How learning to embrace headwinds helped one runner discover newfound peace out the door on any run, I check the weather. Not to see how hot or cold it is, but to find out how hard the wind is blowing. Outside my home on the high plains of western Nebraska, it regularly hits over 20 mph. Wind affects my runs more than any other variable.
For the first decade that I lived here, I warred against the wind. I scheduled runs around the gusts, rising early before the breeze gained force or waiting until dusk when it might subside to single-digit speeds. I devised one-way, downwind routes, arranging for someone to bring me back. When I couldn’t avoid the blast, I’d plow straight into it, gritting my teeth until I could turn around. Sometimes the wind won. I wouldn’t get out the door at all.
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I was doing a slow six-miler on a late fall morning, feeling more beat up than usual from speedwork the day before and cursing the gales that sent tumbleweeds across my path and made every step feel toilsome. Then a shadow moved on the road. I raised my eyes to see a hawk spread its wide wings and lift off a telephone pole.
I see hawks on nearly every run and have always enjoyed their beauty and grace. But this day, I noticed that despite the whistling blast, this red-tailed raptor wasn’t struggling to make progress, flapping and fighting to stay aloft. Instead, he soared, swooped, dove. He glided gracefully overhead. He embraced the wind, used it to his advantage, even played in it.
Another hawk swooped in from the north. Calling and dipping in front of me, dancing in the west wind, they made my movements seem unnecessarily labored in comparison. They seemed to laugh as I griped and grunted into the gale. Watching them enjoy the cause of my distress, I realized they were on to something.
On my next few runs, I kept watching the birds, trying to learn the dance.
Instead of lowering my head, hunching my shoulders, and bullying forward, I began to lean into the wind and let it prop me up, like a ski jumper. I took smaller, quicker strides, staying close to the ground. I laughed at the gusts that knocked me backward. Most important, I relaxed. I let my effort and the wind’s force dictate the pace rather than doggedly trying to maintain my speed.
I started getting out more often. I ran farther. I began to even enjoy a headwind, how it lifted my posture as I pushed against its steady hands.
Once I learned the dance, I tried to pinpoint exactly why I had hated the wind so much. The reason the wind made running so hard, I concluded, was because I refused to acknowledge it. Somehow I had come to believe that a calm day was the optimal and expected state; that the wind was an intrusion that kept me from running how I wanted to run, the way I should be running.
The wind isn’t the only natural phenomenon I foolishly rage against. I often refuse to accept the reality of hills, heat, cold, snow, mud, even fatigue—anything that makes running more difficult. I expect that every time I go out I’ll be able to perform as I would in an imaginary, perfect world—one without obstacles.
Maintaining this delusion comes at a cost. Every run becomes a struggle or a disappointment. It’s hard to sustain love when there’s always something to hate.
My struggle against the wind, I now see, also mirrored my resistance against a larger force in my life: age. I’m 54. I’ve been a runner since I was 13. The sport has been a big part of my identity. Through the years it has provided meaning and brought me joy.
But in my 40s, something started changing. My runs started getting harder, and slower. It felt like running into a headwind, only this wind howled relentlessly down the infinite plains of time and never subsided or changed direction. I couldn’t wait it out. I couldn’t try to brave my way through it, or pretend it wasn’t real. At one point, when it became clear that the gradual increases in my times weren’t temporary, I came close to hanging up my shoes.
Watching the hawks taught me that the only way to survive these unremitting winds of life is to recognize that they are real—and that the concrete numbers that have long defined me as a runner are an illusion. Like most runners, I cling to my numbers—my PRs, my mileage totals, my training paces. Numbers establish my place in the pecking order, and they reveal progress. They give me proof that I am superior to people whose marathon times are slower, or that I’m better than my last-year’s self.
But those numbers were always compromised by conditions. The best ones were enhanced by cool weather, fast courses, well-matched training partners, injury-free buildups, and easy work schedules. Others are footnoted by limiting factors: heat, hills, illness, a throbbing calf, writing deadlines, sleepless nights caring for a crying baby.
Acknowledging adverse conditions feels like complaining. Ignoring them, however, means separating myself from reality and resenting that life doesn’t conform to my imaginary world. It means never making peace with what the world is, who I am.
Hating the wind is as silly as lamenting that my parents weren’t named Bekele or Kipchoge. As shortsighted as resenting that I had to spend Saturday at my son’s baseball tournament rather than doing my long run. As delusional as believing I could be faster—and my life would have more joy and meaning—if I didn’t have to worry about work, family, or mowing the lawn. As insane as thinking I’ll never get old.
Instead of comparing numbers, I am learning to judge effort. Effort is absolute. Effort accommodates the reality of weather, the commitments of a full life, the growing years on my legs.
Today, the wind is blowing strongly from the north. I welcome it. I was planning a six-miler with some midrun pickups, and I think I’ll arrange my loop so the intervals are into the gale. I’ll relish the air blowing through my hair. I won’t time the repeats, so I won’t mind that they are slower. They’ll still work to make me faster and more efficient during my runs next week, and in a race next month. The effort will feel the same as speedy intervals on a calm day, or running faster times in a younger body. Same effort, same joy.
I still sometimes find myself seeking shelter. But on most days, like today, I know I’ll likely spot a hawk or two. And, knowing they’ll be there, leading the way, I head out to dance with them above the plains, running into the wind.
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