Winter Survival as an Athletic Hominid

I spent the whole of November not running. Though I feel a hankering for striding and a rather uncomforting sense of loss, I believe that such time is needed to rest my body. To be fair, I did not step away from activity entirely. I dove head first into strength training, climbing and swimming. I even headed back to the squash court to rekindle my love of lunges and high-speed projectiles. To progress as an athlete it appears necessary to maintain fitness and combat a wholesale loss of aerobic capacity and strength.

While ruminating at home, I begin to look towards the next few months. It is winter outside, but now is my time, like many runners, to grow. During the summer season of racing, I found, it is incredibly difficult to fit in large blocks of sustained training with needing to taper and then recover so frequently. Therefore, the upcoming months of dark and cold present the fitting period for growth and blossoming.

Many runners may know of Bernd Heinrich, an American ultrarunner who wrote Why We Run (originally, Racing the Antelope). Heinrich won numerous ultras. His 1984 US record of 12:27 for 100 miles on the track was only just lowered this September by Jon Olsen. However, Heinrich’s ultrarunning accolades are rivaled by his extensive and varied career as a field biologist. In fact, his study of ultrarunning and human potential rose out of his biologist’s worldview.

Heinrich’s work on winter survival among different animals got me thinking about how I survive–how we survive, as running animals, during the long and often arduous winter season.

Heinrich discusses a multitude of physiological and behavioural adaptations that allow insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals to tough it out during frigid months. He defines differing processes such as hibernation, torpor and diapause forms of inactivity and states of arrested development often observed during winter months in an effort to reduce the stresses of world outside.

Humans are great innovators. As any other animal, we most certainly rely on physiological adaptions. We also continually adapt our environment to suit our needs. And, as a result of molding the world around us, we flip the notions of diapause and torpor on their head. It is true that humans will never hibernate in the same biological sense that bears do. However, our collective lack of slow-down and reduced activity is a marvel. Instead of hunkering down for many months of inactivity and halted growth, I, as well as nearly all others, have the great opportunity to pursue hyperactivity. I can focus, with this as my period of boosted development, despite external conditions that would otherwise slow me down. It is rather strange to me to suggest that I can expand my physical and physiological capacity during this season. However, as a contemporary athletic hominid, living in a world my predecessors created and contemporaries continue to create, insulated from many of the conditions that trigger such seasonal changes in other animals, I have nearly unlimited access to regulate my own schedule of hibernation.

While animals near my home prepare to settle down, I am already relaxing my body, resting my system for the long winter ahead. Though my schedule is contrived, manmade and feeling at odds with the natural world around me, I am thankful for the rest I choose and for time to grow though the light outside is dim and air biting. We, as runners, have the liberty and good fortune to create our schedules, select our races and define our training just as we transform our bodies. Through technological and industrial innovation we transform our world and our relation to it. In this way, our collective transformation mirrors our running practice. The trick is to maintain a perspective and acknowledgement of connection to the natural world and its rhythms without displacing our aspirations and dreams.

As I sit and rest, actively awaiting the end of my running-hibernation, I meditate of my continuous challenge to find my place and cadence within the natural world while pursuing perpetual growth. But for now, as the world around me settles, I look to bound back into form striding headlong into the quiet season.