The Race Is the Easy Part
About 7 things that running taught me about design — and about independence, mistakes, falling, getting up and doing it all over again
On Saturday, I completed my first half marathon. It was not the prettiest of finishes, nor did I come in first (or last). I encountered everything that one could image during those 21.4 kilometres. Starting with the thought of “in no way should I be doing this” while surrounded by extremely fit, laughing and singing millennials and Gen Z runners sporting their bone induction headphones, their $400 shoes, and their extraordinarily high tech vests, which looks like they also contained oxygen.
There was I, with my mid-length shorts and half-decent gear and single gel pack. Plus a hat. And AirPods. And an early model Apple Watch that played music when it felt like it. And my past-mid-life body.
I have been running since I was 23 or so. After grad school, and on a fellowship in Krakow, Poland, I decided it would be a great idea to take up running in the most polluted city in Europe. This was right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nearby was Nowa Huta, which sounds just like what it was — a new town dedicated to burning tremendous amounts coal — and a Soviet diss to the historic city of Krakow, which was a cultural and intellectual mainstay for 1,000 years.
Anyway, that was the start of my running career, two words that didn’t really come together until, I think, yesterday.
It was also the start of design career, or the start of my transition from being a painter to becoming someone working in the field of design.
Why should you care about any of this?
There are a number of what I might call psychic tenets that tie running and design together (for me) and I thought it might be of interest to enumerate them, as I continue to connect health, healing and the ever-intensifying practice of design.
Caveat: I’m not really trying to encourage you to start a running practice. But if the net benefit is more running (or other form of exercise) for you, then yes, my encouragement was intentional! Mostly, my goal here is to show what running taught me about design.
Independence. This is the most important aspect of being a runner. It’s all you. One hundred percent you. You and a pair of shoes and your mid-length shorts. And probably a top. Some people belong to a running group, but that’s not my thing. I’m too introverted much of the time and too impatient most of the time to want to deal with others’ mishigoss (“Can you guys wait up while I go back and get another pair of gels?”). You run. Unlike being on a team, no one is going to put running on your calendar. As a designer and visual artist (remember that you are both), it is both imperative and satisfying to maintain and foster your personal independence, to learn to say no, to prioritize your time and your energy, and to stand firm on your values. Running means saying no to some things so that you can say yes to you. This was an incredibly hard thing for me to learn. Like democracy, personal independence is a hard-won affair. It takes constant vigilance and discipline to maintain and defend your running and your practice.
Discipline. For a number of years, I was unfit mentally and physically, in pain and with horrid anxiety, and I gave up my running practice. I literally could not get myself out the door some days. On other days, I found it hard to walk more than a few blocks. After moving to Montréal 9 month ago, I decided to tie my fresh start to a fresh running schedule. I started small. 1 k. 2 k. Then 3. Then 4. Then 5. (One nice thing about keeping track of your “mileage” in kilometres is that you can clock larger sounding numbers.) It took weeks and months to crawl from zero to 10k and then 12k and 16k — and then the half marathon yesterday. There were mornings when I felt like absolute hell and I did it anyway. As designers, fear of the white page is similar. You open it up and you are confronted by a snowy hellscape. And you know that you have done this before. Writers block is a myth, or at the very least, a bad trope invented to dismiss creative individuals. We all know what it takes to get through the start of anything — it’s discipline and a bit of healthy self-talk.
Informality. A few weeks ago, I fell on my face while out for a long training run. It was horrible. I thought it ended the possibility of doing the 21k this month, and perhaps ever running a longer distance. There is nothing more informal and unceremonious than falling on your face. You feel exactly like the most base elements that you are — a collection of skin and corpuscles tied together with bones and ligaments — intimately telling you that your flesh is a mere flash of finitude. Running forces you to confront, and give comfort to, your confidence in a very intimate manner. But, after the fall, I rallied. I came through it. And I finished the 21k in the time I allotted myself. Running trains you to honour your fragility and your resilience both, dear designer. It helps you see that, whatever your current station — student, practitioner, seeker, founder, director — the icy sidewalks will not be there forever.
Iteration. During the first ten minutes of a run, it’s not unusual to feel like crap. Then something happens and, over the next half hour, you’re on top of the world. Other runs are the opposite — you start off slow but strong and end up slow and weak. Why? Who knows. Because our bodies are weird. Too little sleep, too much sleep, an argument with a friend, drinking a darker beer, the way that you looked at your socks. For running and for design, we really don’t know how this stuff works. Yes, there is plenty of science and theory to both. But both contain glorious mystery. What we do know is that iteration — the consistent, diligent and often unjoyful repetition of activities — day over day and week after week, lead to breakthroughs. Not always and not always consistently, but primarily, we get out of iteration more than we can know. The outcome of any physical or mental work is directly proportional to the relevant input over time. Some say it’s 10,000 hours. Others put it at far less or far more.
Discretion. Connected to independence, discretion in running is the freedom to decide what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, and how you’re going to personally manage it. Lots of folks love Strava, an exercise app which tells everyone how much you’re running (or biking, whatever) and broadcasts your personal stats to the world. No thanks. I tried it out for a few weeks and the last thing I want is to telegraph to other people how crappy a runner I am. Not interesting. Running is about me, mostly. I enjoy the congrats and the high fives after a long run from others — and I love a good, private hand wave or nod of the head during a run — but it’s not necessary. As designers, too, hearing positive feedback is sweet, but I also don’t need to present everything to everyone. Like running, design- and art-making are messy, complicated and unfit for public consumption. I’d rather just do the thing, get it right in my own time and place, and then we can all talk about it later. Maybe.
Physicality. I learned how to design with paper, pencil and pasteup. I mean, there were computers, but we definitely printed stuff out, cut it up, and placed it carefully down. The physicality of design is something I still appreciate and I wish I could still design entirely on paper. I’m sure that, for you, dear designer, it all started with drawing: taking a “Violet (Purple)” out of a box of chewed up, blunted old crayons, and making lines and shapes. The early scribbles of my daughter are innocent and clear-eyed visions which I’ll treasure. And while most of us will never be able to draw like quite like that again, I think that every time we reach for a sheet of paper, we are also reaching into those early days of divine drawing. Running, too, is an act of full physicality. But instead of your hand doing the work, it is your entire body drawing a path as an acts of promise and potential. To run is to make lines in time.
Reflection. After a run, whether it’s 500 meters or 100 kilometres, there is necessarily a time of reflection. It’s kind of forced on you. The reflecting can be met by pain, or exhaustion, or anger coupled with defeat or distress. Or it could be met with mild exhilaration or heatstroke or sadness or glory. It’s hard to know what you might encounter after a run. And that’s the point, kind of. Your job as a runner and a designer / artist is not to get anywhere in particular but to proceed and to process. You hope that you might learn something after you’re done, but if not, that’s okay. Reflection means that you come to terms with what was, and to resolve to move forward with whatever you found.
Running has taught me to be a better designer — and a better person. There are other physical activities, personal endeavours and career choices that are equally wonderful — but most are less solo, less individualistic and less forgiving. Running and most design practices are fuelled by acts of personal independence. Designers, methinks, make natural runners. I’m curious to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Yours,
Image of the week
A page from a pamphlet called Point and Line to Area by Wassily Kandinsky. Even the simplest of forms — dots, lines, surfaces — have emotional effects on us viewers. I love how this spread uses various small typographic tricks in the most constrained and subtle of ways. This is one of fourteen different volumes published by the Bauhaus in the 1920s under the Bauhausbücher imprint. Punkt und Linie zu Fläche is a kind of continuation of Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art (free on Kindle) — and here is a little excerpt from the latter.
When religion, science and morality are shaken… and when the outer supports threaten to fall, man turns his gaze from externals in on to himself. Literature, music and art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt. They reflect the dark picture of the present time and show the importance of what at first was only a little point of light noticed by few and for the great majority non-existent. Perhaps they even grow dark in their turn, but on the other hand they turn away from the soulless life of the present towards those substances and ideas which give free scope to the non-material strivings of the soul.
Quote of the week
I always loved running… it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.
~ Jesse Owens, African-American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games (during the Nazi regime)
P.S. Thank you for reading this far, dear designer. Would you do me a favour and share this with a designer/artist friend? My goal is to get to 1,000 subscribers, after which I will consider another goal.
Thank you and wishing you a good run (I mean week) ahead! Also: If you want to subscribe,