Why do I run almost every morning?
By: Christophe Berg
Tags: Habit Building, Trailrunning, Habits, Morning Routines, Running

The Simplicity of Running

There is nothing complicated about running. All you need is to lace your shoes, go outside to Run then Rest (to recover) and Repeat. No special gears required, no fancy or costly equipments either. You don’t need to run that long, thirty to forty five minutes every other day is enough to feel a change. Within three weeks, you can start to feel good. Don’t hesitate to mix running with walking, cycling or swimming. The more consistent you manage to be, the better it is going to work.

A Daily Dose of Humility

When I go for a run, I get my daily dose of humility! In five minutes I get a clear idea of my level of fitness and how I feel that day. It reminds me about my limitations. I get to learn from errors and setbacks. Constructive feedback is essential to any evolution. More than talking or reading about it, you really start learning by doing it! You get to figure out day after day, what works for you, what doesn’t and what keeps you going. If you are humble enough, you can even liberate your mind from unrealistic expectations.

Some days are more difficult than others. Accidents or injuries are parts of an active life. Doing anything implies taking some risks. Coming back from injury is not easy, it requires patience, motivation and commitment. Yet as any struggle, you can learn a lot as you finally manage to overcome it.

A Morning Dose of Positive Energy

I have a special relation to morning runs. I sleep fast (sic) and tend to wake-up before the sunrise. As soon as I am awake, I enjoy nothing more than being outside moving. I get to start peacefully my day. I like being in a morning mood, when it is still ok to move slowly, listen to birds and greet strangers.

Sunrise on the Gulf of Siam

Keep a Creative Mindset

When I started to run, it was clearly to get physical fatigue and to find a sound sleep. I was running away from the worries of my professional life. Now as I run, my brain likes to tackle problems and to look for ideas and solutions. Morning short runs have a direct impact on my well being. While moving along the sea, I easily focus my attention to the surroundings, the people I pass by and how my body feels that day. It helps me to get perspective on my ongoing projects. It works as a reminder that most issues don’t resist to creative solutions. I like to solve puzzles. Work is a game. So let’s play.

Keep on learning

By running daily, I get to witness the power of small improvements over time. It gets easier to understand the importance of rest and recovery time. It becomes obvious that consistency beats intensity especially on long term. The power of habit is laughable especially when I go outside by reflex, without noticing that it is actually raining. The importance of showing-up daily, the power of repetition and focusing on quality in execution become tangible. Best of all, it is always a humbling reminder of my limitations and my weaknesses… I keep learning small details that can make a difference over time. It’s fun to experiment, to keep learning and to focus more on the process while using the outcomes only as useful feedback. Day after day, patiently I accumulate experience. Step by step, I liberate myself from outside expectations.

Morning picture by the lovely Heather Berg

Build-up, slowly but surely

My motivation and self-confidence are slowly building up as I keep going. I muscle-up my stamina, my persistence and try actively to learn patience. Often as you hit the road, you get confronted to some level of pain, feeling tired or dizzy. It’s a chance to overcome small obstacles as they pop-up and to practice resilience.

Run your Personal Best

One key aspect of running is giving your personal best. You don’t have to beat someone else. There will always be someone faster than you. So the only score board that truly matters, is yours. You can visualize that you are running against your own shadow to try achieving your best run. The real challenge is giving the best version of yourself. As you get older, it gets even more realistic to look for self-improvement rather than competitive performance. You don’t need stress and you can forget external pressures to focus on doing good in the given circumstances. The conditions may reveal to be challenging, so be prepared, that’s all.

From time to time, I feel like I need incentives to keep moving and stay physically active. Small races are enough to provide that motivational edge, a constructive feedback and an accurate picture of my fitness level. If I am not at the level I was expecting, it simply means that I didn’t achieve my personal best « YET » so all I need is to get back to training, be smarter and keep going.

Diversity is more fun

Since the goal is overall physical activity over exercising, don’t hesitate to diversify and mix activities that you enjoy like dancing, walking, swimming, cycling… Even as a pure endurance runner, I got to realize that diversifying my training was a good way to prevent injuries and to stay motivated. While living in The Netherlands, my slow endurance sessions were replaced by commuting on my bike. In Thailand, I cycle after my run to cool down and deal with the heat and humidity. On the volcanic island of La Palma (*), I like to swim in the sea and to hike on the trails… One of the beauty of trail-running is that the surrounding nature and the challenging terrains are making longer sessions enjoyable. I don’t mind a four to six hours mini adventure in order to break the monotony of a repetitive training. Sometimes it is just refreshing to adopt unorthodox training methods. I never was a big fan of long runs on roads… For my very first marathon in Berlin, I experimented shorter runs twice a day instead of a weekly long run. I was running five days a week, each time not more than seven kilometers but twice a day (a short morning run and an afternoon run). The shorter distances allowed me to be more flexible with paces (fartlek or kilometers at marathon pace). Other good alternatives to Sunday’s boring long runs are « village races » (from fifteen up to thirty kilometers), they don’t require a huge training, you run in a good atmosphere and you get a useful feedback on your training.

Running Daily? Meaning every single day?

Daily has to be interpreted as « most of the days ». It defines an established running habit, almost automatic so that you don’t think twice before lacing your shoes and going outside. One day off can be beneficial to keep being motivated, so don’t hesitate to break your habit from time to time. As I get older, recovery became my number one priority. I have 1 or 2 days off each week from running to rest or do another activity (like hiking, cycling or swimming). A typical week looks like: MON-TUE: run / WED off or Hiking/Cycling / THU-FRI-SAT: run / SUN off

Born to Move

The World Health Organization warms us about the risks of our modern sedentary lifestyle. I do believe that we are meant to move daily for our well-being. So yes, I make a priority to avoid physical inactivity. THE W.H.O. recommends regular moderate physical activity (over exercise) for cardiorespiratory fitness, functional health and muscular tonicity. Being active helps to prevent health risks and to facilitate weight control. The good news is that it is not complicated… All you need is to move on a regular basis (preferably outside). Again consistency and regularity matter more than intensity, so it’s ok to « only » have a moderate physical activity especially if daily.

How much is enough? a good start is about two hours and thirty minutes weekly of moderate physical activity. For additional health benefits, you can get to five hours a week (the equivalent of walking or running about ten thousand steps or seven kilometers a day for five days a week).

Sunrise on the Gulf of Siam

How did I start running?

I started to run seriously in my thirties. I went from zero to sixty kilometers a week and up to ninety kilometers in a matter of months… Which I honestly don’t recommend. I was eager to write down training plans, train a lot and enroll for as much races as possible, mostly half-marathons.

Later on as I discovered trail-running events and multi-stage mountain races, I forgot about performance and I started to enjoy more and more moving in nature and exploring places. Trail-running got me motivated to run daily. I lost track of my initial goal-focused training and I started to enjoy the practice just for the fun of it. With no other plan than running on a regular basis, I became more flexible, relaxed and eventually better at preventing injuries. I ended-up maintaining my fitness level with a lower weekly training mileage. I try to run smarter by limiting stress, unnecessary efforts and self-induced pressure. What most people would define as « being lazy », I perceive it as my « minimalist approach » to training.

My favorite “racing” distances fluctuate around twenty to thirty kilometers especially on trails. I have fun running on these « short » distances and I recover quickly. While on my base camp (the small island of La Palma in the Canaries), I fancy hurting my legs on some Vertical Kilometers, steep short trail races (minimum one thousand meters of elevation).

Running became much more for me than a physical activity. It is a positive mindset, which I practice and learn from daily.

Morning picture by the lovely Heather Berg

The Power of a Daily Practice

« How to stay fit and lean after your forties? » part of the answer relies in daily habits, as we are what we do daily. So I practice, looking for incremental improvements and choosing consistency over intensity. I try to make my practice as convenient as possible. I don’t think about performance. I am just trying to develop habits to facilitate my recovery and stay fit. Moving around one hour a day is enough for me, but strictly necessary. Each person has to find what works best, when is the right time and at what frequency?

Further read, the major trails to explore La Palma. More about the author, Christophe Berg.