Energy Is Earned: What I Learned From Two Weeks of Running

Exercise looks exhausting to those who don't exercise. To those who do, it's energizing. Photo: Martin Katler (Unsplash)

I’m a runner now.

Well, I’ve gone running seven times. And that makes me a runner.

For most of my life, I’ve hated running (for the record, I’m not saying I love it now). A friend of mine was once asked, “Do you run?” and she said, “Not even if I’m being chased.” I related.

But here I am, writing to you from my new identity as a runner: transformed, energized, and feeling a great sense of personal renewal. How did we get here?

When Comfort Becomes a Trap

A few months ago I injured my shoulder lifting weights. Exercise has always been such an important ingredient to boost my mood and sustain my energy levels, so when I was forced to take a pause, my life began to shift right away.

I told myself I was “resting.” That meant no lifting, very little movement, and a whole lot of couch time. I watched more TV, scrolled more social media, and ate more junk. I felt sluggish and stale. I was less productive and less creative.

In short, I was in a slump. And I had gotten there under the guise of “recovering.”

It wasn't really recovery, of course. It was a retreat into comfort. This is an important difference.

A lot of the things we reach for when we’re tired - binge-watching, junk food, alcohol, doomscrolling - aren’t helping us bounce back. They feel good in the short term, but they drain us in the long run.

The Flow Cycle

Flow is a state of peak performance where we do our best, most creative, most productive work effortlessly. We all have the capacity to tap into flow, and its much easier when you know how it works.

There are four stages in the flow cycle:

Struggle → Release → Flow → Recovery

That last part is often misunderstood. Recovery gets treated like a reward, but it’s much more than that. Proper recovery is the fuel for everything that comes next. 

You can’t enter flow without the energy to get there. And you can’t perform at your best if your recovery strategy is stealing more energy than it gives.

Proper recovery is active. It’s intentional. Unlike retreating into the couch, active recovery means doing things that restore your capacity - like walking, meditating, journaling, breathing, stretching, or, apparently, running.

Maybe There’s More to It

A few weeks ago, a friend invited me on a hike. During our walk, he told me about running 72 kilometers on his birthday. At first, I was triggered and all sorts of negative feelings came up as I imagined that torture. But as we kept walking, my curiosity took hold. How does someone run that far?

I told him about my own painful past attempts, including a time I ran 7.5 kilometers cold and earned myself a month of shin splints.

He got right to the heart of it:

“Dude, your ego’s getting in the way.”

How astute of him. I knew I wasn’t respecting the process. I was trying to be good at something I hadn’t practiced.

He gave me a bunch of specific advice: take shorter strides, imagine crushing cans beneath your feet, focus on going up, not forward. Run for five minutes, then walk for two.

So the next day, I tried again. With my partner by my side, we completed a bunch of cycles of five minutes running, two minutes walking. And by the end I didn’t feel broken. In fact, I felt the opposite, like something in me had healed.

Breaking Out of the Slump

Since then, I’ve been running every other day. Partly because it’s uncomfortable and I’m trying to lean into that growth, and partly because it’s working.

The benefits haven’t just been physical. Here’s what I’ve noticed:

• A sense of renewal. I feel like I’ve reset. I’m revisiting my nutrition, my sleep, my spending, my work practices and other habits. I'm making adjustments that serve me better.

• A way to tame my ego. I’m not trying to be fast or impressive. It makes it a lot easier to improve when there's nothing to prove. I'm trying to bring this beginner's mindset into other areas of my life again.

• A focus on process goals. It’s not about distance or speed. It’s about showing up right now. Five minutes on, two minutes off. That’s the win. And I’ve started applying that process-focused mindset to other goals.

• Energy to create and tap into flow more readily. I’m thinking more clearly, making better decisions, and doing better work.

  
  

More than anything, running these past couple of weeks has reminded me that real recovery is more than doing less.

Recovery That Restores

To people who don’t exercise, movement looks exhausting. But to people who do, it’s energizing. Being active is a source of fuel. If we want to do deep, creative, productive work we need to stop calling avoidance recovery. And start recovering on purpose.

So let me ask:

What does recovery look like for you?

Is it really restoring you? Or is it just an escape that's not helping you rebuild capacity?

If you’ve been in a slump, the key to breaking out might not be doing more. It might be changing how you recover.