What West Point Taught Me About Running, What Running Taught Me About Life
One of the biggest reasons I struggled at West Point was my ability to run. It didn’t matter if it was running sprints at football practice or distance running for routine morning physical fitness training. When the going got tough I broke.
I’m ashamed to admit this, as this is something I’ve mostly kept to myself. However, I now understand that I had to learn this lesson in order to succeed in life, and sharing this lesson can help others.
In hindsight, I should not have struggled with running when I got to West Point. I was a three sport athlete in high school. What’s more, I got varsity letters playing football, wrestling, and track and I was also the captain of both the football and wrestling teams. All three of these sports require endurance, and to do it at the highest levels endurance running is a must.
When I got to West Point, I expected to be starting on the football team by my junior year. The coaches had high expectations for me too, and treated me like I was a top recruit. Unfortunately, my lack of endurance changed my fate.
Natural Talent + Low Expectations = Low Pain Threshold
The fact of the matter is that in high school I relied on my natural talent for all my achievements. I was a good local athlete. My parents and coaches were satisfied with me being a good local athlete. I was all-county in both football and wrestling, but not all-state and not even close to all-American. I was okay with this. My parents and coaches were proud of me, and that was all that mattered.
Therefore, I never did anything extra. My natural talent was all I needed to meet low expectations. For this reason, I never tried to build my endurance beyond my natural abilities. In addition, my pain threshold was far too low to be anything better than good locally.
When I would train and started to feel the pain, I would let up. I thought other people who could go longer and harder didn’t feel the pain I was feeling. I thought it was natural for them to endure longer and harder.
When I got to West Point, I saw other cadets whose endurance limits were far beyond my capabilities. I thought it was something wrong with me. Maybe I had undiagnosed asthma or maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this type of rigor. Any excuse I could find worked to settle my ego. It took me 10 years to figure out the real reason.
What Running Taught Me About Life
When I turned 30, for the first time since college I ran over 100 miles in a single month. I wanted to get in the best shape of my life, and I succeeded in doing this. Up until this point, I thought running was something my body was not built for. After I graduated from college, I would run from time to time but never over 2 miles and never more than 2 or 3 times a week. But when I turned 30, I gradually worked my way up to 9 and 10 mile runs, 6 days a week.
My initial goal was to walk for 60 minutes, 5 days a week. In the beginning I would run for 10 minutes and walk for 50. Then I worked my way up to run for 20 and walk for 40. Until finally I got up to running for the full 60 minutes. At that point I stopped running for time and started running for distance. I got up to 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 mile runs. As a result, I lost 50 pounds during this process and grew stronger than ever. I ran a half-marathon race and I was the best version of myself for the first time in my life.
Surprisingly, as my endurance improved, the pain did not get any less. Every run from my first until this day requires me to fight through pain. When I ask other successful distance runners about pain, they tell me the same thing. The pain in your chest, legs, back, ankles, and knees never really goes away. The more you run, the more comfortable you get with being uncomfortable. That’s the only secret.
What I Needed to Compete Better at West Point
What I was missing when I got to West Point was experience enduring positive training pain. Positive training pain is training to intentionally create nonthreatening pain with the goal to push beyond fatigue. The best coaches know how to educate athletes on why this is needed. In addition, the best coaches know how to incorporate this into practice.
At some point, most athletes with high expectations learn how to self-motivate to put themselves through positive training pain on their own. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn this lesson until I turned 30.
My curse of having enough talent to meet low expectations limited my pain threshold. What’s more, I naively believed that some people didn’t feel pain the way I did. I believe this combination limited my potential as a college athlete. I’m thankful that running for endurance and distance taught me the truth.
Pain in Athletics is No Different than Pain in Life
My chance at being a world class college athlete is gone. However, my chance at being world class in life is not. When it comes to enduring pain, life is no different than athletics. Everyone faces pain. Some people let up and others turn up when they face it. Those who turn up in the face of pain don’t feel any less pain than those who let up. Turning up when facing pain is a learned behavior and requires conditioning.
This is why I believe the best thing a parent, coach, or individual can do to prepare for the future is use positive training pain in their routine.