New Year, New Me?

’Tis the season of New Year’s resolutions. The cultural imperative to publicly announce one’s goals for the new year has a whiff of catholic confession about it: I feel compelled to tell others where I fell short in the last year, and what I’m planning to do to optimize my life to do better in the future. But Brian Klaas recently wrote that we should ditch optimization as a goal in favor of resilience. I agree, and the running world’s obsession with optimization in recent years has started to rub me the wrong way. But what does prioritizing resilience look like in practice?

Over New Year’s I was on vacation with my wife and her side of the family, and her aunt and uncle, Julie and Gordon, were contemplating how to accomplish their resolution of being bit more active in the coming year. After learning that I was a running coach, they asked me to go on a couple of runs with them and to set them up with a plan to incorporate running into their weekly exercise routine. Neither of them had run for a number of years, and they were both fairly apprehensive about the prospect: their main associations with running were pain and suffering. When I said that my coaching philosophy centered around having fun, they weren’t sure whether I was joking.

We started out with 30-second running intervals and ample walk recoveries, with specific destinations in mind like restaurants and cafes. It was a surprise to them and a relief to me that we ended up having a lot of fun, and they were able to find a rhythm and a pace that felt sustainable and even gratifying.

In one sense, getting Gordon and Julie started on a running plan could be described as helping them optimize their fitness routine. But while I’m a believer in the value of regular running and cardio exercise in general, I think that perspective omits an important element of the week: it’s really awesome to be open to trying something you think you might hate. It takes a lot more courage and resilience to go for your first run in years than it does for me to go on my weekly long run, even though my run might be more outwardly impressive. Starting a new routine of any kind requires that we tolerate a certain amount of so-called inefficiency and exercise quite a bit of resilience.

Consider this your invitation to join me in seeking resilience over optimization and finding ways to expand your horizons in 2025!