The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 362 - Running 2025

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Well, in the Northern Hemisphere, we are coming closer and closer to the end of summer...which means it's time for our annual episode, Pete.

Pete: Oh, we're doing it. We're doing it. I've been waiting all summer.

Jen: Jen's running episode, 2025.

Pete: The crowd goes wild, including me. Jen's running episode, alright. Well, let's not tease any more. Let's just dive right in. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So, tell us about this annual tradition.

Jen: Yes. Let me bring our listeners who maybe haven't been with us for nearly seven years (oh my gosh) up to speed.

Pete: Wild.

Jen: So, I started this routine of running in the summers. And every year, I've been able to find a metaphor for life in the running. I'll drop all the running episodes in the Box O' Goodies.

Pete: We'll make a playlist.

Jen: This year, we have found the metaphor for life. However, this year's episode should actually be called "No Running 2025".

Pete: Ooh, controversial. Running? We're not running.

Jen: Yeah. So what happened was this, Pete. At the beginning of the summer, I laced up my running shoes, went out for a little run, felt a twinge in my left hip that I was not enthusiastic about. I laced up the shoes a second time, went out for the second run, felt the twinge again. And I decided in that moment that it wasn't worth it, because I have so many other things I love to do with my body. And just for context, because I don't think I've talked about this on this podcast, I've had a hip surgery already. I've had two surgeries, one on each foot. And I was just like, "You know what? If this turns into one of those injuries, I'm going to be down for so long," that I had to decide to not run this summer. So instead, I did aggressive walking and worked out five days a week.

Pete: That's the most Jen Waldman thing ever. "I'm going to do aggressive walking, not just regular walking." I love it.

Jen: But I think the life lesson in my 2025 running journey...and it's possible running will be back for me in 2026, we'll see. But I think the life lesson is: There are certain things in life that are absolutely worth the risk, worth pushing through, worth the pain. And there are things in life that are not. And in this case, this was not. I don't know if I would have made this choice ten years ago. I think I would have run through it.

Pete: So it's also dependent on where you're at, the time and place and chapter of life we find ourselves in, which I think is worth saying out loud. I also hear from you that the decision that this time around, it wasn't worth it, isn't a permanent one, i.e. maybe next summer it will be worth it. There'll be a different set of consequences and context, and maybe the hip won't twinge, and you'll go, "Hmm, it's worth it. It's worth it this year." So it's a decision that is made for a period of time based on the context that you're in, that you have recognized the payoff is not worth the risk.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: The first thing that comes to mind for me (you know we love to make this into some sort of learning) is opportunity costs.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And the idea that everything costs something. So, running costs something. Not running costs something. Working for yourself costs something. Working for a company costs something. Choosing to spend your time and energy on this costs something. Choosing to spend time on this costs something. And when we say costs, we don't mean financially...although sometimes, yes, financially. But it costs something in terms of an amount of energy, an amount of risk for injury, an amount of time, an amount of fill-in-the-blank. So, we have to weigh up what these costs are and whether they're worth it at any given time.

Jen: Absolutely. And I'll tell you, Pete, even though I'm saying this so casually like, "It was a super easy decision. I just made the decision and I moved on," it wasn't. But the thing I went to, to help me through this, was, "What is the why behind my running practice? What is the reason I started doing this in the first place?" And the answer started, and has continued to be over all these years that I've been doing this, to become the healthiest version of myself. And so, when I really got back to that basic idea of the why of the running, I was like, "I have to make this decision, because the healthiest version of myself is the version of me that can move every day, can sweat every day, can get out there and enjoy my life. The healthiest version of myself is not the version of me that is in pain."

Pete: Yeah, and has a twinged hip.

Jen: But Pete, at the same time that I was doing this decision-making about running, I have other things going on in my life that are also hard and "painful", that I go, "Okay, wait. Why am I doing that thing? Oh, for a reason that makes it worth it to keep going."

Pete: Mmm-hmm.

Jen: So, how many times on this podcast have we talked about the concept of why? Like, your big why for your life? But also, all the things that you make commitments to have a why behind them as well. And it was just so clarifying to go back to it and go like, "Oh yeah, in this case then, this is the obvious decision to make."

Pete: Yeah. I love the idea of revisiting the things that we do through this lens of, "Why am I doing this?" Or, you know, another way of asking it, which you and I use a lot, is like, "What's this for again? What am I hoping this is going to help me achieve?" Because we maybe have clarity in what that is when we start a practice or a routine. And sometimes, we get a little way down the line and we maybe have drifted from that being important to us or relevant to us, and we might not think to question it. But when we do, what we might discover, like you said, is, "Huh. Actually, this doesn't serve the why or the what's it for. It's actually does the opposite, so I need to think about changing that."

Jen: Right.

Pete: I could think of so many examples. Maybe for the listeners, a useful example is this podcast.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like, there is a decision that we make each and every week...although, I guess we've made a decision at a period of time to continue. But in reality, we make the decision every week to show up, and compare time zone calendars (which is no easy feat), and make time to record a podcast. That isn't because Spotify are paying us forty-five million dollars to produce a podcast.

Jen: They're not even paying us forty-five dollars.

Pete: Although if you're listening Spotify, you know, we're happy to take your call. But the cost is our time and our energy. And actually, like there's actual financial costs that we have to make this podcast. But we've decided that the what's it for and the why behind it (and we actually revisit this quite often, more often than perhaps listeners realize), that it's still worth it.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I mean personally, I get immense joy and motivation and inspiration from having these conversations with you. I get new ideas that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I get practice in asking new questions or coming up with ideas and stories totally unscripted, which then enables me to be better at the work that I do with leaders. So there are these benefits that still fit for us, the what's it for and the why, beyond the costs that it has to us.

Jen: Mmm-hmm. So Pete, on the other side of making the decision to stop running this summer, I've had a lot of wonderful other things come into my morning routine and my morning experience, which would not have been there if I had been running. So to your earlier point about opportunity cost, my running had cost me something, which was to not have these other experiences that I didn't know I would have. And I have literally zero regrets about all of the years that I ran.

Pete: Yeah. Oh, I love that.

Jen: Because that gave me a great opportunity as well.

Pete: Yeah. And were the things that you've now discovered surprising? Like were they predictable when you said, "I'm not going to run, and as a result, all these things are going to happen," or were they unintended benefits, things that you discovered along the way?

Jen: So, to be very specific, I have developed two relationships from my aggressive walking. One is with a barista in town. Because now, my walk ends at a totally different place than my run ended, and that is at the coffee shop. And I buy myself a coffee. And then, I walk home. So, I see the same woman every single morning. And there's something wonderful about talking to a human that early in the morning. But the other wild relationship, Pete, is, I have a relationship with a family of deer.

Pete: That is not what I thought you're about to say.

Jen: Yes. And I've known that these deer are there. I've run by them for years. But now, I stop and I look at them. And we stare at each other.

Pete: Wow.

Jen: Sometimes, for a very long time. We stare into each other's eyes. There are anywhere from three to eight deer in this same spot every morning, when I aggressively walk. But I also have really been committed to my land snorkeling. Which I'll, if you missed that episode, listeners, I'll drop that in the Box O' Goodies as well.

Pete: That's worth a listen, or a re-listen.

Jen: Yeah. I take photos. I examine plants, with this app called PlantNet. I take pictures of the ocean and try different exposures, to like get it to look in my camera the way it looks in my eyes. Like, I've just been seeing the world through a very different lens, because I'm doing things differently. And I love both versions of my summer.

Pete: Yeah. So another thing that pops into my head as you're saying this is, the idea that saying no to something enables us to say yes to other things. That this is sort of another way of saying the opportunity cost of it all, but you saying no to running, which feels really hard in the moment, or saying no to working with a particular client or taking on a particular role, for example, feels so hard in the moment. But one of the useful ways of framing that for ourselves, or at least one of the ways I've found a framing for myself is that by doing that, I open myself up to say yes to something else. I open myself up to say yes to a relationship with a deer. I open myself up to saying yes to getting a coffee in the morning. I open myself up to saying yes to a new role that I never would have considered possible. But it only was because I said no to the other thing.

Jen: Right.

Pete: I sometimes find getting rid of habits, practices, routines really difficult. I find saying no to things that have served me in the past really difficult. And I could think of so many examples of where doing so has actually enabled me to say yes to so many other things. And so, that's how, like as a mental model, that's how I'm try and make that decision easier for myself. Because you're right about, like you kind of said, "Oh, I just decided no," I'm sure that was a much harder decision than you just alluded to.

Jen: Yeah. And I mentioned earlier that like ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have made that decision. I would have run through the pain, and I would have ended up in the doctor's office, and all of that. And some people told me that like when you turn fifty, you just don't have that many fucks left to give. And I think that is true. And thinking about putting myself in my forty-year-old version of myself, if I was experiencing that pain while I was running, why would I have kept on running? It's because I told people that I run.

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: It would have had nothing to do with what I wanted to do for myself. It would have had something to do with like other people's expectations, or not wanting to shake this identity that I had established in other people's eyes. And so, there is something that comes with getting older, where you're just like, "Sorry about it."

Pete: Yeah. I love...I mean, that's rich. Like, it's not even the identity to self, but the identity to how other people perceive yourself. Oof.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: That's what makes it difficult to say no to things. Yeah, I think I need to percolate on that for a second. I think I'm probably still in that phase, in some parts of my life.

Jen: Well, you are significantly younger than I am, Pete.

Pete: No, but I'm also like, "How do I get some of that Jen Waldman fifty-year-old, 'I don't give a fuck'... how do I get some of that in my life?" That's great.

Jen: Maybe you've got to wait.

Pete: Damn it. I don't want to wait. I want it now.

Jen: When I was younger...maybe I've talked about this, maybe not. I was a dancer when I was younger, and I danced through so much pain. So much pain. The dancers listening right now are like, "That's correct. You did. Because we all do. We all do." But at the time, that gave me a deep sense of pride, and like I was really a dancer for doing that. And on this end, I'm a recreational pretty poor runner. So, I don't really have anything to prove.

Pete: It's funny how we get ourselves caught up in that though. Like when I used to play footy, which is Australian rules football...which is not worth me trying to explain to our American listeners. But I used to play at A-level. It was an amateur level, not a professional. And I, towards the end of my playing days in my twenties, I mean, I had a shoulder injury so bad that like I used to get cortisone injections the night before a game. And then, I still played the next day, so that I wouldn't feel the pain in my shoulder. Then, I would go to my nine-to-five, Monday to Friday. And at one point, I was like, "What am I doing?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "I'm not even close to a professional level. And I'm putting my body through the most absurd procedures for what elite athletes would do, I'm sure. But like, a local footballer playing in Melbourne while working full-time?" And at some point, I was like, "What the hell am I doing?" It's wild, the things that we do, the pain that we go through, the attachment we have to the things that we're doing.

Jen: Yes. And sometimes, it is worth it. Sometimes, it is absolutely worth it. Pete, there was a show that played on Broadway in the previous season called Suffs. It is incredible. Highly, highly, highly recommend. And there is a song in this show where the main character (based on a real person, true stories) Alice Paul is contemplating whether to continue to lead the movement for women's suffrage or to consider backing off, finding a partner, "settling down", having a family. And she sings this song about it. And this song haunts me at night. Because this question, "Is it worth it," is something we only actually find out later. The answer to like the really hard things, we find out the answer later. But in this case, I knew the answer right away.

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: That in this case, the answer is, "It's not worth it for me to run this year."

Pete: Yeah. Randomly, that story reminds me of that Mark Manson blog post that also haunts me. He wrote a blog post that I'll put in the Box O' Goodies. But the crux of it is around this question that he flips on like, you know, instead of, "What do you want out of life," the question is like, "What pain are you willing to struggle with? Like, what are you willing to accept?"

Jen: Right. Yes.

Pete: Because it has to be worth it, in some way. And it's interesting, your point around you might not know until after the fact, but can we get clear on what pain I want in my life? What pain I'm willing to accept in my life? Like, because you can't have a life without pain.

Jen: Right. Correct.

Pete: Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Jen: And so, Pete, we will, at least for this year, bid farewell to the idea of Jen running. And we will revisit it in 2026.

Pete: But listeners, know that for most of us, Jen's aggressive walking technique is probably about as fast as we can all run. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.