Why I run far — jënni jalonen

The dark night of the soul is where transformation most often happens, and if you can just bare being somewhere that you’ve never been before where you don’t have any kind of owner’s manual, or a clue on how to proceed, then you’re really teachable.

— Anne Lamott, on ep. #522 of the Tim Ferriss Show

When you’re out running for 6+ hours a day for six days, you’ve got a lot of time to think. Well, actually, a lot of my time spent running the Haute Route I didn’t think about much at all. My mind was blank and a majority of the time my only focus was on setting one foot in front of the other. Some might call it being in a state of flow. The few times I did think about something, it was about getting to the next point where I could claim another one of my small victories: reaching the top of the next climb, arriving at the next yellow signpost. With each victory, I would take a micro break, maybe drink or eat something, and be proud of what I had just achieved. These small and subtle acts were crucial for me to stay motivated.

But there were also times when my mind was more active than others — especially when I was suffering because of the heat or lack of food or just because my body was exhausted from the long days. In these moments it became impossible to think about anything else than how far I still had left or how tired I was or how much I just wanted to quit and go home. Looking back today, these thoughts and feelings actually represent some of the most valuable moments because they forced me to dig deep into myself and find a reason to keep going despite the mental boredom or physical pain.

I eventually developed a strategy on how to keep my myself motivated when I found myself sinking toward the bottom. One of the things that helped was to remind myself that pain is 1) temporary and 2) not exponential. In other words, pain neither stay forever nor does it necessarily get worse over time. Pain can arise, but it can also decrease or completely disappear, or be replaced by another type of pain.

To comfort myself, my mind would start thinking about the world at home and how much it means to me. Memories started bubbling up to the surface of my mind — snapshots and mental video sequences of past moments, or dreams of moments that may come. I dreamed about sitting at home, writing down these thoughts and sharing them with you, or painting a watercolor portrait at my desk. I thought about my family — the weekly Sunday sauna rituals with my family, going for a rest day walk with Jost talking about everything between heaven and Earth. I longed to cook a delicious meal, read a good book. I captured small images of my mom smiling at me, of the fresh smell of fall in the air.

And as I was out there, in the midst of the suffering but also the beauty and the greatness of it all, it became clear to me once again that pain and love make up a whole.

Because just as the pain is temporary, so are the beautiful and happy things in life. Everything, and everyone, is impermanent. Our loved ones. Even our own time on this Earth is finite. But we have a tendency to overlook this simple fact, living our lives on autopilot mode and either doing our best to ignore this inevitability or trying to forget it altogether because we think that we will not be able to deal with the pain of knowing that everything as we know it will all be gone at some point. Everything we’ve created, everything we are, everything that we love. It hurts. I feel it too.

On the last day of my run, I was having breakfast at the hotel when this guy at the table next to me all of a sudden starts talking to me. We talk about the Haute Route and when I tell him I am running it, he asks me plainly and curiously why I do this. Why do I run such long distances, why do I voluntarily put myself through so much pain. And I didn’t know the answer then, but I do know.

Because doing something like this — where I don’t know if I will be able to do it or not but where I do know for sure that it will hurt — helps me set priorities in life. It helps me understand that I want to give more of my time to the things that really matter and eliminate the things that don’t.

The more I put myself through discomfort, the more I appreciate the other aspect of life — the one that is filled with warmth, comfort and safety. And more than anything, running far throws me back to the harsh, but also beautiful, reality that this very moment is important because it’s the only one there is. That the clock is ticking, and there will be a time when it runs out.

So I will hold on to love for as long as I can. And when I find myself switching to autopilot mode, I will do my best to remind myself yet again that nothing lasts forever. Neither the physical pain I feel as I’m running, nor the wonderful life that only exists in this very moment.