How much should you push yourself?

Not too much, not too little, just the right amount

Illustration by Stephanie Davidson, written by Rachel Katz

I am a bad runner, I always have been. I’ve written about this before: a “run” for me has long consisted of jogging a mile or so, barely above the pace of a vigorous walk. I typically don’t like it and am eager for it to be over. And this situation has basically been totally fine with me. I have no goals when it comes to running. Choosing areas of life where we don’t excel can be highly liberating.

But recently something weird has happened with my running. I started up again after a long break, expecting to consistently plod through my 1.23 mile run at my 14:16 minute per mile pace, every time, forever. Instead, my normal run felt, well, easy. So I ran a tiny bit further. That felt pretty easy. So I ran a little faster, but not too much. That felt quite good...fun, even? Then I ran just the littlest bit further. I felt weirdly great at the end. I did it a bit faster. It felt good.

What in the heck was going on here? I reported this development to my husband, who said, “sounds like you’re getting in shape.” But, but, I stammered, but this has never happened before. I’ve felt “in shape” before, but I’ve never, ever liked running. It never got easier. I never got better at it. It never felt fun. I was baffled.

Enter Goldilocks

Then the other day I was listening to Mr. Rogers read the story of Goldilocks on repeat for forty minutes, a last-ditch effort to entertain our toddler on a three-hour car ride. By the third listen I was absently analyzing the logical gaps in the story (papa bear’s chair was too tall, mama bear’s chair was too short, and baby bear’s chair was just right? Why would papa bear’s chair be taller than baby bear’s chair? Presumably baby bear would be in a high chair? This doesn’t make any sense), and by the fifth time, I was cradling my head in my hands wondering if I would actually, like everyone says, look back on this time when my kids were young as the golden years. The goldenilocks years? This level of awful pun was all my poor, melted brain could muster.

Then, as Mr. Roger’s friendly voice once again told of the too-soft bed, the too-hard bed, the the just-right bed, I had a flash of insight: there’s a “just right” amount of pushing myself.

Let me explain.

I have, for so many years, pushed myself too hard at just about everything. I went full-steam in my work, and developed or worsened a host of mental and physical health issues, from anxiety to chronic diarrhea to chronic rashes and an autoimmune disease. In the realm of exercise, I’ve also had some incidents of too-hard pushing. I rowed crew for one season in high school (hello, New England private school girl!), and I pushed myself too hard, earned the the best seat on the novice team, terrified myself by how hard I was pushing, and quit. With running, I have occasionally and miserably slogged through faster, or hotter, or more uphill runs, trying to reach some goal, and ended the run deeply unhappy and wholly unmotivated to ever do that again.

In both of these areas I have then gone to the completely opposite end of the spectrum. I pulled back from work altogether, scared that pushing at all would mean falling back into that strung out, miserable state of affairs. That’s where I am today, and it doesn’t feel great. In running, I shut the door on any possibility that I might run further or faster at all, because that ensured that I wouldn’t push too hard and make myself miserable. You might soay, if you were Mr. Rogers, that the first push was too hard. The second push was to soft. And the third push…

How do you push just right?

I’m curious about that just-right amount of pushing. Pushing some-but-not-too-much is not something I ever thought about in the pursuits of my twenties. My current situation reminds me of a wobbly toddler trying to figure out the mechanics of walking. She stands still swaying in place. She takes a tiny step. She lunges forward and falls. She is trying to figure out the right pace to put one foot in front of the other.

There is something about repetition and boredom that can breed insight—running can do it, and so can listening to Goldilocks read by Mr. Rogers fifteen times in a row. Suddenly, friendly, calm voice droning on in the background, I realized that this theme of “pushing the right amount” connects to so many things in my life right now—running, writing, earning income, parenting, chronic illness, community building, volunteer work. It comes up in one form or another in almost every conversation in the Lady’s Illness Library

. As the three bears came home and once again found Goldilocks sleeping in baby bear’s bed, I started developing a seed of a new hypothesis about pushing myself.

Here’s my emerging framework.

• In any endeavor that matters to me, there is a right amount of pushing, and it’s more that zero and less than 100%. Stopping short of the right push feels roundly unfulfilling. Pushing too hard burns me out or scares me and causes me to quit.

• I have to land on the “right” level of push based on feel, and this is a learned skill that I have not practiced much. To complicate it more, the right amount of push changes day by day and month by month. Running has been a fantastic instruction in this. On a given day, a single speed and distance can feel drastically different, depending on how much sleep I got, and whether my toddler just had a meltdown, and whether I ran the day before, and whether I ate something that gave me an inflammatory reaction, and whether The Future is Female is playing on my headphones to pump me up. It is an important skill to read the signals and push when the energy is there and let up when it’s not. This is the practice at the core of “pacing,” an approach used by people with chronic fatigue, which I think we can all learn from. My increasing ability to do this well is, I think, what is making running feel easier and more fun right now.

• The right push is different for different activities, and at different life stages. It is human nature to want to arrive at the Final Answer and then never think about it again. But that is not how it is with pushing oneself in different areas. If I tried to have two young kids and take on a big new job and train for a half marathon and level up my writing all at once, of course I would fail or be miserable or (probably) both. I suspect my current running evolution has something to do with my lack of other goals and my generally improved state of health in the last few years. It is a right now thing. To grow with joy, I need to be intentional and explicit about where I’m pushing and where I’m not, and rebalance this periodically.

• The right amount of push has nothing to do with the amount other people push themselves. My opportunities, desires and constraints are different from yours, which are different from hers, which are different from theirs. This point might be the hardest one of all to internalize, particularly if you ever read the internet, but it’s absolutely essential. If I tried to train like my friend who loves long-distance running and does not have my health constraints, I would only make myself miserable. Same goes for all other pursuits in my life.

Well, that’s what i’ve got so far! It’s love to hear your thoughts.

• Where do you push these days?

• How do you know when you’re going to hard, or not pushing enough? Do you feel it in your body in certain ways?

—Rachel