Meditations on life from Olympic Marathoners

On August 10 in Paris, Clayton Young will represent the United States in the Olympic marathon. It’s almost unreal how fast the marathon pace will be – the runners in the men’s race will average somewhere under 5 minutes per mile for 26 miles – and a viewer might be forgiven for thinking that these athletes are superhuman. One might think these otherworldly physical specimens drop out of nowhere and accomplish feats of which the rest of us cannot dream. It’s as if they’re somehow a completely different species than us or mythological champions descended from Mt. Olympus. This is why I love Clayton Young’s YouTube channel. It turns out, elite athletes are just like us.

12 weeks ago, Young began posting videos once per week documenting his preparations for the marathon. Endurance athletes call the process of adding speed and peaking for a specific race a “build.” The human body can’t sustain peak performance for very long, so if a marathoner tried to stay in form all year-round, his muscles would break down.

Typically, a long-distance runner will put in lots of miles in the off-season but they won’t be fast. Because the running is far less stressful, the runner stays in shape but his muscles also recover (runners also just love to run). Marathoners will achieve peak volume as they begin their build – somewhere around 120 miles per week – but they also begin to run those miles faster. Even during the most intense weeks of the build, they can’t run fast every day. In the midst of the high number of miles, they might have two or three specific workout days that are targeted to be fast. This includes extremely fast mile repeats and gasping for air in between the intervals, or maybe they’ll run 20 miles at a slow pace and then add “pickup” miles at the end of about four or five marathon-pace miles.

A few times during the build, runners will run somewhere close to a full marathon pace for somewhere close to 26 miles. The entire build is carefully structured to push the runner towards the fastest pace possible while at the same time not burning them out before the actual race. The idea is to peak on race day.

Young’s YouTube series documents the intricacies of the build as he works with his coach and fellow Olympic marathoner Conner Mantz. It sounds like the type of documentary that only a hardcore runner would find interesting, but I’ve been watching it and the only way I can describe it is to tell you it’s mesmerizing. The running footage is peaceful and calming. It’s accompanied by a perfect soundtrack that transforms the physical efforts into pure beauty. The gracefulness of the athletes in action makes it easy to forget they’re at maximum heart-rate.

As Young says, during intervals he’s just counting through the next 100 seconds of suffering until he’s allowed to stand still again.

Watching these athletes struggle for greatness is humanizing. It reveals the persistent, quiet, steady work, the pushing through pain and discouragement that is required to stand on a victory podium. Often, Young runs with Mantz or some other training partners from the BYU track program, but there are days when he’s alone. All he has is a workout plan from his coach. Those are the times he must search within himself for the inner determination to push through the effort with no one else holding him accountable.

It can be lonely, running long distances with nothing but the trail in front of your and heat rising within like a furnace. There’s nothing easier in the world than to rationalize quitting (I know because I run long distances myself, much more slowly, and often ask myself what in the world I’m doing it for).

The side-by-side existence of suffering and beauty is what makes the documentary so affecting. These men aren’t superhuman. Sure, they’re physically gifted but they are struggling for every bit of pavement, every next step, every next breath. Just like you and me, they have runs that don’t go well and they feel slow. There are days they don’t feel like running, or are distracted, or have a nagging injury that’s worrying them. There are days they’re barely holding on.

But there’s grace, here, too, even in the conflicted struggle to finish the run. Yes, these elite runners shape and discipline their bodies to the point that it creates an inspiring and beautiful physical effect, the grace of the runners and our awe at their abilities, but the struggle also creates a beautiful interior effect inside the men themselves. The physical effort also shapes their souls.

Young knows when he’s had a bad workout but doesn’t linger in discouragement. He simply vows to make the next run great. On the other hand, he doesn’t become proud or boastful when he has a great workout. He accepts it with gratitude. Maybe he’s just a great guy. He does seem like it. I wonder if he would say, though, that part of what formed his personality is the disciplines of running, and if the suffering and beauty of the sports hasn’t changed him for the better.

Why do people run long distances when it takes so much effort? For Olympic marathoners, it’s partly the thrill of competition at the races. But, as evidenced by the myriad long distance amateur runners who run mile after mile, day after day, all around the world for no competitive purpose whatsoever, running isn’t defined by competition. Rather, running is the desire to explore the limits. It’s the idea of coming home to ourselves through a form of physical pilgrimage. What possibilities for greatness lie within each of us? You never know unless you’re willing to put in the effort.

In the end, marathon running is a sport less about dominating athletic foes and more about the satisfaction of knowing deep down inside that you poured everything you had into it, that you have pushed to the (current) boundary of possibility.

Running becomes a way of life. It shapes the way you think. This is on full display in the documentary as Young occasionally offers unexpected little snippets of advice gleaned from the discipline of running. At the beginning of his build when he’s not fast yet, he notes that we all need to give ourselves grace whenever we're not where we need to be yet. This holds true for anything we do. We start slow and with difficulty, but if we persevere we can achieve more than we’d ever dreamed. At one point, Young sounds like Solomon writing the book of Ecclesiastes, noting that some days are bad, some are good, but you always keep going. “There are highs and lows in life,” he tells the camera, “highs and lows in the sport, times to push, times to enjoy the ride, and times to relax. Now it's go time.”

I’ll be one of a large crowd watching the marathon on television with rapt attention. But the runners are not worth our attention because they received some physical gift that you and I never got. It isn’t that they’re so different from you and me. They’re admirable because of what they’ve done with what they have.