I’ve just finished reading a very interesting book evaluating some potential trajectories of where our species could be headed: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. There were many eye opening insights for me in this book. One of them was how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing and how it is very likely that in the not-too-distant future very very many jobs will be performed by robots and algorithms. The author made the point that human beings are a dominant species because of superior data processing skills but we will soon be surpassed in all areas on this feat by computers. Being able to take in all the variables and come up with the best solution, whether it’s buying/selling stocks, investing a company’s marketing dollars, making an informed legal decision, deciding what medical treatment someone needs, will be way more efficiently done by an algorithm. That means that all the soft skill jobs which surround these positions (managers, assistants, directors) will also become obsolete.

This got me thinking a lot about coaching (specifically for athletic pursuits.) It seems obvious that this could be one of the first roles to become obsolete – and for some it already has. We have watches which track our heart rate, power output, sleep, nutrition and our related performances. We have websites which can provide us with advanced technical training schedules and advice. As these devices become more sophisticated and personalized it is not unreasonable to see a future where all performance athletes are “coached” by an algorithm specific to their physical and genetic make-up as it relates to their goals. Based on my current resting heart rate, hormone levels, performance history and the time of day, I should do hill repeats today if I want to race my fastest 10K in three weeks. But you should do weights to maximize your training value. And our other training buddy should do an easy run with some pick-ups.

Kudos from my watch.

It sounds like the perfect system. But there is something missing there. I am a running coach and I have been coached by various different people over the years. I’ve also been a competitive runner for long enough to pretty much know what I need to do in order to reach my goals (close to 30 years if you must know.) The biggest value that my coaches have offered me is not my precise technical training plan, but their human-ness. By this I mean, I’ve benefitted by just having someone – a person – in my corner. When I’m in the middle of a race, I would much rather look up and see my coach than look down and read my watch. It motivates me differently. It’s the same thing after a race: I want to tell my coach how I did because he or she was invested in me and that matters. They care. My watch buzzing “you reached you goal!” feels a bit hollow.

The problem, as I’ve discovered with my own coaching, is that providing this level of service has a numbers cap. Really caring about someone takes a fair amount of time and energy. It is immensely rewarding, but it is not simple. It can’t be replaced by an algorithm which is “applicable to all.” Finding a good coach who cares about you might get you similar results to a plan off the internet, but it is worth so so much more. When you share a problem, worry or defeat with another human, it literally takes the weight off you. When you share a success or joy with someone who cares, it amplifies it. I don’t know if the smartest brains in Silicone Valley can come up with an algorithm that can replicate that.

Maybe this will be our future. As our jobs are all replaced by robots and artificial intelligence we’ll all start investing our time in personal growth, development and athletic goals.  And the workforce will be made up of the human coaches who help us get there.

Coaching some people I care about.

I’ll be the first to admit that making decisions is not my strong point. I don’t think many people would refer to me as ‘opinionated’. I tend to see all sides of an argument or story, even when I’m actually trying to pick a side. When forced to make a decision, I first do a lot of listening, gather information, mull it over (usually throughout a few runs), chat about it, do a gut check, and then finally make a choice. I know life moves faster than that, so I can and do make quicker decisions, I’m just not that invested in them. I see this as a strength as I can change directions easily and with little fuss. As the wind blows…

However I do think about how I am supposed to make the “right” decision, especially when it comes to conflicting priorities, like work, family, and my own athletic pursuits. Here is an example I’m struggling with; I find longer tempo workouts particularly challenging on my own, and therefore I don’t do them as often or as well as I should if I want to realize my best results in races. I do however have a coach and group of runners to run with and push me on the exact day I need to do my tempos – Saturday mornings. But these workouts are across town and what I could get done on my own in an hour if I just stepped out my door could take me three hours if I meet the group. So then I’m stuck deciding… is it worth it? Three hours away from my kids and family on a Saturday for a better quality workout? I play it out over the long run – what could these workouts possibly lead to? Maybe 10-15 seconds faster in a 5K, 30 seconds to a minute in a Half Marathon? Do I care about that more than say going for a family bike ride or hike or library visit which we love doing together? But then, what if my kids are being ungrateful brats who are whiny and refuse to do anything (it sometimes happens) and I’m stuck with them for an extra two hours vs. doing something rewarding and energizing for myself? See what I mean? There is no clear answer as to what the “right” decision is. If I were completely invested in my running and results I would do the workouts. And if I didn’t care at all about running results I’d invest the time with my kids. My reality is somewhere in the middle.

I guess like most things in my life, I’ll probably just compromise. I’ll go to the workouts sometimes and do family time sometimes. I won’t be the best, most present parent, and I won’t be the fastest runner I can be. That’s just how it’ll be for now. Until the wind changes direction again and a new option pops up.

I’ve run (or I should say raced) many marathons. At least 10 I think. People have asked me later about some fact or other about the course or the scenery, and I’ve had absolutely no idea. When I’m racing, I’m extremely internally and process focused, and only register the outside world in fleeting glimmers. In Philadelphia I think we ran through a zoo, but I don’t recall one specific detail of that. In Chicago all I remember is seeing Paula Radcliffe at the start; I couldn’t tell you one thing about the course. In Sacramento I remember my friend cheering me on halfway through – that’s it. It almost seems pointless for me to go somewhere beautiful to race a marathon because that is not what I will take in.

But this year I decided to walk a marathon. The Catalina Marathon to be exact, which is on Catalina Island: 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. It is beautiful and scenic and contains over 4000 feet of total elevation. My husband was racing and it was point to point, and logistics proved that the best way to meet him at the finish was to walk there. Plus I would be accompanied by a very fun crew of people also walking it. What a different experience! Here are the pros of walking a marathon:

1.You don’t have to stress about getting enough rest and good nutrition in the days before. This worked out well for me with all the travel it took to get there. Also, once on the island I enjoyed a beautiful run, not worrying about time or pace, and finished with whatever I wanted to eat, including a beer.

2. You don’t have to wake up super early in order to eat and digest breakfast before the race. In fact, you can take your last bite of food and sip of coffee while walking!

3. You also don’t have to worry about warming up. You just start walking.

4. You can eat whatever you want at all of the aid stations because you can walk and digest at the same time (so wonderful)

My diet throughout the Catalina Marathon

5. You can even drink a beer at the beer station!

I’m sure it was after noon somewhere …

6. You can stop to pee whenever you need to (which, it turns out is much more often than when racing – especially if you’ve had a beer)

7. You can take in the beautiful scenery in every spectacular detail. You can even stop to take pictures!

I definitely paused to take it all in.

8. You can have great conversations with the people you’re walking with. You can ask insightful questions and respond with well thought out sentences instead of communicating in gutteral grunts.

Some of the amazing people I was lucky to share this experience with.

9. When you finish, you feel quite good vs. like a truck has just run you over.

10. You actually look forward to going for a run the next day.

I sure took a lot of footsteps – but they didn’t leave me feeling wrecked.

So would I walk a marathon again? Sure! But I’d have very different criteria from marathons I race. To walk a marathon it should have: nice scenery, good food on course (beer a plus), enjoyable warm-ish walking temperatures, changes and undulations in the course are appreciated, and I’d have to do it with good company.

To race a marathon I would like: lots of port-a-potties at the start, cool temperatures for racing, water/sports drink every 5km, scenery not a requisite but would like a flat, fast course, and any human bodies will do to run with as long as they’re running my pace.

That’s not all too much to ask, is it?

When I go to my doctor if I’m feeling ill, whether I think it may be Strep Throat, Bronchitis, or some other malady, I usually say, “… and my other symptom is that my runs feel really hard.” Then she looks at me and I can see her thinking, “well, if you’re still running, you can’t be that sick.”

The thing is, with runners, going for a run is no barometer or indicator of how well everything else is going in our lives. We don’t wake up every day and decide whether we’re going to go for a run or not. That decision has been made. It doesn’t take willpower or mental energy. We don’t consider the pros and cons and then make the decision. We skip all that. We just go. That’s the only way we’re able to do it so consistently every day. We just know we are going. The only question is how the run will play out based on our physical and emotional states and the conditions. Some days obviously feel way better than others, but we don’t pick and choose based on a scale of how ‘good’ it will be.

I liken it to brushing your teeth. Once it’s a habit, you just do it. You don’t consider every night before going to bed whether you will brush your teeth or not. It’s just what you do. Missing a night won’t kill you, and you rationally know you won’t get cavities in one night, but you miss it and you feel more comfortable doing it.

So it is even when we are sick. My thinking process goes like this: “Well, I’m up. I’m making lunches for my kids. I have to get dressed and walk them to school. If I can put one foot in front of the other I may as well run.” No, these are not my ‘best’ runs. They are short and slow. But I’m pretty sure they don’t make me feel worse. Since I don’t have a decision making process, I don’t know how to decide whether to go or not. Unless I physically can not put one foot in front of the other, my default ‘habit’ is to go for a run. I also have to be extremely sick not to brush my teeth before going to bed. It’s the same logic.

I know this may look obsessive and unhealthy from the outside, but it is just two sides of the same coin. I don’t deserve kudos for having the ‘willpower’ to run every day because it takes no willpower, but I also have an ingrained habit which is powerful and hard to turn off. I have a friend who ran the Boston Marathon with walking pneumonia. Unlike some who might have thought he was masochistic and nuts, I understood. He had made the decision a long time ago. He was running Boston. How it played out might change, but the decision to run was not up for question.

So when people say “well, if you’re running you can’t be that sick” I always smile inwardly. They don’t know runners.

Still running…

“What place did you get?” I hear this question being shouted to each other by 8 to 11 year olds all around. It is their form of communication at the end of a day of cross-country racing. I see kids from different schools who know each other and haven’t seen each other in a while, and their standard greeting is “what place?” I cringe a little each time. I coach these kids and I don’t even ask them what place they came in. I cheer for them as they are racing and can see the level of effort they are putting in. I watch them finish and look down at the number on the little piece of paper they’ve been given. I can tell by their faces whether they are happy with their effort and the result it garnered or not. Then mostly I just say “great job, way to go, I’m proud of you” or in some cases “you were tough out there and you learned something for the next one”. Maybe they’re waiting for me to ask “what place?” I just can’t bring myself to do it because it feels like such a loaded question to me and I don’t have enough context. Some kids are thrilled with 88, others are in tears with 13. I have a friend whose son’s goal was to NOT advance to the third meet. So there’s no point in asking if I don’t know what it means.

But that’s one of the things I find so great and funny and refreshing about kids. To them, it’s not a loaded question at all: it’s a straight up objective number. In fact, to them it would probably seem rude and like you didn’t care if you didn’t ask. None of them asks, “how did it feel” or “are you happy with it” or “what was your goal”.  They just want the number. These are their social rules. I watch as the question gets flung around again and again, and no one seems put out by it at all. No one says “none of your business” or “I don’t want to tell”. Everyone shares openly and then goes and asks someone else.

Grade 3 is the first year they are given a place. Grades 1 and 2 compete, but aren’t yet ‘ranked’.

I’m not sure when this changes. Like most things it probably happens gradually. Kids learn that there are many layers behind what you see. Just as you shouldn’t ask someone how much money they make, your standard greeting after a race shouldn’t be “what place did you get?” Trying to explain this to a kid is hard. I’ll just go about my usual tactic of trying to lead by example and hoping they figure it out along the way.

A happy crew – and quite fine with each of their numbers.