourselves. We don’t feel worthy so we chase more achievement. Endless, infinite, games.
The same applies with ultrarunning. Succumb, listen and continuously abide by them thoughts and feelings and well, you can’t run.
But see them for what they are and go beyond them, rise above them and see who you are and what is possible when you’re not so lost in your mind?
And bam — you just ran 50 miles. 100 miles. 200 miles. 5 miles. 10 miles. 5k. Whatever it is.
You just did what you didn’t think you could do.
But not by playing mental tennis, not by forcing, struggling, proving.
By letting go and just, being.
5 — To be ok with being a bit shit.
We do things because we’re good at them. We don’t do things we’re not good at.
Scared of looking a failure, stupid, an embarassment. So we never try, and we never see.
Ultra-running has been an amazing invitation to completely drop knowing what I’m doing.
Because, well, when I started — I had, and still don’t really have, absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
I’m currently training for GB Ultra’s Scotland 100, a 106 mile ultramarathon across the Southern Upland Way in Scotland — and I honestly have no idea what I’m doing.
No idea what happens beyond mile 50. No idea if I can, If I’ll make it. But willing to give it a go and see.
And I’ve met so many other runners with the same, open, ego-free mind of being ok with what happens, and being open to getting it wrong, to “failing”.
There is no certainty. Anything can happen. But the fact that so much of it is, really, out of your control — makes it exciting. It makes it freeing. It’s like surrendering all your need to know, do and control to the higher force of nature.
Who knows, your stomach might be bad. You might be more tired. You might have a mentally intense day. The weather might be horrendous. Who. Knows.
But to be ok with not knowing, but being open to experiencing — is so exciting. It’s new, it’s refreshing, it’s open.
And it’s freeing to admit and accept that. There’s such a light, emptiness within the community of outdoors people, especially ultra-runners — of dropping the ego and being taken by the wind (literally).
When immersing yourself in the outdoors, it gives great perspective that we’re not in control. We have to go with the flow of nature.
In a world where we all pretend to know what we’re doing, it’s fun to let that idea go.
To stop trying to prove, hide and just be a human being existing and moving. That’s fun and freeing.
6 — Oh, the simplicity.
I remember reading once the Kenyan’s have a word for this equation (btw, I actually can’t remember the word and google isn’t helping me lol, if you know it — please inform me!):
But it means (apparently):
Simple + Discipline = Joy
I. Love. That.
To run ultramarathons requires them two things and results in the last thing.
You need to keep it simple.
You need to be present, listen to your body and fuel it appropriately.
Them 3 things are truly all you need. And even, be present — and the two will follow.
The simplicity of just being an animal. Moving, eating and resting. Absorbed in the total presence of now, nature, the universe.
You need to be disciplined.
But not the rigid, brittle dead plant discipline I was talking of earlier. Not following strict rigid rules despite circumstances requiring otherwise.
But the discipline to prioritise what’s important over what’s urgent.
The discipline to be present now, over the mind’s desire of everything else.
The discipline to run, even when you don’t really want to.
The discipline to eat, regularly, even when you don’t want to.
The discipline to rest, even when you don’t want to.
The discipline to keep going, even when you don’t want to.
Them two things, the simplicity and the disciplined nature of running — make it so joyful.
And what a transfer to life this has.
I know personally, the more simple my life is, the happier I am.
The less things I have. The less rules I make. The less expectations I create.
The importance of prioritising what matters to me, not what matters to everyone else and the expectations of society — keeps it simple.
And the discipline to do so, makes it all joyful.
The second simplicity transforms into complexity and discipline becomes rigidity or urgency, life becomes stressful.
What a beautiful thing.
We chase so much. We want so much. We do so much.
But really —
We all just want a joyful life.
And oh, how that can come from keeping it simple and being disciplined to your highest desire.
How great that is.
Ultra-running encompasses all of that.
You have to keep it simple. You have to have discipline.
Not complex, not rigid, not urgent.
Simple and disciplined.
Joyous.
You don’t need to run an ultra to experience any of the above, by the way. But for me, it was a vehicle to a door that has opened up my experience of life in ways I could never have imagined or thought possible.
I love this sport. Which to me, isn’t even a sport. It’s just life.
Going slower,
Being present,
To not get attached to achievement and the outcome,
Letting go of your ego and the need to prove and hide,
Being totally, yourself,
Keeping it simple,
Being disciplined.
Ultrarunning, the antidote to the chaotic franticness of modern life.
Everyone is welcome. Please come join!
