John P. Faris III

Things I'm Working On

Running

Don’t Camp Out At The Aid Station

I was looking for a reaction from the other side of the table, but the absence of one was nearly as telling. 

I’d invited a friend, an accomplished endurance athlete, to lunch in order to get advice. 

I shared with him the stats about the ultramarathon I’d signed up for.  The race was just a few days away and  I was worried I wasn’t prepared.

He didn’t dismiss my concerns with positive reinforcements like “You’ve got this. No worries.” Instead he offered me two pieces of advice that’ve stuck with me:

  1. Relentless. Forward. Progress.*
  2. Don’t camp out at the aid stations.

Over the years I’ve adopted “Relentless. Forward. Progress.” as a personal mantra. When the going gets tough; DON’T – STOP – MOVING. 

When something is complicated, break it down to its simplest components.  Complete one, and move on to the next.  

Don’t think about the next ten miles or even the next mile.  Think about the hill you’re climbing right now.  Can you take one more step?  Yes?  Do it.  Can you take another?  Yes.  Keep moving forward – relentlessly.

The second piece of advice, related to the first, is equally profound.

You don’t hang out at the aid stations too long because it’s the opposite of progress.  If you get too comfortable, you just might stay.  Grab what you need and move on.

The aid station is a metaphor for life.  It represents your comfort zone.  I’m not sure who said “Comfort zones may be nice places, but they are waste lands where nothing grows.” 

What job / relationship / routine have you gotten too comfortable in?  You need to mix it up.  To be clear, I’m not suggesting you quit your job.  Maybe that’s what you need to do.  But maybe it’s just the opposite.  Maybe you need to double down and take your skills to the next level so you can grow in the job you have. 

Whatever your situation, don’t get too comfortable.

Relentless. Forward. Progress.

P.S.  I’ll never know if I had what it took to finish that ultra.  What started out as a light drizzle the morning of the race continued to increase in intensity throughout the day. Stream crossings that were supposed to be ankle deep were knee deep, then waist deep, and an even deeper crossing became impassable.  We were pulled from the course for safety reasons, having completed a little less than 70% of the full distance.  Nevertheless, I still count it as one of my greatest accomplishments. And yes, it was way out of my comfort zone.

*It wasn’t until later that I discovered that “Relentless Forward Progress” was the name of a book about ultra-running by Bryon Powell.

Finding Your Way Home and Beauty in Motion

Your Time

One of the top things elderly Americans regret in life is being too busy to have had the time to do the things they actually enjoyed. Older Americans overwhelmingly wish they had worked and [sic] less and spent more time with family, going for a walk, sleeping in, and just enjoying life. Few people my age will take this advice seriously.

The field of positive psychology teaches us that having control over your time is one of the biggest keys to being happy. People adjust to material stuff quickly. But losing control of your time makes almost everyone miserable. No matter how much you love work, everyone should do everything they can to gain control over their time.

Having Control Over Your Time Is the Only Sensible Financial Goal by Morgan Housel

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Find Your Way Home

I once heard a speech by writer Elizabeth Gilbert about how the best way to respond to success or failure was the same, “You have got to find your way back home again,” she explained. “If you’re wondering what your home is, here’s a hint: Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. Your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.”

Trail Runner Magazine article about Tommy Rivers Puzey

This quote was from a Trail Runner Magazine article about Tommy Rivers Puzey, a long distance runner.  It’s an inspiring story about his battle with cancer. 

His return to the NY Marathon was written up in the NY Times.

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Tree Stand

Although it looks like a woodland of individual trees with striking white bark and small leaves that flutter in the slightest breeze, Pando (Latin for “I spread”) is actually 47,000 genetically identical stems that arise from an interconnected root network. This single genetic individual weighs around 6,000 metric tons. By mass, it is the largest single organism on Earth.

Aspen trees do tend to form clonal stands elsewhere, but what makes Pando interesting is its enormous size. Most clonal aspen stands in North America are much smaller, with those in the western U.S. averaging just 3 acres.

Pando has been around for thousands of years, potentially up to 14,000 years, despite most stems only living for about 130 years.

…It has dealt with disease, wildfire, and grazing before, and remains the world’s largest scientifically documented organism.

via Atlas Obscura

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Beauty in Motion

In his 2006 essay, ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience’, the late, great American writer David Foster Wallace wrote that “beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty”.

“It might be called kinetic beauty,” he added. “Its power and appeal are universal.”

Watch Kipchoge run, and you’ll see his point. It’s difficult to find a sportsperson so impossibly suited to his craft, as if his entire reason for being is to coast over the ground at 4:40 per mile, a pace that for most would feel like a sprint.

But when Kipchoge does it, his head has virtually no vertical motion, his face so relaxed that he looks bored. His arms hang loose, swinging casually, his fingers in a gentle tuck, as if holding an invisible stick. His feet don’t so much hit the ground as stroke it, his toes pushing off the road with the elegant, balletic grace of a dancer.

via Irish Examiner , H/T The Collaborative Fund

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Links

If you’re interested in NFTs:

A model for trading and sharing art, built on the principles of financial transparency, royalties and easy access for all may sound egalitarian. The reality has been rather different. As soon as it became apparent that almost anything digital could be labelled as art and sold, the circus rolled into town. 

The Guardian

If you’re a baseball fan.

If you know (or don’t know) who Paul Finebaum is (RE: Knowledge Bubbles).

If you’re wondering why Amazon delivery vans make a funny noise when they back up.

If you’re thinking about working multiple jobs simultaneously.

If you like to snow ski (or you just want to be entertained)

Finding the Right Metrics

Almost every morning for the past few months I have weighed myself.  The number on the scale has barely moved.  If I were to use this one data point to measure my level of fitness I would reasonably conclude that I haven’t made any progress.  But that’s only part of the story.


My watch gives me a lot more information – including heart rate, pace, and overall distance.  I ran more miles in the month of June than I have in any single month in the past three years.  This information tells a different story.  One that I might not even know if I didn’t have the right device to measure my performance.


When we start something new it’s important that we choose the right metrics to gauge success.  Pick the wrong ones and you could give up too early, or waste time on unproductive projects.


Feedback guides our actions.  When we get relevant and accurate feedback we make better decisions.

How We Spend Our Lives

A few weekends ago I forgot my GPS watch when I went on a run.  As I started down the trail I thought to myself, “Well, I guess this one doesn’t really count”.  Which, of course, is ridiculous.  Just because it won’t show up on my Garmin dashboard doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter.  

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. – Annie Dillard

In life, it is often the sum of the little things that matter as much or more than our bigger actions. When I’m training for a race, I have no problem getting motivated for a long run on Saturday. The hard part is dragging myself out of bed for the short, frequent runs throughout the week.  But the shorter in-between runs are just as, or more important than those weekend slogs.


I thought about the races I haven’t run.  The ones where I injured myself before race day. The ones that didn’t fit in my schedule.  Was all that training wasted?  Of course not.


A friend of mine asked me what I liked about long distance races.  I surprised myself with my response.  I told him the often used cliche, “Its about the journey, not about the destination” was actually quite fitting.  I like working towards something.  I like the momentum and the purpose.  But even if I don’t get there, I find I arrive somewhere.

The reward of running—of anything—lies within us.  – Scott Jurek


For a long time when people asked me if I was a runner, I would hesitate and reluctantly answer yes.  That changed after I read a piece with the theme “we are what we do”.  If you take pictures, you are a photographer – whether you get paid to do it or not.  If you write, you are a writer.  If you create art, you are an artist.  And if you run, you are a runner.

The reason that run counted was because that’s what I am – a runner.

What more is our life than the sum of what we do each day?  Let’s make every day count.

The Cottonwood Trail