What do you think about when you run?
When you're out on the trail for hours, what sorts of things float through your mind? These are the different personas that run through my head.
This week, and honestly as of late, I’ve been struggling with content ideas. I feel obligated to get a post out, but I feel dry and underwhelmed with my brainstorming capabilities. Maybe it’s because there’s a lot going on. Maybe there’s been an influx of so much content lately that I’m burnt out. Is my ADHD hyperfixation with running starting to dry and phase out? It’s something I always worry about. I love to move from thing thing, but I don’t know…there’s something so special and unique about this sport. I think it’s the creativity and ability to experience an activity in a new light every single time you do it. New trails, new rocks, new dirt, different dirt, different rocks, different weather, great nutrition, almost shit my pants, peaceful creeks, roaring falls, amazing shoes, I hate these shoes, the list goes on.
The experience can always be different. There’s always something new to experience and something new to talk about, which is why I think my hyperfixation will last and prevail. Perhaps I might start to even refer to it as just my lifestyle now, and no longer a phase…that’s something I’d really like.
Now that you’re up to speed with where I’ve been in terms of my content game as of late, between the exhaustion of training, working full time, and being a dad, I had something I wanted to chat about…
This is what I think about when I run. Get ready to take a step inside the wild world of my brain. It’s going to be a ride. If you feel vulnerable and willing, let me know what kinds of thoughts run through your head as you go out on those long efforts.
The Daydreamer
This might be the most embarrassing one. It’s the most far-fetched, idealistic, and dream-worthy content that runs through my mind. Ever since I was young, I massively day dreamed. When I was young, it was about playing baseball at the Major League level — specifically for the Boston Red Sox. It would be bottom of the ninth, tied game, 2 outs, full count, and I’d hit a walk off home run to win the game. I also grew up a skateboarder, so there were many study halls where I envisioned a buzzer 360 flip down a massive gap to take home X-Games gold.
Well, spoiler alert, I never became a pro MLB player…but I haven’t seem to shed those daydreams, they’ve just changed in terms of their content in my adulthood.
When I go for long runs, or sometimes even short runs, I find Ryan at the start line of some of the biggest races in the world. UTMB, Western States, etc. It’s usually a race that’s current and going on soon, or just happened. Recently, there’s been a lot of Western States daydreams because that race just happened.
My daydreams usually have no correlation to my performance in reality. I’m not fast, I’ve only ever raced up to a 50k, and my experience is limited. But man do I love to dream. I dream about ascending the escarpment, flying through aid stations, battling through the high country, crossing the Rucky Chucky river crossing, and finding my way down the streets and onto the track as I cross the finish line. Place doesn’t matter to me, it’s just the ability to be out on a historic course, doing something hard, and finishing it.
This is the daydreamer.
The Problem Solver
I’d be a big ole liar if I said work wasn’t on my mind a lot. When I’m not running or daydreaming, I work full time in Marketing Tech for Expedia. My role consists of leading massively complex technical projects from a solutions perspective. This means that there’s a lot of times where I have a problem I need to solve, but I don’t have anything to go off of in terms of how I accomplish it. It involves a creative brain to think outside the box and essentially develop the working solution.
When I’m out of runs, I wish I could say I completely disconnect from work and don’t give it a thought. However, that’s not true in the slightest. Sometimes I’m able to do so, but often times my runs are spent thinking of work solutions.
In fact, running can be a creative box for me. A long run becomes a little room I can enter and start to hash out ideas. I work with various coding languages and a plethora of data, so often times I will brainstorm in my head different ideas and ways to accomplish a problem I’ve been working all day.
It’s a great feeling when I come up with an idea in my head and then get really excited to try and implement it when I get back home. Sometimes it is annoying though because I’m so impatient and eager to try out my idea, that I want to cut my run short…but I battle with myself and force myself to keep going.
This is the problem solver.
The Shoe Obsessor
Shoes, shoes, shoes, omg, shoes.
If you’ve been following along with my Substack for the past 6 months, then you know shoes were bound to pop up in my thoughts. I don’t know what it is, I just love shoes. They are the little vessels that take us to amazing places.
I spend A LOT of time on my runs thinking about new shoes I want to try, ideas for new shoes, how I would have designed a specific shoe differently, and so forth.
I’ll give a call back to the daydreamer and say he sometimes sneaks in with the shoe obsessor because I’ll daydream about being given the opportunity of wearing prototype shoes. It’s really fun. The shoe obsessor loves to come out to play especially when I have a new pair on the way, which right now, is the Topo Vistas, the North Face VECTIV Pro 3s, and the New Balance Fuel Cell Rebel v5s. All of these have comes across my running mind in the past week as I’ve gotten outside.
This is the shoe obsessor.
The Anxious One
I have anxiety.
I am no longer afraid to admit it. I have it bad sometimes. I take medication for it because it got to the point where it just inundated me and all my thoughts. It’s health related.
Unfortunately, sometimes it likes to join me on my runs if I’m being honest. It usually pops up in the form of my heart rate, or a little niggle.
I’ll have an anxious thought when I notice my heart rate a little higher than normal and I’ll start to obsess over it and really worry about it. I know that my watch heart rate monitor isn’t the most accurate, but it still bugs me out when I see it a tad different than normal. It’s sad, but it really consumes my thoughts.
Sometimes it’s not my heart rate, but an ache in my back? Do I have cancer? A tumor? Or a headache? Brain tumor? What’s wrong with me? It’s always worst case scenario.
If I’m being 1000% honest, when I ran my first 50k, it was amazing…but I did have anxious thoughts about getting rhabdo and dehydration. Sometimes I’m able to fight the noise and push it out, and it’s truly gotten much better, but this is definitely a personality that does come out to play from time to time.
This is the anxious one. F you, anxious one. You suck ass.
The Not-Feeling-It Guy
This guy also sucks and I don’t like him. But…he does show up every now and then. Occasionally I’ll go out for a run and I just don’t want to be out there. Maybe it’s been a long week at work, bad sleep from the crazy kids waking up every hour, or my body just requires more recovery. There’s times where when I’m running, I’m just over it and ready to be done.
I’ve always tried to have the attitude that if I can just run 1 mile, that’s good enough and better than nothing.
Sometimes, the Not-Feeling It Guy will show up at the beginning of the run, but I can work him out of my head and replace him with someone else. It’s usually when the warmup portion of getting my body going and the blood starts to flow, but eventually I find a rhythm and vibe and I’m glad I pushed through.
I think we all see this guy from time to time, and it’s ok. Time on feet is time on feet.
This is the not-feeling-it guy…and yeah, he sucks. Get lost bro.
The Creator
My corporate job might be highly technical, data oriented, and operational focused, but I was born a creative person. I do find creativity in my job, but I also find it outside of work more-so.
In college I majored in English Creative Writing and Screenwriting, and had the opportunity to work for a couple of major movie studios. However, these days I find myself exploring creativity with running by the very thing I’m doing right now…writing. I love coming up with written words and new content ideas. I also have a podcast now with my two close friends, and I love to create simple Instagram reels and other social content.
These are some of the things I think about on runs. What Substack post do I want to write next? How can I do something a little out of the box? In fact, the idea for this post came to me when I was on my 14 mile long run over the weekend. Sometimes I dream up post ideas, other times I think about topics and things to chat on the podcast, or other times I have an idea for a new Instagram reel. It all just depends, but I do a lot of thinking and creating out on my runs. It’s actually a really nice incubator with uninterrupted time for creating!
This is the creator.
Who are you on your runs?
I wonder if you might resonate with any of these personas, or maybe, you have someone that I don’t have. If you’re willing, please please please drop some comments and tell me all about it. I love reading the comments and chatting with you all.
Thanks for taking the time to read about something a little more personal to me. So when I’m out on the run, you maybe get a better idea of what’s coursing through my brain. Is it all sane? Nah. But this is just me being real!
Catch ya on the next one!
— Ryan from Into the Wild
I love this. So much so it’s in my own post ideas list.
Daydreaming is definitely a good one. A career coach I worked with for a while would probably prefer to say we’re visualising 😅
I also find that I solve problems when I’m out for a run or in the pool too. I believe it’s got something to do with not actively thinking about the problem any more makes it easier to solve. Sometimes the solution comes to me mid run, but it can also be sitting back down to tackle it with a clearer head that makes the difference too.
I don’t think of myself as particularly creative, but I have lots of big ideas. So the ideas guy comes for runs quite often. Thinking about ideas for posts, adventures, potential running event ideas. All sorts of things that get added to a list but then I don’t have the execution to actually pull them off.
When I do track or tempo sessions I find myself mainly just thinking about what I’m doing or playing little games with myself. Pushing to the end of the next rep. How’s the technique? Do I feel like I’ve picked up the pace? (I love to try and guess my pace for a rep then compare to what I actually did)
Running trails there’s also a lot of thinking about where you’re going. What’s under your feet? Shit is that a snake? Nawww look at the little Joey kangaroo. Wow those birds sound nice. Look at that view!
So I find that being in the moment and just soaking all of that in can be a magical thing too.
I also think it’s important to note that it’s not necessarily just one of these thought patterns that are in your head while your run. Sometimes it is. But often I find I’m jumping around between them all as well.
Letting yourself relax and letting your brain do what it needs to do can bring so much mental clarity and peacefulness to your day - that’s a huge component of what gets me out the door.
Great post, as always.
I have a condition called Aphantasia which means I don't have the ability to visualize so the daydreaming isn't something I can relate to, but it also means that I am pretty much always experiencing the present moment. Whether I am out for 6 miles or 16 miles, each step is brand new and offers me a unique experience. I may have run a trail dozens of times, but as I round each corner I am amazed - it is familiar but not something that I could have described to anyone with any clarity. It also means that I need to have some sort of navigation device on me or I would be lost even in familiar surroundings. Since this has always been my reality it doesn't scare me, however my friends sometimes get a bit freaked out if they haven't seen me for a mile or so on the trail.