5 Things Writers Can Learn From Ultrarunners

How to achieve seemingly impossible goals

I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child. However, I struggled to make this dream a reality.

But it was not because publishers would reject everything I wrote or because I didn’t know the steps I would need to take to accomplish my goals. It was also not that my writing was awful.

The reason for my non-existing writing career was simple.

I was the problem.

I allowed my limiting beliefs and fears to hold me back. I made excuses for why I didn’t have time to write and comforted myself with thoughts of “someday.”

My aha-moment came when a fellow writer asked me why pursuing my writing goals differed from pursuing my running goals. And why I don’t apply the same self-discipline that allowed me to race ultramarathons to writing.

And while my inner critic started reciting all of the excuses why I can not pursue my writing goals now, something shifted.

I have been writing regularly for over seven months now. Aside from journaling, I have never consistently written for such an extended period.

I know that my writing journey has only just begun, and I have wanted to quit several times again.

What keeps me going this time is a straightforward question that I ask myself whenever I question myself and my writing goals: How would I approach this if this was an ultramarathon?

And the following five critical lessons from ultramarathon running are helpful guidelines.

1. Pace Yourself And Commit To Learning

It is illusory to think that you can finish an ultramarathon tomorrow if you have been living the couch-potato lifestyle for the past 20 years.

If you’d try to do that, you’d either not finish, get injured, or both.

If you want to succeed at ultramarathon running, you will start slow. You are building up mileage over months and years.

Learn about the training, injury prevention, and how to nourish your body to withstand the stress you are putting it through.

Learn how to pace yourself. Respect the distance.

Likewise, it is illusory to think that you can finish a high-quality best-selling book in 4 weeks if you haven’t written much at all for the past 20 years.

Even though the indie-publishing landscape made it easy for everyone to publish their books, many of these books would have been too low quality for any traditional publishing house to accept.

But you don’t have to even look at book publishing for this lesson to apply.

Take article writing, for example. Sure writing an article might seem easy, compared to the mammoth task of writing a book. However, you also need to practice becoming a better article writer.

Learn how to write compelling headlines that are not clickbaity and structure your post so that readers can follow your thoughts.

Learn the craft. Respect your readers.

2. Go Through The Motions If You Have To

Anyone who tells you that running is always fun is either lying or a freak.

The truth is that you will have days where you don’t want to head out the door. You will have runs that will test your mental strength because every step feels like a herculean effort.

Then you have to go through the motions.

It’s raining, and you hate running in the rain? Head outdoors anyways. It’s a dark winter morning, and you’d rather snuggle up in bed than go for your morning run before work? Get up and going.

Likewise, writing is not always this beautiful flow-inducing activity, where you lose your sense of time and become one with the task.

Some days you won’t feel inspired, you won’t feel motivated, and the reward for your efforts seems to be lightyears away. Some days the words just never come out the way you intended to.

What do you do? You sit down and write, anyways. You continue staring at your screen until the writing time is up.

Realize that it is normal and ok not to be bursting with motivation every day.

Instead of relying on motivation and inspiration, commit yourself to the process.

When running, you focus on putting one foot in front of the other. When writing, you focus on stringing one sentence together after the other.

3. Break Up The Task Mentally

Running 50 miles, 100 miles, or longer is a daunting task. Your mind struggles to accept the possibility that you can do it.

And yet, you can.

One of the most helpful mental strategies for keeping calm and focused during an ultramarathon is to break up the distance into smaller chunks.

Instead of focusing on the end and how long you still have to go, you focus on making it to the next aid station or completing the next hour.

Likewise, when you are writing a book and find yourself procrastinating because you are afraid of the mammoth task in front of you, focus on writing today.

Focus on finishing that one chapter or the next paragraph.

When you are starting to write a new article, and you can’t see it through the end yet, focus on the next sentence, the next paragraph, or the next one hour you committed to writing.

4. Be Willing To Eat Your Shit Sandwich

No matter what big, hairy, audacious goals you want to achieve, you will not like every step of the journey. Every work you engage in, every project you are passionate about, comes with its own set of challenges.

If you want to fulfill your dreams, you must be willing to accept and endure the least fun and exciting aspects of the work required.

If you want to finish an ultramarathon successfully, you need to be willing to train when you don’t feel like it, when the weather is bad, or after a bad night’s sleep.

You also need to discipline yourself and make time for rest and recovery, even if foam rolling and stretching bore you to tears.

And if you want to be a successful writer, you need to be willing to publish your work and risk being vulnerable.

You need to write even if rejection from publishers, rude comments on your articles, and very little monetary compensation are your current reality.

5. Become Good At Solving Problems

If you are trying to run insanely long distances, you will invariably have to deal with obstacles along the way.

Injuries might derail your training. Your partner gets mad because you spend so much time away from home now. During a race, you might have to deal with blisters, an upset stomach, dehydration, or sudden weather changes.

The better you can keep an even keel and respond to challenges in a calm, collected manner; the more successful your ultramarathon journey will be.

The same is true for writing.

When trying to finish a writing project, you might encounter obstacles that threaten your progress.

Your friends are laughing at your dream. Your inner critic is shouting relentlessly about how you are not a real writer. You can’t seem to get the structure right.

And the most dreaded obstacle: “Writers Block.”

What do you do?

You need to develop problem-solving skills and find ways how to ignore your friends’ fun-making of you, use mental strategies to silence your inner critic, and learn how to create without experiencing “Writers Block.”

To Recap

Running ultramarathons has taught me more lessons than just how to run farther.

Through consistent, long-term training and devoting myself to the process, I learned skills that serve me well in other areas of my life.

By applying those skills in my writing journey, I am finally making consistent progress in an area that I have always wanted to excel in yet never pursued with the determination and self-discipline needed to succeed.