Training, friends, is boring. We must not say so. … Or should we say so? It’s base season for many of us, and as I was working my way through this weekend’s longish run that follows my Saturday long run, I was—as poet John Berryman says, ‘heavy bored.’ But that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a really, really good sign.
In Dream Song 14—yes, you can tell that this blog is written by an English major!—Berryman writes:
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
This has been one of my favorite poems since I was a teenager, though its meaning for me has shifted over time. When I’m on the trail or road and I’m starting to lag during one of my regular zone 2 10-milers, the bread and butter of my training week, I think about these lines. I think to myself, ‘I am heavy bored,’ and then, I snap out of it. Because I have inner resources. Because I know that feeling bored is how I should be feeling right in this moment, but also, I have the power to turn inwards and shift that boredom to something productive. Maybe I can work through a problem or a writing prompt. Maybe I can think about the next Shred Girls book and come up with a brilliant plot point. Maybe I can visualize the next race.
What I don’t do is change up the training that I’m doing in order to avoid that feeling of boredom. Training should be boring most of the time. Sure, there should be those interval workouts where your muscles are singing and your heart is racing. But even those shouldn’t feel like the world is spinning faster or like you’re about to burst. Even intervals should feel, well, a little boring most of the time.
Forget embracing the suck—embrace the boring. That’s where the real magic is happening.
Boring is a good thing. Boring means that you’re prepared and aren’t being caught out by the unexpected. Boring means you’re fueling well and hydrating well so you’re not coming in and out of that bonky feeling. Boring is an exercise in willpower: You against your urge to stop. It’s not something we view as particularly sexy in training, but it should be. Boring is should be the goal. We should celebrate boring. Boring is a victory: Boring means that we are capable of doing the work that’s on our training plan, and it’s not a stretch.
So, next time you’re feeling bored during a training session, celebrate that fact!
