For the first 18 months after I returned to running, I enjoyed phenomenal consistency. Early in that period, I conceived the Inch-Up Theory, which holds that a runner can always make the best progress by increasing his training in tiny, regular increments. Conversely, he’ll lose ground if he tries to jump ahead too quickly.
During the Inch-Up period, I missed just one day of training in a year and a half, when I had a bad reaction to a flu shot. Consistent training brought excellent progress. Excellent? It was formidable. I went from a completely deconditioned slob, to running 15 miles every other day over challenging, hilly terrain.
Then I got greedy and started overreaching my abilities. In the next seven months, I ran seven marathons and three 50Ks, and I got sick after every race. There wasn’t a day during that period when I felt truly healthy. I was continually out of sorts, unpleasantly distanced from my own life’s joyous core. I was paying a high price for shoddy goods.
Could I return to the sensible training that had brought such gratifying results?
During those 18 months, I trained with spiritual principles as my guide. My fitness goals had little to do with looking or feeling good, and more with opening my heart. I started each run by offering it to God and asking Him to help me run expansively.
I adjusted my pace by watching the effect it had on my heart and mind. I knew I was doing “good training” when I felt focused and harmonious. My body was being challenged, I was nudging my edges, but I was balancing effort with relaxation, and the work rarely exceeded my ability to recover.
When I did this over and over, I improved. I also gained mental and spiritual benefits, because running that’s good for the body generates good effects for the heart and mind.
My obsession with long races diverted my attention from the humble Inch-Up path, with its rich rewards. Running ego-gratifying numbers of marathons and ultras, I flew too close to the sun, and my wings melted, and I crashed.
While I was inching up, I finished my runs with reserves of energy. My recovery was rapid, and I began the next run feeling fresh and enthusiastic. In this manner, I was able to increase my training from zero to alternating weeks of 60 and 45 miles, without ever becoming overtrained.
After seven months of “marathon madness,” I was exhausted and discouraged. I had bottomed-out. I had hit the wall. And I had it out with God.
I confessed that I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. Why was I feeling so tired and slow? Other runners seemed to be able to enter staggering numbers of long races and thrive. Why couldn’t I do the same? I needed help.
The answer came as a quiet intuition: You’ve been running too hard. Reviewing my training diary, it was clear. I was no longer inching up. I was scrambling forward madly, and it was wearing me down.
How much better to run in harmony, well within my abilities, than to leap forward, if in the attempt I’m pulled outside myself, with haunted eyes and an unhappy heart and troubled mind. If I succeed in running a fast race by stripping my gears, the aftermath will reflect the method; I’ll feel little enthusiasm for training to run still faster, because I’ll be deeply spent.
True victory is harmony. True victory means feeling expanded after the run.
At age 41, Doug Kurtis has run more sub-2:20 marathons than any other over-40 runner. Kurtis trains hard, but his training is harmoniously integrated with his life. He spends time with his family and works a full-time job. He shares his training methods freely, and he invests energy in promoting the sport.
Running a fast race on an exceptional day is worth something, but how much better to be able to run fast over and over, as Kurtis does, with sufficient poise and wisdom to taste the joys of helping others. That would be true victory. It would mean that I had become a successful runner.
I was overtrained, but it wasn’t enough simply to admit it. While conceding my error, I needed a direction forward. I needed fresh insights. How should I train? I needed to learn how to train wisely for my goal races of 26 to 50 miles.
I was driving on the freeway through Grass Valley and praying fiercely about this, when I heard an intuitive voice that said, “Go see Jim Walker.”
Jim Walker has run 112 marathons, with a PR in the mid-2:30s. He’s run the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run four times, the American River 50 eight times, and the infamous Badwater race twice – 135 miles across Death Valley and halfway up Mt. Whitney in the heat of July.
Jim works at a local sporting goods store, and I hesitate to bother him during working hours. So I said, “Jim will be working, and his boss glares at us when I ask Jim questions.” But the intuitive source was unyielding; again it said, “Go see Jim Walker.”
When I arrived at the store, the owner was away. I told Jim how I’d become overtrained, and that I was doing long runs of 22 to 24 miles every 1-2 weeks, running them straight through, and that I was having trouble recovering.
Jim leaned on a clothes rack, as if he had all the time in the world, and proceeded to lecture me about training.
He said that he did all of his long runs very slowly. “I never let myself cover more than six miles an hour, and I walk a lot. Sometimes I’ll go four miles an hour, but I don’t usually go less than that. A couple of young girls passed me the other day, and I overheard them talking. One girl said, ‘Hey, isn’t that Jim Walker? – he’s running so slow!’ The other one said, ‘Yeah, he must be injured or something.’”
Jim laughed. “I love it! People are always calling me and wanting to go running, but I tell them, ‘I don’t think you want to run with me, because, first of all, I run very slowly, and second, I’m not interested in racing with you.’”
Jim told me that in his days as a fast marathoner, he had felt he needed to “beat myself up in training” because he had a certain image that he wanted people to hold of him. But he no longer cared what other people thought.
Years ago, Jim was running 100 miles a week in preparation for the Western States 100, when one day he ran into Jim King. He proudly announced how much he was training, and King said, “Why are you killing yourself? I won Western States three times, and I never trained more than 70 miles a week.”
I found Jim’s advice deeply encouraging, because it confirmed the inner guidance that my intuition seemed to be trying to give me.
I no longer want to run for ego-gratifying rewards. And I don’t care what others might think. I want to improve harmoniously, all parts together, body, heart, will, mind, and soul.
