Wu Wei Running?

Running
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This came up in a Substack link (intriguingly re-stacked with the comment: “I like it when people get weird with (very into) running philosophies”)

"Wu wei, often translated as “effortless action” is a Taoist concept that describes a synergy with nature. It’s a concept closely aligned with the Western term, “flow state,” as coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s.”

Firstly, I immediately thought of the quote by Caballo Blanco in Born To Run

“Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it efforthless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practiced that so long, that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one - you get those three, and you’ll be fast.”

Reading further, the author conveyed an acronym: “EAT - Ease, Attunement, Trust.”

Acronyms can be helpful, but since I’d recently read & posted something from Glengarry Glen Ross in Mark Remys Dumb Runner FB page, I got this exchange stuck in my head

" Blake: A-B-C. A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!! A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention – do I have your attention? Interest – are you interested? I know you are because it’s fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision – have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action. A-I-D-A; get out there!!!"

Anyway, has anyone here heard of Wu Wei Running, or is that another woo-woo running philosophy?

I mean, I kinda run that way, but I don’t label it as such

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most people would be better off running more and thinking less when they run

You know how to make running easier, lighter and faster? Run more duration and volume, design your run training to be smarter, run more frequent.

One of the reasons people need stuff like this is because they run 3x a week and expect miracles. If they ran 8x a week they’d have more awesome running miracles in a year than they could remember.

Now the question becomes could the average runner go from 3 → 8x running per week injury free? If left to their own designs I’d say no. If left to a professional who does that routinely then I’ll say yes

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The Desert Dude abides. What is old is new and what is new is old. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Sometimes overthinking things causes more problems than it solves. I was given some sage advice by a coach when I was younger. That the journey to the result is the important part of the experience and the result is result. One takes a lifetime the other a short while. Now that I am nearing my finish line of life I can see clearly back on the journey and smile.

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Going to be one hell of a run though