How racing teaches you about yourself

Case Study from the 2024 Backyard Ultra

Run To Become

One of the reasons I landed on sports philosophy as an intellectual pursuit twinned to applied coaching and teaching is the reality of the effort.

In the personal development space, there are so many different ‘practices’ pitched from different ‘guru’s’ and ‘influencers’ it’s hard to know which will work for you and which are modern forms of snake oil. But when it comes to sports and physical activity, there is no room for lying, the results and your effort speak for themselves.

This makes sports a rich vein of knowledge for seeing people breakself imposed limits and transcend beyond themselves. As a philosopher interested in better understanding sport’s nature and role in society, being able to coach individuals through sports towards their own internal breakthroughs is a special type of primary research that has real world impact.

I witnessed this firsthand leading 4 men I coached between 2023-2024 run the Prairie on Fire Backyard Ultra a few weeks back (read about my big takeaways below)

Kyle’s Story of Self Discovery

I want to share a brief story of one of those men today. It’s the exact type of primary research I look to gather in these race experiences beyond my own.

I hooked up with Kyle W in the fall of 2023 and signed him up for months of individual coaching and entry into my coaching group aimed at competing in the 2024 Prairie on Fire race. Over the course of our work we landed on meditation as the big physical mover for his personal growth. Like a lot of us, Kyle’s mind races 2-3 steps ahead of his current position and that caused him anxiety about the future and an inability to be satisfied in the present.

Through meditation he found the courage to be still in his thoughts, to interrogate his negative emotions, and to let the present moment wash over his future anxieties through a conscious effort to ‘not move.’ This worked wonders for his inner peace while his outer world was chaotic. Kyle is a new dad, two little ones under 3, with a new promotion at his job leading to a lot of new responsibilities in a short time span.

Despite his desire, he couldn’t manage to block off large parts of his calendar to fit in lots of long runs to train for this event. This made him apprehensive about his chances on race day to run long. Kyle completed a marathon earlier in the year, but he told me that he was in better physical shape for that race, than the ultra we were running together.

On race day, I could feel a bit of Kyle’s nerves in the first few miles. But then I noticed something amazing happen. On the 3rd lap he seemed to release all obligations and expectations and find his place in the present moment. For the next 25 miles, he had the biggest smile on his face while running on his own. He was in his own fantasy land. He described it to me as ‘6 hours of the runner’s high in a row.’ Perfect description. He basically ran an entire marathon floating off the ground, that’s how light he was in body, mind, and spirit.

I saw man completely at peace in the moment. Not worrying about anything other than the direct experience in front of him. I notived him gazing at the the wildflowers, the sunshine, the birds, all the little elements of nature that we take for granted rushing through our day to day lives.

He literally never wanted it to end. Even when things got tough, he wouldn’t stop going out for the next lap. Out of our 15 guys, he was the ONLY one to go out on a lap, not finish it in time, or even finish it at all. He didn’t expect to be running into the night and needed to borrow a headlamp from another guy in our crew. He went out, struggled to get even a mile down the course until I saw him on my way back to camp. He asked if he needed to go the full lap, and I told him to turn around right that second and get back to camp before he froze.

The next morning, Kyle had to leave early to get back home, but he sent me a powerful note on ‘becoming.’ That race blew up his self belief in himself. Now he knows more powerfully who he is and what he’s capable of doing. No longer afraid, he’s confidently stepping into his true potential one difficult decision at a time.

Your turn to transcend

When I say ‘run to become’ this is the exact process I’m talking about. Running gives you the space by yourself to know yourself. It challenges your body and mind in so many ways, but it’s the spiritual element that’s most powerful. Running is the human story. It’s our evolution. We were born to do it. Our bodies changed over time to become better at it. When you tap into that deep energy, the lessons you learn are deeper than you ever imagined possible.

If you want to know yourself through running like Kyle was able to find himself on race day, don’t let that energy fade. Strike now while your passion is hot. Hit the message button below, message me directly, and let’s chat today on how my coaching approach can help you break those limits you put on yourself because you’re not confident in who you are right now. It’s time to find out the truth, together