The 99th Edition

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about identity, the self, and the strange relationship we have with running as a way of proving who we are.

Something to Think About

A lot of what we call ambition is actually a desire to feel worthy in the eyes of others.

Something to Ask Yourself

If nobody else could see your training, your races, or your accomplishments, how much of what you do would remain the same?

Personal Lesson

Over the last few years, my life has changed a lot. I’ve gone from working in corporate sales in London to building That’s Runnable, travelling the world, running ultras, speaking at events, even made a film, and creating a life that, in many ways, feels completely different to the one I once imagined for myself.

And yet, despite all those external changes, I still notice the same patterns appear in me. The same tendency to compare. The same desire to feel “enough”. The same urge to prove myself through productivity, running, achievements, physique, or social media growth. I can tell myself I’m pursuing meaningful goals, and often I am, but if I’m honest, there are times when underneath all of that is still a desire to be seen a certain way. 

What’s strange is that the version of myself I once tried so desperately to become now feels so distant from who I am today. The things I cared about at 23 are not the things I care about now. Even my relationship with running has changed. I used to approach training with far more ego attached to it. Every session felt like evidence of who I was. If training went badly, I felt bad about myself. If training went well, I felt more confident and secure. Now, I still care deeply about running, but I’m increasingly aware that building your identity on performance is dangerous because performance is always fluctuating. The self you are trying to protect and project is constantly changing anyway.

Running – Life’s Metaphor

Running can show us how attached we become to identity. We cling to pace, race times, mileage, fitness, aesthetics, and labels because they help us create a story about who we are. But fitness comes and goes and motivation changes on a daily basis. The more tightly we cling to identity, the more we suffer when life inevitably throws us a curveball or shifts beneath us.

Final Thoughts

I think many of us spend large parts of our lives trying to construct a version of ourselves that feels worthy of love, respect, admiration etc. We want to belong. that’s human, and normal to want to be accepted. We do it through careers, money, how we look, relationships, intelligence, productivity, and of course, running. 

We build identities carefully and then spend enormous amounts of energy trying to maintain them.

Social media has intensified this for all of us. 

We’re constantly encouraged to project ourselves outwardly. Even authenticity can become performance (I see this all the time on social media). 

We’re taught that our lives should look impressive, disciplined, adventurous, optimised, and meaningful. And because of that, it becomes difficult to know what is our own desire and what is performacne for others. 

I think there’s something deeply freeing about recognising that the self itself is not nearly as fixed as we assume. 

The person you are now is not who you were ten years ago, and it will not be who you are ten years from now. 

Your fears, ambitions, insecurities, priorities, and identity will continue to evolve. There may well be some deeper thread beneath all of this, something more constant and aware, but much of what we obsess over is far more fluid than we realise.

And perhaps that’s why running can become healthier when we stop using it as proof of our worth. 

You can still train hard, chase goals, and care deeply about improvement. But you no longer need every run to validate you as a person. 

Running stops being a desperate attempt to complete yourself and instead becomes an expression of yourself.

And in my opinion, that’s where the real joy of it all begins.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition of the Weekly Reframe.

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RUN THE RUNNABLE 😉