Back in 2016, I surprised everyone—including myself—by coming third place in a 220-runner, six-day stage race across Namibia. What was perhaps weirder, was that I managed to do this while finishing most days between positions five and 15.
How did I shoot up to the podium, despite completing almost every stage a good 30 to 60 minutes behind the top finishers?
The answer is a concept that applies to all of running, whether it’s thinking about your daily miles or a marathon PR attempt. And it’s a framework that I’ve found useful when I’m thinking about how I want to be a happy, motivated runner for the rest of my life.
It’s an idea that many runners will already grasp intuitively, while for others this concept might be revelatory.
And it’s called ergodicity.
Here how you can start deploying it today.
Ergodicity, Defined (Briefly)
The easiest way to illustrate ergodicity is with the following example, which I’ve pilfered from Luca Dellanna’s excellent book on the subject:
Dellanna writes how his cousin was an excellent competitive skier in his childhood, and was the fastest in his cohort, even competing in the world championships. But due to repeated leg injuries, Dellanna’s cousin had to retire from skiing before he even turned 20, never reaching his full potential.
The lesson?
In skiing, as in life in general, it’s not the best performers that succeed. It’s the best of the ones who survive.
“Catastrophic losses absorb all future gains,” as Dellanna puts it.
In other words, whether to skiing, running, or living your life in general, your approach shouldn’t be to do your best at all costs. It should be to do your best while avoiding the pitfalls that can end the game for you.
The concept of ergodicity was originally developed by statisticians and physicists, but it’s a useful filter that can be applied to various parts of life; in our case, running. Both in one-off running events, and in a runner’s (hopefully) long and rewarding running career.
Ergodicity, for our needs, might be described as a measure of how likely your approach to a situation is to yield the same result every time.
An ergodic seasoned marathon runner follows the same proven training regime and race strategy every year, largely avoiding injury, and consistently finishing around the same time.
A non-ergodic approach would be to train sporadically, then enter a race and test out some exotic pace or nutrition strategy. Injury and drop-out rates for non-ergodic runners are quite high.
Still with me for now?
Let me first explain the ergodicity of my Namibia race, and then we’ll look at a couple of different examples of good (ergodic) and bad (non-ergodic) runners…and why you shouldn’t imitate David Goggins’ approach to training:
My Big Fat Ergodic Win In Namibia
So, how did I come third overall out of 220 runners in a 250 kilometer, six-day stage race in Namibia?
I ran a consistent pace the whole way, which meant I ran slower than the top five runners for about 80% of the race.
At the start of each day in Namibia, I’d see the pack of leading runners take off into the distance, battling with each other for the top spots.
Meanwhile, I chugged along in the 100 F (35 C) heat at a sustainable 10:00/mile pace (with a 18 lb. pack on my back), running based on my rate of perceived effort (RPE), having trained in those conditions for months building up to the race.
In the first couple of days, I was coming in around position 10-15, sticking with my happy pace.
As the week went on, each day I would climb the daily rankings a couple of spots as other runners would tail off or drop out due to exertion.
Then came day five. At 80 kilometers, its the single longest day in the race. Going into it, I was in eighth place overall.
Again, I dropped back into my comfortable gear, put on some music, and ground it out in eight hours, 20 minutes. It was, if nothing else, an exercise in ploughing through boredom and mental fatigue.
But, guess what? I came third that day.
That was the turning point in the race standings, and I went on to take a podium spot, totally unplanned and without trying to land up there.
What happened?
Everyone else had slowed down or dropped out over the race.
In a stage race, this is incredibly common.
Meanwhile, I’d just held a constant pace throughout every stage.
This means going intentionally slower than what I was capable of on the first few days, and ignoring what the other runners were doing, so I would always have something in reserve.
Multi-day races are a different beast than single day events, where it may pay to go all out.
A lot of an ergodic strategy isn’t just thinking about your speed, it’s thinking “how could I fail?” and avoiding those pitfalls.
In Namibia, this meant game for avoiding heat stroke, exhaustion, injury, dehydration, stomach issues, and acting accordingly.
Pushing yourself too hard increases the likelihood you’ll end up dropping out, and being conservative but consistent can mean that, over time, you’ll do better than those who are naturally faster than you but take bigger risks.
I know what you’re thinking: all this sounds painfully familiar. It’s Aesop’s tortoise and the hare, writ large.
The hare is faster, sprinting far ahead, but then must take long breaks. He is non-ergodic by nature. While the tortoise is slow but consistent, and keeping the risk for catastrophic failure to near zero. He is the single most ergodic figure in our cultural imagination.
The Ergodic Runner: Haruki Murakami
Ergodicity brings to mind Haruki Murakami, the celebrated Japanese novelist and author of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – who, for decades, has maintained a daily running habit, and would run a marathon each year, always finishing around the 3:40 mark.
Now 75, it looks like Murakami is (understandably) slowing down, and isn’t running as many races as he used to.
But he still credits his daily morning run as a fundamental part of his routine, and describes it as an essential part of his way of life.
Murakami is the poster boy for ergodic running.
He’s happily bagging a sustainable mileage amount, year in, year out, and has now accrued a lifetime of marathon experiences, with an impressive overall time average.
He has written about occasional minor injuries, but he’ll tweak his training to account for them so they don’t blow up and stop him running altogether.
What’s interesting: Murakami’s writing process is also ergodic. He’s written about the importance of discipline and routine, and reliably commits 1,000-1,500 words to paper every single day. This regularity keeps him going, as opposed to working in spurts of inspiration which might dry up.
Find an approach that is consistent and sustainable, do it ad nauseum.
The Non-Ergodic Runner: David Goggins
Yes, Im going to cite Goggins here. Captain Willpower himself.
Here’s why David Goggins’ approach to running is not one you should replicate: it’s not ergodic.
In short: he’s undoubtedly impressive, has landed some insane ultramarathon podium finishes, and can power through almost anything.
But that’s also his biggest weakness.
His running biography includes a litany of needless injuries like broken feet—then running through them and making them worse.
It’s a strategy that works until he’s literally forced to stop running because of the damage he’s done to himself. His list of injuries (some now permanent) read like those sustained by an entire platoon after a long military campaign: chronic knee problems, permanent joint damage, heart issues that required surgery, kidney and organ damage, multiple stress fractures, pulmonary edema.
And that’s not to mention the strains, tears, scar tissue and everything else he’s built up through, well, overuse.
Let’s face it, neither you or I actually want to take this approach (or the litany of injuries it comes with).
We want to be able to get up on any given day, be injury-free, and be able to go for our runs, and about our daily lives, pain-free.
Although I’ve been known to occasionally run extreme distances, by embracing an ergodic approach I know when I should dial things back, when an injury might be flaring up, and when to tap out. Goggins either doesn’t or he chooses to ignore it.
My colleague Michael Doyle summed it up to me recently when he said “David Goggins would fail miserably at the Barkley Marathons“.
An event like the Barkley marathons rewards an ergodic approach – that is, the tactical runner who considers all the potential pitfalls of the race and tries to train and plan around them, rather than just muscle through them, Goggins-style.
How To Become An Ergodic Runner
OK, here are my tips for applying ergodicity to your running game.
Why would you actually want to do this? The whole concept of ergodicity is to design a strategy that is likely to get you to have to same desired outcome every time, and not lead to burnout, injury and failure.
It can be handy for applying to individual races and runs, but the true value in the ergodic approach comes to applying it to your relationship with running for the rest of your life. By thinking ergodically, you can put in place some tenets to maximize the probability that you’ll be happily running for decades to come.
So here you go:
1. Think about running in decades, not in weeks or months
One of the gifts of running is it’s something that we can aspire to do well into our later years. Plenty of septuagenarians and octogenarians use running as their primary ways stay active.
When you start thinking about your relationship with running as something you may want to last for another 30, 40, 50 years, you look at it differently. It’s no longer all about beating last year’s marathon time or setting another PR.
Because once those speed-based achievements are behind you, you’re going to have decades of running where you just can’t hit those prior targets.
Retired pro runners, as they age, tend to fall into two camps: those who transition happily to recreational running, and those who don’t and never run again.
Do you want to be someone who “used to run” but hung up your shoes when you couldn’t hit the same pace as 20 years ago?
2. Don’t try and win; try not to lose
This is a delicate one for runners—especially those with a competitive mindset—to manage: when we strive to “win,” whether it’s a new PR, a podium finish, or completing a crazy-long ultra, we push our bodies to new limits.
And whenever we try to optimize one aspect of running—whether that’s speed or endurance—we usually expose ourselves to weakness in other areas.
A high-mileage training plan without proper guidance and patience can increase the risk of injuries, stress fractures, and exhaustion.
The gruelling ultra (and it’s training) can leave you burned out and with no desire to even look at your running shoes again.
There’s a tight-rope to walk whenever we’re reaching for something new: it’s the trade-off between pushing ourselves to new limits, while not falling into the pitfalls that come with our new challenge.
The ergodic runner would usually err on the side of backing off, rather than pushing themselves to the point of injury, exhaustion, or burnout.
3. Invert; always invert
Another way to frame the above: think about what could derail your running, and avoid it.
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, often said, “invert, always invert” (which he apparently borrowed from German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacobi).
In other words, instead of asking yourself “how can I have a great year ahead in running?”, ask yourself how you could have a miserable year ahead in running, and then do everything to avoid the things that could lead to those unhappy circumstances.
If you simply run consistently and avoid injury and burnout, the rewards can be pretty astounding.
You’ve just got to compare the day-to-day experience of a runner who is training unencumbered vs a runner who is, say, laid up for 3 months due to injury.
4. Find contentment in the journey
I often think about my friend and colleague Amby Burfoot, who at 78 has run the Manchester Road Race 62 years in a row.
Amby, once a 2:14 marathon runner (and, at the time, missed the American record by just one second) is the rare example of someone who has embraced his post-elite running career, and now runs happily with us regular recreational runners.
Finding some reason to keep engaged with running seems key to keeping that long-term, ergodic link alive. Whether it’s with a run club, or just a core part of your daily structure—like Murakami—you need to have a “why” to your running that at least makes sense to you, and gets you over the daily friction of getting out the door and logging miles.
5. Don’t allow yourself to fall out of love with running
This last one feels like the kicker.
A lot of the time, the ergodic approach to running feels a little banal in it’s simplicity and conservative nature. Don’t do anything too extreme, just keep running consistently, back off if you notice any injuries cropping up.
But one of the biggest risks an ergodic runner faces is falling out of love with running. I’ve been there; I’d been running ultras at a high level, but gradually got mentally fatigued by the long training runs and never found the same extrinsic rewards from running that I’d always experienced before racing competitively.
How to avoid this?
It depends.
But the answer is usually by mixing up something in your approach to running. You may have to set a new, different type of goal to train for (like a fast mile). Or find a new route, or new running club to join.
Remember, the goal isn’t to be the best runner you can possibly be.
It’s to be as best you can be while ensuring you stay in the game.
