Motivate Yourself with an Arbitrary Challenge
What I learned from my 8x8x8 — running eight miles every eight hours for eight days. Spoiler alert: it’s not about running.
Back in August I undertook the “4x4x48,” a challenge thought up by fitness guru David Goggins that entails running four miles every four hours for 48 hours. I wanted it to mean something, but the whole thing just felt performative and insubstantial — something to do and then maybe post about on social media. I thought possibly I might have begun developing better discipline in getting out for a run “on time” and without too much foot-dragging, but other than that, it was just generally unsatisfying. Not sufficiently challenging.
If nothing else, the 4x4x48 had offered a couple of days of structure and focus — and a blessed distraction from world events — so I decided to come up with my own new and improved version.
Not that it was easy to haul my ass out the door every four hours while accumulating a moderately debilitating sleep deficit, but I felt that it didn’t really do anything for me. Four short miles; twelve outings; finished in two days. While I was very much looking forward to being done with the whole thing after just a few runs, by then I was already almost half-way finished. Throughout, I thought about how it could be better, by which I mean more useful to me — something that would require some level of adjustment and might lead to some actual change. If nothing else, though, the 4x4x48 had offered a couple of days of structure and focus — and a blessed distraction from world events — so I decided to come up with my own new and improved version.
To address my complaints about the original, while maintaining the catchy title and symmetry, I came up with the 8x8x8: eight miles, every eight hours, for eight days — 192 miles in 192 hours. Twice as many runs, twice as far each time; four times the overall time period and four times the total mileage. The prolonged duration seemed like it might offer an opportunity for some meaning to arise. Also, completing this would be accomplishing something new for me: like the 4x4x48, it involved running 24 miles every 24 hours, but while I had run more than 48 miles in less than 48 hours before, I had never run almost 200 miles in barely over a week. Overall, this seemed like rather more of a challenge.
Calculating the beginning such that I would be finishing on Friday afternoon, at which point I could celebrate by indulging in pizza and beer and going to bed early, I put some fresh batteries in my headlamp and headed out for Run #1: 8 miles on a lovely, moonlit night. Unlike the four-mile thing, eight miles is far enough to feel more like one of my regular outings. Except this one started at 10:30 PM.
Some notes from the field:
#1 turns out to be a surprisingly pleasant run — clear night, full moon, perfect temperature. Eight miles down, 184 to go! I feel pretty encouraged and even energized at the end; it takes a while to settle down and go to bed. This ultimately turns out to be my fastest run of all 24.
Run #2 is a very different story. I wake up stiff and sore , and 6:00 AM feels way too early. Getting a few hours of sleep is infinitely preferable to the minimal resting period allowed by the 4x, but not nearly enough. This run feels slow. I’m not a morning person, so I knew the early runs would be the least enjoyable for me and probably the slowest, and about this I am correct. The next two runs though, at 2:30 and 10:30 PM, turn out to be almost exactly the same pace, so I start to think this is just how it’s going to be — slow and steady and really not too bad.
I’m wrong. The following morning sucks. A lot. Getting out of bed is a struggle, and the struggle continues for pretty much the whole run. I expected this (see above about not being a morning person). I fully anticipate doing some walking on this outing (because…morning) and being out for a longer time. I am not wrong. I’m hoping this very slow “run” is going to be the low point of the whole challenge. On this point — sadly, and again — I am very wrong. Still, I’ve already knocked off 40 miles, so that’s something.
Before things get much worse than Run #5, I have two very nice runs: #6 on my beloved trails in the sunny afternoon, and #7 that night featuring new shoes, in hopes of combating some aches I am developing in my knees and hips. The shoes do seem to improve the situation, and the note I jot down upon returning from Run #7 is, simply, “Awesome.” I have completed more than a quarter of this challenge and it seems to be going pretty well.
But then…my alarm goes off. F**k. It is disturbingly, painfully difficult to get out of bed. Like, I really, really don’t want to go running. I really, really want to go back to sleep. At 6:30 AM it is just getting light enough to not need a headlamp, but the actual sunrise does not occur until I’m a few miles in. Being out as dawn is breaking is, theoretically, nice. This run, though, is not nice. It’s awful. My usual warm-up jog does not get me going; over and over I give up, walk for a bit and try again. About halfway through this slog, I fall on my face. As falls go, this is not bad at all — no blood, nothing broken — but it is not exactly encouraging.
This is the time of day when all the Morning People are out running and riding bikes and walking dogs, and I am embarrassingly covered in dirt, like someone who has perhaps just fallen on her face. I know no one actually cares, or probably even notices, but it adds just a little extra suck to what is assuredly the worst of the 24 runs.
I’m wrong, again, of course. #8 turns out to be neither the slowest nor the suckiest of all; not even first runner up in either category. Thankfully, at this point — officially one third of the way through this challenge — I don’t yet know this, and happily assume it will get better from now on.
I had found that the 4x4x48 challenge progressed much like any race: it began rather energetically, hit a rough patch, recovered and found a rhythm, went well for a while and then gradually descended into a hellish suffer-fest before becoming fun again as the finish line came into view. On some level I probably knew that #8 was not the low point (more like that early rough patch) and that the worst was yet to come. I became increasingly reluctant over the next few days. A couple of hours after returning from my afternoon run, I would begin to dread the night run, and even when that turned out to be fine, I would lie down and attempt to sleep dreading the alarm and the run that would follow.
I started to view this schedule as a series of relatively normal days followed by anxious evenings and an unpleasant energy-sucking blur that encompassed both the night and morning runs, plus a few hours of attempted sleep. Over the first few days I have established that I just cannot make it through a sleep-deprived day that begins before dawn with an 8-mile run (or “run”), so immediately after Run #8, I stumble upstairs and fall right back into bed. From now on I am planning to do this every morning. This way, when I actually wake up (hopefully before noon) I will be reasonably well rested and can then have my “day,” featuring a mid-afternoon run and a few hours to do errands or whatever else my life contained before I started with this ridiculous challenge. And then dinner, like a normal person. And then the dread, the blur, a rinse-off, and back to bed again.
Responding to the accursed alarm at or around 6:00 AM day after day becomes increasingly difficult. It’s hard to believe this whole thing is only eight days, total, and I’m not even half-way through. It already seems like forever.
6:00 AM, October 5 (run #11): I don’t want to get up. I can’t believe I have to get up, let alone RUN.
6:00 AM, October 6 (run #14): It is difficult to convey the intensity of my desire to NOT get out of bed. Words cannot express how very, very much I DO NOT want to get up right now. Or maybe ever.
6:00 AM, October 7 (run#17): Already? Really? Fuck. Fuck. … Fuck.
Meanwhile, each night I go upstairs and glare jealously at the dogs as they curl up to go to sleep while I change into running clothes instead of getting ready for bed. And yet, the 10:30 runs almost always prove to be the fastest and most enjoyable of the day. Seven of the eight night runs end up on the top ten list of fastest paced, while, predictably, seven of the ten slowest were in the early morning. The afternoon runs fall appropriately in between. And while my pace does not necessarily translate directly to how pleasant the outing might be, it is a pretty good indication of how I feel — physically, at least. A few times I take my phone with me to try and capture the sunrise or the moon, and maybe a few selfies to prove that I got out there, because some days, when I regain consciousness (if, indeed, I really do…) it is hard to remember whether I got up at 6 and ran 8 miles or if that was a dream, or yesterday — it’s a blur. But the days are going by; the runs getting checked off; the miles accumulating.
So yes, I can continue on with this stupid challenge and make myself much more miserable even than this! And I will! Because…wait. Why?
On the fifth of the eight early mornings, I arrive at the very, very worst, slowest, lamest, achiest, most pathetic and dismal run of all: #14. By this point I have convinced myself that this whole experience is going to keep getting progressively worse, possibly improving for the very last run or two. I can’t even imagine, though, how it could get much more utterly wretched than this nearly three-hour death march. It can’t get worse, but it WILL. It will suck more and more! So yes, I can continue on with this stupid challenge and make myself much more miserable; more miserable, even, than this! And I will! Because…wait. Why?
This is not the first time I have questioned why I am doing this. I’m hoping there will be some lesson or benefit in it. That it will mean something. Like many things I undertake, I don’t necessarily know, going into it, what that something will be — or, unfortunately, whether that something will be worth the effort. In this case, there is no one to offer clues by sharing their own experience, because unlike a marathon or an Ironman or a 100-miler, or even the 4x4x48, this is not a pre-existing challenge. This is one I have dreamed up all by myself. So far, this challenge has made me generally stiff, achy and exhausted. It’s true that I have racked up a very satisfying number of miles in a short time — in fact, as of the end of Run #14 I have far exceeded my lifetime record of miles logged in one week (now at 112.70) — but it seems like I could have done that in a less regimented and maybe more fun way.
I am still waiting for the epiphany that will reveal the point of inflicting this upon myself.
But if this f**king miserable run didn’t show me the light, I am not optimistic. I’m just wiped out and f**k it, I’m going back to bed and I’m NOT setting an alarm.
I wake up (luckily) at almost 2:20pm, with barely 10 minutes to get out for Run #15 on time. It’s true, I did just say f**k it after that last run, which sucked so enormously, but I also posted on Facebook about this challenge shortly before passing out. The way I see it, my options now are to hope no one has seen it and delete that stupid post, and then go back to bed, or proceed with the remaining 10 runs and see what comes of it. In my mad dash to get dressed and out the door, I notice, I don’t seriously consider pretending I never dreamed this up and then tried (and failed) to do it. I can’t take the time to get online, anyway; I have to start the next run at 2:30, so that’s what I do.
And this — the language in my head that is arising to make sense of what I’m doing — strikes me as what might be the Big Takeaway of this 8x8x8 thing.
This is when I start to perceive what I might be learning from this challenge. First, more than five days and 112 miles into this, getting out three times a day and knocking out 24 miles every 24 hours is becoming normal to me. My body — and, perhaps more importantly, my mind — is adjusting. After just these few days this volume of running doesn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. My unauthorized 4-hour nap seems to have revived my energy, and it’s another nice sunny fall day, and I can get out on the trail. This is the slowest of my afternoon runs, but it is so much faster and lighter and more enjoyable than #14 that it seems absolutely fabulous. I feel great! I almost want to go farther on the trail than the 8-mile loop allows, but I can’t; I have to go another 8 miles later tonight.
And this — the language in my head that is arising to make sense of what I’m doing — strikes me as what might be the Big Takeaway of this 8x8x8 thing. I’m thinking, quite literally, that “I can’t” do certain things and that “I have to” do others, and these parameters are effectively guiding my behavior. I’m doing the runs, and not doing things that would make them harder or mess up the schedule. Of course I don’t really have to run eight miles every eight hours; I don’t have to get up at 6 or get dressed to run when I want to go to bed. And I can, in fact, run as far as I want on any given day, or have a beer while cooking dinner, or go grocery shopping in the mid-afternoon. I only “have to” and “can’t” do any of this because I decided that this particular 8x8x8 thing is what I’m going to do, and I have adopted this language and this way of thinking in order to make myself do it.
For some people, this will not be a big revelation. For some people, the concept that one can decide to do something and then, just…you know…do it…is simply self-evident. Duh. For the rest of us, though, this is often way more difficult to implement than it sounds. Seemingly impossible, even. Ask someone who has tried unsuccessfully to lose 20 pounds, or knit a sweater, or clean out their basement, or learn to play the bassoon. You decide to do a thing. You begin, with the best of intentions, to do the thing. Maybe you get it done — follow through to completion — or maybe you manage to stick with it for a while and then give up, or maybe you decide on the thing but never even start. Breaking bad habits is hard. Developing better habits or new skills is even harder. Most of us prefer, at least some of the time, to have the thing laid out for us, and maybe have guidance or even assistance getting the thing done — hire a personal trainer, buy a book, follow a pattern, sign up for lessons. That way, achieving the thing is broken down step by step, each one clearly defined, and it feels so much easier when all the decisions have already been made and someone else is giving the orders. There are rules: you have to do this; you can’t do that.
if I can direct myself to do this thing — this random, arbitrary thing — I can (theoretically, at least) direct myself to do whatever I want.
I don’t have to think about when or whether or how far to run, and therefore — for this brief period of days — there is no dithering, no procrastinating and no just not doing. Someone has mapped it all out and is telling me what I have to do, and that makes it easier. The someone, in this case, happens to be me. If I can direct myself to do this thing — this random, arbitrary thing — I can (theoretically, at least) direct myself to do whatever I want. This is (theoretically, at least) liberating. I can map out whatever hopes and dreams I may be harboring and then follow those instructions, step by step. Check things off, day by day, and voila! I will have done the thing. Mission accomplished. Theoretically, at least.
My 8x8x8 Challenge was far more useful to me than the 4x4x48, but not for the reason I originally guessed that it might be. I expected that it would be more satisfying than the original for the reasons I came up with it in the first place: it was more challenging (longer, farther) and at the same time more manageable (more sleep, time to do laundry, etc.). And it’s true that the nice list of checked-off steps, 193.7 miles logged, and all the Facebook “likes” and comments (mostly saying I’m insane) are kind of gratifying. The real payoff, though, is possibly getting it through my head that I can establish a goal, work out the necessary steps to achieve that goal and then execute the plan all by myself. No one else needs to be involved, no money needs to be spent, no fitness guru or book or race director required.
Admittedly, I have never been big on the self-help type books or gurus of any kind, but I have most certainly found signing up for a race to be the surest and easiest way to get myself to do a thing. For me, the signing up is the hard part; once I have filled out the form and paid the fees, I have only to do what I’m told. The course is already laid out — usually well marked — and there is a specific date and time for me to show up. Then I just do the thing. And when I’m done, I get some kind of official recognition (a medal, a shirt, a line in the race results, etc.). The 8x8x8 made me be my own race director.
As it turns out, you, too, can be your own race director, or your own David Goggins!
I would like to apply this theory to something other than running, but I’m already thinking about testing it out with another running challenge: the 12x12x12. First, though: that much-anticipated pizza and beer, and a whole lot of uninterrupted sleep.
