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Run for Your Life
- zimpenfish 6y agoArticle title seems to be "Essay: Run for Your Life" and barely even mentions CEOs.
- bovermyer 6y agoI like having intact, functional knees far too much to run regularly.
- kevinstubbs 6y agoThere's actually evidence that running regularly strengthens your knees. https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a32598733/is-running-bad-for-your-knees/ https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a32598733/is-ru...
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoIt seems, as with many things, that trick is to use it, but not too much, and if you hurt yourself take a break, but get back to it once you're done. My favourite parts of that article are the comments - I believe someone is trying to log in by repeatedly typing their password into a comment box.
- kevinstubbs 6y agoPretty much. It's also quite important to strengthen muscles that work in tandem with the knees, get your vitamins, be smart with your running shoes etc. I've gone through my fair share of injuries to ramp up to 100km/week on pavement and had to a learn a new 'trick' every time to get past it and onto the next limiting injury. Also, "if you hurt yourself take a break" is interestingly not always true! Some injuries will basically not improve by resting - patellofemoral pain syndrome for example. For some other injuries, you can still keep going while injured as long as the rate of recovery is greater than the damage you are doing by exercising more. Injuries are not so black and white, and some very painful ones can sometimes be suddenly fixed without taking time off.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago> Also, "if you hurt yourself take a break" is interestingly not always true! Good to know. With COVID shutting down all the gyms I've taken up running to replace my regular workouts, and I'm still learning these things. The difficulty there will be to figure out how to correctly diagnose those injuries.
- xur17 6y agoI started running a few years ago, and my knees feel better than they did before I started running.
- mikestew 6y agoI run regularly and I, too, enjoy my functional knees. Oh, wait, you were going with some "running hurts your knees" trope, weren't you? Apologies. But if you're waiting for an athletic endeavor that leaves you perfectly healthy even if you do it wrong, well, enjoy the couch I guess. Or possibly swimming.
- mam2 6y agoOr hiking
- mantas 6y agoHiking ain't guaranteed to leave you healthy either.
- bovermyer 6y agoYou're making a lot of assumptions here, and you seem to have taken my comment as some kind of personal attack. To give you more context - in my specific personal case, running would damage my knees more than it would give me any kind of pleasure or added fitness.
- zimpenfish 6y agoIf it's any consolation, I'm in the same boat where running would not be any kind of sane option for the current state of my knees.
- blackearl 6y agoYeah swimming, no need to act like it's obscure or the only options are running or riding the couch.
- 01100011 6y agoDepending on why your knees hurt, you might find activity is the cure. I went on a long hike once and hurt my knees. They wouldn't stop hurting so I took a break from hiking. Months went by and I couldn't get them to stop hurting. Finally I just got fed up and started hiking again. My knees have been fine ever since(years later). Many older athletes will tell you to never stop moving. The pain starts when you take a break. If you don't overcome it, you'll never move again.
- muska3 6y agoNo comment on the article, but the website is a beautiful example of a text first design.
- SilasX 6y agoHow so? It still has the super annoying fixed header/footers that I have to kill with special tools.
- frank2 6y agoI agree. I don't know why there is not more outcry against the "position:fixed" attribute or whatever the correct technical term for sticky elements is. I use a Chrome extension to try to get rid of them, but the extension does not work on some popular sites.
- novok 6y agoThe company that made it has a pretty confusing portfolio demonstration website although: https://www.madebysix.com/ https://www.madebysix.com/
- DavidVoid 6y agoI like the way they position the footnotes and it is always nice to see web articles that are typeset well (serif font, old style numerals, correct quotation marks and dashes, etc.). Kinfolk (the magazine) is known for its clean aesthetics and lack of ads, so anything else would be antithetical to their brand.
- 01100011 6y agoI've always felt that endurance activities, anything longer than a few hours, build a sort of toughness that you just don't get from regular sports. I've been on many hikes where it's an all-out mental battle to keep going. Beyond that, there is a physical aspect of pushing through, hour after hour, with little rest and food. It's tough on your joints and energy reserves. I'd encourage everyone to consider pushing yourself. It's amazing what the human body, even an old one, can do. Don't compete with others. Compete with yourself. See how many amazing things you can do while you still have your body.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoNot arguing at all, I've been on hikes I didn't think I could overcome only to find myself at the peak, but I also think that everyone should put themselves under a bar they don't think they can squat and find that overwhelming intensity, focus, and strength inside themselves to succeed at that as well. Overcoming the adversity of all sorts of physical challenges is an experience worth having.
- xarope 6y agoI've done both, i.e. endurance events (triathlons, marathons, ultras) and powerlifting/weightlifting (yes, olympic weightlifting). They are different mindsets. Training for endurance events require a level of suffering e.g. when I did the 777 (it's a small list of people who have done it - not as small as the barkley though! - so it's easy for me to prove I've done it if anybody is skeptical), it was both mentally forcing myself to train to run 2 marathons a day, as well as the physical effort/pain (I have terrible feet). Another nightmare was the MdS, 250km in the sahara. Forcing myself to run a half marathon with a 10kg pack in the middle of day (for the heat acclimatization)... wouldn't wish that to my worst enemy. Training for powerlifting/weightlifting is a different type of suffering (I have medalled in my weight class and age group). You KNOW you can't just dump 10% on top of a PR (whether weight or rep) and "gut-it-out", the way you can gut-it-out an extra 10-20 minutes on a run/cycle/swim. I guess it's like topping out on a certain speed for a certain time, in a run. If you can run 16min 5kms, you know how hard it is to get below that, say sub 15mins. It's not "EASY" to cut your time by 10% in the 5km by just running more mileage. So it requires a different mindset, willingness to analyze, change training etc. I think both are complements. Of course, if you have only done one and not the other, it's easy to say "you should try endurance running, you'd be surprised", or "you should try to lift heavy weights, you'd be surprised". Most people will never hit that limit, and won't know what it means in terms of the effort required to try to transcend those limits. Oh, and BTW, I do mountaineering for "fun", because on the one-hand the views you get are amazing, and on the other hand, the preparation required for it is a microcosm of what, IMHO, you need to do to succeed in life - hard work, persistence, long term vision etc. And you get to do it with friends, lol (climbing stairs with a 50lb bag, what fun)
- redelbee 6y agoI used to run ultramarathons and I’ve since switched to cycling. I find that I injure myself less on the bike, probably because of my very flat feet and unwillingness to mix in the strength training that would make me less injury prone when running. Running isn’t bad for your knees (or any other body part) but doing it a lot and not paying attention to issues is a recipe for disaster. I ended up injuring myself repeatedly because I was chasing the feeling that I got from running. I’m still chasing that feeling on the bike. I don’t get quite as zen on the bike. I think it’s because there is more speed involved (going into my mind at 20+ mph isn’t a good idea) and because I’m not getting the proprioception feedback (there’s just something about ambulating through space that’s hypnotic). I still get the post-exercise benefits and I’m hoping to chase down more of the zen as I go farther and farther on the bike. I think the article has some dubious reasoning when coming up for justifications for why ultramarathons tend to attract rich white guys. I think the biggest elements in any endurance sport are time and overall nutrition. If you don’t have the time to train and the resources to fuel yourself consistently with high quality food you’re probably not going to enjoy training and participating in ultra endurance events, no matter how much you “yearn for a rawer form of human experience” or want to exercise your “control-and-conquer mentality.” Societal inequality means that the people who have an excess of time and money can participate, hence the rich white guys. I’m grateful to be one of the lucky ones who can participate, even though I probably only qualify for one half of the “rich white guy” descriptor. I’m fortunate to be self employed, which gives me a lot of control over my schedule. Final thought: The anecdote about the Kenyan professional is ridiculous. The “motivated” amateur calls out the professional for quitting the race when he injured his toe and says it’s because “he wasn’t there to suffer,” then goes on to insinuate that the professional only wanted to feel good. In reality the Kenyan professional relies on running as his profession (one which likely gives him a better standard of living than almost any other opportunity in his country) and rightly wants to protect his body as it needs to be in good working order to do his job. What kind of person puts down a professional for looking after himself so he can feel better about running a long distance?
- jarnagin 6y ago> "Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!" I cried, patting him affectionately on the head with a mallet, "how far you really are from the pure love of the sport—you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. Excerpted from “The Perfect Game”, by G.K. Chesterton
- 762236 6y agoThe author is confusing pain and suffering --- they are not the same. When you push your body to its limits, you will suffer, such as forcing yourself to continue running despite fatigue, but without damaging yourself. If you are feeling pain, such as a hurt toe (like in the article), or due to a joint problem, then you have to stop to recover. Pain does not scale when you push your body to its limits, and can't be ignored. A typical off-the-couch athlete can successfully ignore pain because they'll go back to the couch and recover for weeks or so. An endurance athlete that ignores pain will just cause a larger injury that needs even more recovery time in the long run, and since the catabolic destruction of fitness during recovery is exponential, you come out at a disadvantage by ignoring pain. A couple days to recover vs weeks to recover. If you are in the middle of an event and suffer some type of injury, you stop --- continuing despite the injury is stupid (and so many people are taught that they are losers if they stop, which is so dumb --- continue and hurt your performance at the next event).
- skinkestek 6y agoIsn't pain the thing you feel and suffering what you do afterwards or something? I.e. once I hit my toe I cannot avoid the pain but I don't necessarily need to go around suffering all day? I.e. sometimes when I fry something hot oil hits my hands. The pain is immediate but I laugh at it instead of going around suffering under it. Or am I mixing up some words? (English isn't my first language.)
- vcg3rd 6y agoNot all pain is equal. As in anything else one learns the difference between discomfort and muscle fatigue/exhaustion and injury. I ran a half-marathon in freezing rain, and my feet started blistering badly about halfway. If I had been doing a marathon and my feet blistered that badly between 6 and 10, I probably would have dropped out, but it wasn't really bad until about mile 10, and I'd have had to have walked to the finish anyway, in freezing rain! Most elites will stop and accept a DNF (Did Not Finish) if they a are really injured, and most fitness/recreational runners get a good sense of when it's the mind and not the body really screaming quit. It's like getting your breath knocked out of you. It's scary as hell the first time, but it's not a heart attack. There's lots of good, sound research on endurance running: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance Life Is a Marathon: A Memoir of Love and Endurance Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself As an example of how running has impacted, not a CEO, but an international award-winning novelist, short story writer, and essayist see: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. And, related to the topic in general, see: The Beauty of Discomfort: How What We Avoid Is What We Need Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
- motohagiography 6y agoRunning seems like its own thing. I often suspect runners are doing a kind of public penance. Not as many CEOs or executives sailing, skiing, playing rugby, let alone power lifting or martial arts these days. If choice of sport is a reflection of the culture, I'd be interested in what it might mean that so many of the people we elevate have taken up running.
- goldenchrome 6y agoMy theory is that long distance running and being a CEO are similar pursuits. They both involve using a great deal of willpower over a very long period of time to achieve results. I’ve found that a CEO isn’t the smartest person at a company, but they are the person willing to eat the most shit in order to earn money and respect. Once you get into the rhythm of being a CEO, most of the difficulty is existential. Out of any sport, long distance running most closely matches that mindset.
- DoingIsLearning 6y agoRunning is an activity that exposes you to the fact that you _can_ push past far beyond what you initially thought was possible. It's a raw realisation that your body was designed to take so much more than what you use it for. There is something really primal about that. I don't know enought about the science around it but I suspect it will be a combination of hormonal transients plus the _hypnotic_ repetitive motion (it becomes almost near 'sensory deprivation' after a long enough distance). I've played/tried most of the sports you listed but nothing I tried (expect for maybe swimming) really mimicks the intensity of the running experience. I can definitely see how that empowerment feeling and insights (plus the runners high) would appeal to C-level people who typically self identify as having high grit and drive.
- cafard 6y ago1. I run to enjoy myself. 2. When I was in my 20s, running races, I seldom hit the 2/3 mark without wondering why I was there, and half-promising myself I wouldn't do it again. 3. I don't get the feeling as often as I did in my 20s, but there is a great feeling when you are in condition, fall into a rhythm, and feel as you could run like that all day. 4. It is the perfect sport for a lazy man. You don't need to book a court, find a tennis partner or spotter, drive to the slopes, etc. You just lace up the shoes and head out.
- adv0r 6y agorelevant news: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/acute-bronchitis-brings-runner-courtney-dauwalters-record-breaking-attempt-on-colorado-trail-to-a-halt https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/acute-bronc...
- shard 6y agoI wonder if this article from Kinfolk was found by the OP after reading the recent article posted here about the Three Bay Areas, which used Kinfolk as an example of a snobbish lifestyle magazine, and went to check it out. I for one have never heard of Kinfolk until that article.
- frequentnapper 6y agosounds like masochism to me.