I ran my first half-marathon in 2015. I did a 2:20 something one week and brought the number down to 1:55 a week later. The next 4 days, I was barely able to walk and spent them nursing a high fever.
2016 was a glorious year for my running passion. “Runs” .I met a number of insane runners. Freaks that could run 50 km and 100 km week in, week out. People that have run for more than 24 hrs.
Between June and August/September I was running a half marathon for fun every weekend and logging in anywhere between 50-70 kms a week. I ran my first unofficial 50k trail runs, 2, over a weekend.
And then the injuries piled up. My left knee would feel like it was being pricked by a nail after 5 km. I could barely walk beyond 10. I was devastated, upset, shocked and sad. Running was my passion, the one true thing I looked forward to everyday. Not running made me miserable. I circled into a cycle of depression. I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t even figure out what was wrong, what part of me hurts and why.
It took me about 6 months before I was able to run another half-marathon. I spent countless hours nursing myself, foam rolling, stretching before the pain became manageable. Not gone, manageable.
2017 was even better. I ran two official 42 km marathon and one 50 km ultra trail and countless unofficial ones. I was flying. I had a great set of friends that I would run with on the weekends. Life couldn’t have been any better for me.
2018 January. I ran my first 80 km ultra marathon. It was exhilarating. I ran for 12+ hrs continuously. I ran over hills/mountains. 2000 m of elevation gain probably. I ran so hard, that I couldn’t sleep for 2 days straight. Ever been so tired that you can’t focus, but your body hurts so much that the pain keeps you awake ? It was the first time I had experienced anything like that !
And then I quit running. Zilch. I went from clocking in ~100s of KM a month to practically nothing.
I stopped running beyond a couple of km at best. I got into a calisthenics training camp. It was the best decision I made.
If a couple of years ago, had you asked me that if it was ever so possible that I would stop running, I would have laughed at you. It was inconceivable to me.I mean why would someone give up something as awesome as running ? The wind on your face, the steady rhythm of the feet hitting the asphalt, the amazing clarity of thought and the rush of all those hormones….
I told a good running friend of mine I stopped running completely. He wished me luck with the injuries, but then asked me the question…. When are you getting back to running ? My answer was: “Probably wont”.
What was interesting to me was his reaction: “Why not?”
This was my first realization that I was in a cult.
During the depressed period of my injuries, I was searching for answers high and low. I wanted to read about the experiences of people that have been hurt badly by their passion and how they recovered. I kept running into blogs from people that had had devastating injuries, nursed the wounds over months and years, and how they got back into the game. It was very inspiring and motivating at times.
It wasn’t what was written that struck me. It was what wasn’t: No one ever talked about quitting marathon running.
Strange, in an internet filled with the personal notes of billions, I couldn’t find even a single entry from someone that gave up on marathon running and went to find something less harsh on themselves. Okay, I did find one blog entry from a lady that described how she retired from running because of her injuries and general feeling of tiredness.
The idea that a runner gives up running was inconceivable to most of my fellow runners. “But how can you ?”. The alternative was in some sense, impossible.
I got into running because I would get into fights with my Dad, and needed a timeout activity. To get away as far as possible from home. To expend the anger and the frustration. I loved running for the solitude it provided and the joy I would experience in tiring my body out and the in not exercising my brain.
And for being fit. How do I satisfy my appetite for carb and sugar rich sweetmeats and amazing Indian chat food, yet not grow fat or have a paunch ? Running to the rescue :)
Yet, I could see my health being devastated by running. I was barely able to do 5 pushups. I was weak and skinny. My T shirts hung about my shoulders like a piece of towel left to dry out on a pole. My parents and relatives were worried that I looked sick. My favorite uncle remarked that I looked terminally ill.
And I did. It took me a while to realize it, but looking back, a lot of the people I was running with weren’t in the best of shape either.
Big blobs of belly fat underneath the T shirts. Skinny shoulders. Thin and fat at the same time.
This was the first tryst with the term “Skinny Fat”.
These were extremely remarkable people. Some of these guys were capable of feats that probably billions could only dream about. Yet at the same time, they had all the markers of chronic long-term ill health. Most of them couldn’t do a Pushup or a pull up if their lives depended on it.
In this sea of conformity, I found a sole voice of reason, of advise to the contrary: Guru Anaerobic.
Guru’s tweets changed my world view. His experience and wisdom struck a deep cord within me. I saw how in the name of health, I was damaging myself long term.
More importantly, I saw how deeply I was being brainwashed.
I was surrounded by cults. Veganism, Marathon Runners, Intellectuals, political absolutists (scale-less democracies, Constitutional rule).
Cults feed on our deepest insecurities: social validation and the need to feel being a tribe. You trade your ability to think, to question for camaraderie and a support network.
Tradeoffs are everywhere. People take up 9-5 jobs for the security of a paycheck. Some of my friends do not stay by themselves for the fear of being lonely. There is nothing wrong in trading a part of your freedom for something else. But the important part is you should be able to choose the tradeoff. Voluntarily.
Cults are dangerous in the sense that you are trading off the most precious of commodities: Your ability to think and reason for yourself. Among all living/sentient beings, the biggest distinguishing factor of humans is our autonomy. Our ability to overcome our genetically programmed reactions. As Tantra says: Mind over body.
It is not easy to be contrary, to against the grain of prevailing thought. But being blessed with the ability to think for oneself, it will be a criminal waste of that ability to not do so.
Cults do not care for you. The goal of a cult is to preserve the idea behind it. Communists killed and gulag-ed their fellow comrades to preserve the charade. Vegans will happily ignore the ill effects of seed oils and the devastating effects of artifical food and soy on the hormonal balance in the human body. Marathon runners will always counter your arguments on why running long distance is dangerous with “Oh you need to foam roll, stretch and improve your running form. Maybe even spend 500$ on running shoes and getting them fitted”. The members can never for even once contemplate that the fundamental idea behind the cult can be even flawed (forget wrong!) and not universally applicable.
Cults like living organisms need food to survive and thrive. Their food is your freedom, your ability to think for yourself. The more converts to their cause, the more they thrive.
Their kryptonite is the skeptic, the one that goes: “What if this idea is wrong?”.
The skeptic could set of a chain of chain-reaction of disbelief, upset the order that took decades/centuries/millennia to build up and destroy the entire structure in a matter of hours or even minutes.
This upsets the ones that benefit from such a cult. The “marathon coach” can no longer make money making people do mobility drills. The EU bureaucrat will no longer make a salary from your tax money. The politician will no longer receive your donations for a political cause that he claims will make the world a better place.
They will do anything to stop you. Maim your reputation, tarnish your image, harm you and your loved ones, or more scarily, separate you from your loved ones.
But how do you know if you are in a cult?
Figure out the fundamental orthodoxy of a cult. And think, if the orthodoxy holds true against reality.
My wakeup call when I realized that running, which is supposed to keep me “healthy”, didn’t. I was weaker, skinnier and far more injured than when I wasn’t running. It wasn’t just the case with me, but many around me as well. The reality did not match the orthodoxy. But unlike most, I questioned the orthodoxy. I tried to hold up the idea against reality, and it failed for me, big time.
Resist the urge to be lazy with thinking and never hesitate to confront reality and ask if this idea you adopted truly works for you.
Don’t feel bad for being brainwashed.Our strongly held intuitions and beliefs can always be wrong. Einstein was so surprised by the implications of Quantum mechanics that he remarked “God does not play dice”. Paul Erdos, the famous mathematician, refused to believe the optimal solution for the Monty Hall problem, because it was counter-intuitive, until he saw the results of a computer simulation.
If great scientists like these can be wrong and admit to their “mistakes”, one shouldn’t feel too bad for being a little dogmatic.