I’m going to take yet another swing at a really old question: when does someone who runs finally become a runner? I wrote about this a while ago, and gave an inclusive answer - as long as you are running, you’re a runner. Essentially, I was mirroring the view of lots of old school running experts/gurus. Here’s Bart Yasso:
“I often hear someone say ‘I’m not a real runner.’ We are all runners, some just run faster than others. I never met a fake runner.”
And here’s John Bingham:
“If you run, you are a runner. It doesn't matter how fast or how far. It doesn't matter if today is your first day or if you've been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run.”
Yasso and Bingham favor an “action-oriented” definition of being a runner— if you are running, then you’re a runner. Such a definition has the merit of being inviting and non-elitist. Since it rejects a performance standard, it doesn’t lead beginners into the bouts of self-doubt so common in internet groups. Deflating elitism in running is a good thing. But is the action-oriented definition right? Can be be anti-elitist about “being a runner” and not need to hold to its way of answering the question?
My suspicions about the action-oriented definition have nagged me for a while, and came out a few weeks ago after I ran a particularly hard threshold paced 5k. Afterward, I thought, “I’m not a threshold runner.” I wasn’t applying n action-oriented definition, as I did complete the threshold run. And my refusal to think of myself as a threshold runner also wasn’t due to a belief that I’d failed to meet a performance standard. It was an excellent 7:38 pace run! I found myself a bit confused about how to sort through my assertion. Jeremy Wisnewsky’s1 writing helped me through this, positing a different definition of “being a runner” that is not elitist but also not action-oriented.
Phenomenology: Examining How The World Appears
Wisnewsky suggests that we think about “being a runner” through phenomenology, a method of analysis in philosophy that focuses on studying “how things appear.” If “being a runner” can be defined phenomenologically, we’d expect things to appear differently to a runner and to a non-runner. So, such an analysis must clarify how and why things appear in a specific way to “a runner” and differently to those who are not “runners” but yet who do run and meet the Yasso/Bingham action-oriented definition.
To grasp what phenomenology is, a good place to start is with philosopher Thomas Nagel’s2 famous question “What is it like to be a bat?” In posing it, Nagel was seeking to highlight that there is a what it is like to be a bat, one significantly different than the what it is like to be a human. His focus was on how things appear in consciousness. When humans consciously experience the world, it is like something very different from what bats experiences when faced with the same world. The world “reveals” itself to these two species in phenomenologically different ways.
So, a phenomenological analysis of our question would ask what it is like to “be a runner” and suggest that what it is like to not be a runner (who runs) will be different. To answer this, we need to move further into what can make things “appear” to us one way as opposed to another way. In Nagel’s case, “how things appear” to a bat and to a human are different because they have very different sensory organs. Runners and a non-runners (who run) share the same senses, so if the “way things appear” to them is different, we’ll have to appeal to something other than sensation to explain it.
Different Ways the Running Body Can Appear to You
For Wisnewsky, the crucial next step requires awareness that consciousness involves experiencing one’s body. Moreover, he thinks that how the body appears to you in consciousness impacts how the world appears to you. When running, “a runner” experiences the body as unified with the mind, and when that happens, the world appears in ways that express that unity. When you run but are not yet a runner, the mind and body appear separate, and how the world appears reflect that disunity.
To see his argument, we should start with the claim that running is a very particular and structured way of moving that the body is not accustomed to. So when we start to engage in it, we become very aware of the locus of that activity - the body - and we focus on it. This makes sense; the lack of comfort with the activity makes the body “stick out” in consciousness as it appears to us as an urgent problem demanding solution. It hurts, it feels weird, it is sore, it’s not clear how to move the legs and arms. This experience is one of separation; the mind sees the body as an object, and it tries to consciously manipulate and control it to “solve the problem” it is experiencing.
Wisnewsky describes his own personal experience of running for the first time to explain. He struggles mentally and feels as if his mind and body are at odds. His runs are filled with internal mental debates and his mind focuses on forcing the body to continue on and to ignore pains. Moreover, he says that during such runs the trail he ran on appeared to him in ways reflecting that problem-driven experience. For example, familiar natural objects were no longer trees but rather “the halfway point to rest.” Nature itself reflected the problem being solved. Wisnewsky calls this experience, central to running while not yet being a runner, a “phenomenology of obstacles”.
This phenomenology of obstacles leads a person to experience themselves in an unnatural and disconcerting way. The reason is: the body is not an object separated from and controlled by one’s mind. Instead, a person inhabits a body in a way that is fundamentally different from the way a carpenter uses a hammer. When engaged in familiar activity we are accustomed to, the mind and the body appear to us as unified, which is their natural state. Our bodies do not “stick out” to us in consciousness as separate. This happens only when we move in unfamiliar ways, and when this happens our natural default state of unity is disrupted. We are “broken” - there is a problem.
The opposite of this disruption is a “phenomenology of unity” - flow. When we inhabit our bodies naturally, we flow. When one runs and is unified, one is (a runner) what one is doing (running). One “is” what one is doing because one experiences the activity as natural, as seamless, and as familiar. Cases of flow with actual objects are easy to find. Once you master riding a bike, you stop thinking about what to do. The bike becomes an extension of your body and you make on-the-fly complicated physical adjustments without a need to cognitively focus on the bike itself. When you flow, you experience the seamless integration of mind and body as it controls the bike “without thinking”.
Flow in running is similar to flow in cycling, but also importantly different. It’s similar because the “what it is like” to run as a runner is an experience of seamless flow in which the body moving is not experienced as a problem, and you make adjustments to bodily activity without much (or any) conscious thought. It’s different, however, since what you are seamlessly integrating is not an object you are using, but rather a body that you are inhabiting. This difference is crucial. Flow with the use of an object that is external to you (like a bike) can only be achieved only through learned skills. Since the body is not an object, flow is not achieved this way. If so, how?
Becoming a Runner is about Habits, Habits, Habits
The answer, it turns out, is habit - an acquired sense of comfort with a routine we have established. By default, our bodily habit is simple motion. We are comfortable with it, and as a result we naturally flow in our everyday bodily behavior and don’t notice the body. The mind and body are one. Complicated movement, like running, disrupts the flow of everyday movement and enters the unfamiliar. So, when you first begin to run the body appears as a problem needing a solution. Your prior unity has been broken, and needs to be fixed. While this continues, you fail to inhabit your body as a unity.
Once we see this, it is clear that for a body to flow again doesn’t require being good at the new activity. Getting those inner voices to stop simply requires becoming familiar again, and that’s solved by time on feet. Once this happens, the body acquires the habit of moving in this new way. It becomes comfortable in this more structured activity called running. The body no longer appears to you as separate, and the internal voices disappear. You now see that tree as a tree, and not as “I’m halfway done”. Your mind and body have aligned. You inhabit the body again. You flow.
Recall my early claim that “I’m not a threshold runner”. I am a runner - my mind and body are unified when I run as I typically run. There’s no internal mental debate as I plod along on a moderately paced 17 miler, but during a short hard threshold run it’s there as I check my watch thinking, thinking “only 0.7m to go!”. I fight urges to stop, I look to control and force my body to maintain my speed, and once again my body becomes a problem to be solved. Clearly, I can run at threshold pace and still not be a threshold runner. This activity is not yet “me” - I am not “familiar” with it, so things appear broken and disunited.
This way of answering “when am I a runner?” can be helpful to people who run.
First, like the action-oriented definition, it’s not elitist, so it is inviting to people who would like to engage the sport, but it’s not so overly inclusive that running for the first time is enough - which just seems hard to believe. While it is true that not everyone who runs is a runner, it is true that eventually the practice of running leads to becoming a runner. When that happens exactly is based on subjective phenomenology, not by an objectively determined performance issue. Truly, anyone can be, or is, a runner.
Second, it helps beginners realistically grapple with the difficulties of running. At the start, the ways the body appears as a problem seem insurmountable, and these can lead people to give up due to frustration. I’m terrible at this! Real runners, one thinks, don't experience these difficulties! But that’s not true. When you “are a runner” they appear natural; many are still present, but since you don’t see them as problems you don’t focus on them. It’s seeing difficulty as a problem that makes it bothersome. This changes your focus - you’re not trying to overcome and eliminate difficulty, but make it familiar.
Third, it helps developing runners tackle further challenges. You know that “being a runner” is specific to your running, so you know that you are not every kind of runner — you may not be a sprinter, or a marathon runner, or an ultra runner. But you can be any of them, if you want to put in the time. Each path will contain specific challenges, and difficulties, but the main issue will be unfamiliarity. But you know in advance what that means - more internal debates about the task, you body will turn into an object and a problem, and familiar trees will turn into signs pointing to the finish line.
But you know the drill. If you keep at it, the difficulties will become familiar, and you’ll flow once again.
Enter your email, hit ‘subscribe now’, and these posts will go to your email when published. I write mostly on analysis of my own training and running, and also about philosophy and how it intersects with running, and sometimes about philosophy on is own. Thanks in advance for reading, and please feel free to leave a comment!
Wisnewsky, Jeremy. “The Phenomenology of Running”, in Running and Philosophy, edited by Mike Austin, Blackwell Publishing (2012).
Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Oct., 1974), pp. 435-450