On a recent weekday, I headed out at 1 a.m. for a 65-mile adventure run around New Zealand’s Lake Hawea. As I ran down deserted Highway 6, I considered what I would listen to as I passed the early morning hours. Surprisingly, I settled on David Goggins’ book “Can’t Hurt Me.”
While I had downloaded the book more than half a decade earlier, I had never listened to it. Various clips of Goggins on social media suggested I wouldn’t resonate with the brash machismo he uses on those platforms. However, I enjoyed spending 10 hours running with Goggins that day. Indeed, while he and I come at things from seemingly different perspectives, I suspect we’d find much overlap in our underlying approaches.
Getting underway with Goggins along Highway 6. All photos: Bryon Powell
Case in point, the “cookie jar.” In Chapter 6 — Calloused Mind, Goggins discusses collecting and recognizing wins from throughout our lives where we’ve scored a personal victory, big or small. That can be done through active analysis of our pasts. We might find cookies in overcoming family obstacles, bullying, a disability, or the like in our child. Those cookies might come from more recent times in our lives where we’ve achieved the promotion, worked through a tough relationship issue, or overachieved in a race.
Why collect these cookies? So we can refer to them in future moments of difficulty. They’re a spark to refire our motivation and commitment when we have self-doubts. When we have those inevitable mental stumbles, these cookies can put us back on the right track. They break us out of any negativity spiral in our internal dialogues and the chemical responses they trigger in the body.
Lake Hawea by night.
In the same chapter, Goggins also addresses the idea of the calloused mind. With this concept, Goggins advocates for repeatedly exposing oneself to uncomfortable situations so that we become accustomed to being uncomfortable — so that we callous our minds. In particular, he suggests that physical training offers a fertile field for callousing the mind.
Now, here’s the thing, I’m a wuss. No matter how successful callousing the mind might be — and I think it is! — I have little desire to search out misery purely for misery’s sake. I’m no sadomasochist. No, thank you!
The head of Lake Hawea in the early light of day.
That said, as humans and, particularly, as ultrarunners, we regularly expose ourselves to plenty of uncomfortable situations. As such, I’ve been considering a concept that combines the cookie jar and callousing the mind for a couple of years: collecting strength.
For example, during my weeklong 237-mile San Juan InFINity Loop last summer, I ran the final seven miles on the third day in an absolute wrecker of a thunderstorm, even by San Juan Mountains standards. I mean, the county shut down both roads northeast of town, and I was running on one of those very roads not knowing of the closures, due to the weather’s effects on them. I ran over a fresh debris flow that reshaped the Animas River below it. Lightning everywhere. Torrential rain. Bountiful hail. Yeah, it was something.
This stormy run and that week were all a part of my final training push for last year’s Ultra Gobi. Simultaneous with my mind being blown by this storm being possible, I thought to myself, No matter how bad the conditions are in Ultra Gobi, I will have been through way worse in this storm. In Goggins’ parlance, I’d found a cookie, while at the same time callousing my mind. I’d find a few more cookies in the insane storms that had me balled up on the side of multiple roads in the coming days.
A look at the homestead on Hunter Valley Station from across the lake.
This wasn’t the first time I’d collected strength. In running the 2015 Ultra Gobi, my feet blistered to hell in the final 100 kilometers. Add to that plentiful sand and stretches of a horrendous substrate we’d earlier coined “camel crud.” Needless to say, I was in agonizing pain for the duration of the race. However, I rationalized my way through it, This is only temporary. This is not an injury. This will hurt whether you walk or run. I was proud of this feat in the moment, while also noting it for future use. I cultivated this memory in the months leading up to the 2024 Ultra Gobi. If things got really tough at the upcoming race, I wanted to be able to use that experience as a backstop. I could overcome new discomfort because I had overcome that prior pain.
In mulling over this concept now, I’ll file away my Achilles tendons rehabilitation in the collecting strength cabinet. Gosh, my simple rehab can really hurt. Especially, when I return to it after any breaks or if my Achilles are aggravated from training. Even if I’d prefer not to have to do this rehab, it certainly falls into the category of callousing the mind, and doing that rehab enough to greatly improve the state of my Achilles ahead of last year’s Ultra Gobi sure was a cookie I could think back on positively.
Nearing the homestead on Dingleburn Station.
Even during last year’s Ultra Gobi, I collected plenty of cookies along the way. While I can’t say it’s impossible to run 250 miles while thinking of it as one integral length along the way, that’s certainly not how I run that sort of distance! No, I’m either trying to just run along in the moment or from checkpoint to checkpoint. Although seemingly inconsequential, a segment run well can be a cookie. I just ran from the last checkpoint to this one. Cookie. And I ran well to that previous checkpoint, too. Another cookie. And the same for the segment before that. Call it two cookies, one for that section and for running three good sections in a row. Those small wins reassure us that we can succeed on our way to the next checkpoint.
Now, let’s go collect some strength!
Call for Comments
- What do you think of the concepts of callousing the mind, collecting cookies, and collecting strength?
- Where and when have you applied some of these concepts, even under different terms?
Nearing the end of my long lap around Lake Hawea, where I’d collected a cookie or two for future use.
