ID0001: From Team Sports to Trail Running - Leaving the Coach, Taking On… Ourselves
The whistle sounded, and the coach called out orders. Pressure grew. For years, the author spent time in organized team sports - these sports offered fellowship, contests along with a routine. The routine controlled much of life. Practices occurred three times each week. Games took place every weekend. Tournaments used whole months. Life seemed to circle the team's calendar. A change occurred. Work as well as facts of life entered the picture. The fixed system no longer fit. Many people sought peace in the wild areas where they ran on trails.
The allure is undeniable. Freedom! Run when you want, where you want. No set practice times, no weekend games dictating your life. Just you, the trails, and the sweet, sweet liberation from organized sports. It’s glorious. For a while. Blissful, unstructured miles. A newfound appreciation for solitude, for nature, for the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other. It’s all so… unstructured.
And then, the contradiction appears. The distances slowly lengthen. The quiet thoughts of "perhaps an ultra?" turn into loud statements. The independence starts to feel common. Long runs happen on the weekends, because a person trains. Early mornings occur, because the paths call. Nutrition gets careful planning, because running out of energy happens to beginners. The unsystematic way of life begins to organize itself. But now, you act as the coach. You establish the unachievable mileage aims. You yell at yourself, inside, to push harder. You have exchanged the coach for a far more demanding leader - yourself.
This situation presents a general irony. We escape the power of team schedules, only to willingly take on the power of training plans. We discard the coach's whistle, only to hear our own inner voice tell us to go out and "conquer those hills." We trade team dinners for... well, we likely still have team dinners, but now we spend time thinking about eating many carbohydrates. The dedication remains, but it points inward - this dedication goes to the growing mileage, the hard-to-get personal record, the present challenge of the next path, and the next next to the next.
So, perhaps trail running does not involve avoiding a system. Perhaps it means choosing our own type of pleasant self caused difficulty. And perhaps, just perhaps, that is exactly what we looked for all along. We do not escape the coach. We just become our own, slightly more self punishing, form of one.
< Back to Blog
