Reclaim the joy in your miles. Here’s how adding play to your training can boost performance, fight burnout, and keep you in love with the run.
In March, I traveled to Italy’s Chianti region to run a 123K race. And since flying a professional crew to Europe is, well, prohibitively expensive, but your mom is free, I invited my parents to crew for me.
This was their first time at a big European ultra, and they were completely blown away. The start line spectacle, the sea of runners, the sheer fanfare, but what really got them were the aid stations.
European aid stations are truly in a league of their own, especially when they’re staffed by the hardest-working Nonni from any Tuscan village. These stations weren’t just fuel stops; they were full-blown feasts, featuring everything from charcuterie to espresso shots to steaming bowls of wild boar stew. My parents could hardly believe their eyes.
As my mom put it so eloquently after the race:
“I didn’t know ultrarunning was mostly people eating pie and walking around in the woods.”
Thanks, Mom. Sometimes you need an outsider’s eyes to remember how truly fun, and delightfully ridiculous, this sport really is.
I take having fun very seriously. After all, we’re just out here eating pie and walking around in the woods. Or as Kurt Vonengut says, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” But sometimes, it’s a real challenge to balance my love of all things silly with my drive to grow as an athlete, a drive that demands at least some structure and discipline.
I see this all the time with the athletes I coach. They want to get faster, but they also want to enjoy big, wild adventures in the mountains without staring at a data screen or constantly worrying about aerobic development and VO2 max.
But what if play isn’t a distraction from progress? What if it’s actually a shortcut to it?
Emerging research shows that play can boost performance, spark creativity, build resilience, and even improve endurance capacity. And yet, play is so often the first thing to get squeezed out of our busy lives, crowded out by training metrics, mileage goals, and performance anxiety.
So let’s dig into it. We’ll explore why play matters, what the science really says about how it can benefit your training, what our culture gets wrong about play, and, most importantly, how you can bring more fun into your training and your life.
Play isn’t just games with winners and losers, or chasing Strava segments like your life depends on it. Play is spontaneous, messy, and purely for the joy of it. It’s running with airplane arms because it feels good. It’s jumping over puddles you could’ve easily sidestepped, turning your long run into a scavenger hunt, or cracking up with your friends mid-interval.
Crucially, play is not forced fun. It’s not slapping a smiley face on a workout that secretly stresses you out. Real play comes from the inside—it’s joyful, self-powered, and feels light, like possibility itself. And while it might seem like a guilty pleasure, research shows play is doing serious work under the hood.
Play lights up the brain circuits behind creativity, problem-solving, and adaptability—basically the holy trinity of endurance sports. Research (Pellis & Pellis, Trends in Neurosciences, 2007) shows that play actually boosts neural plasticity and helps animals respond more effectively to new challenges. And honestly, what is ultrarunning if not an expensive, exhausting series of novel challenges?
Play also keeps your stress in check by lowering cortisol, helping to balance out the hormonal chaos of training. A 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that playfulness as a personality trait helps fend off burnout and promotes healthier coping strategies. (Truly, how do I sign up to be a test subject in these play studies?)
But most importantly, play keeps training fun long after the external motivators like races and belt buckles lose their shine. A study in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology (2008) found that intrinsic motivation is a much better predictor of long-term athletic commitment than chasing external rewards. TL;DR: joy is the secret fuel.
Our culture loves to glorify the grind. Flashy workouts and monster mileage are way more likely to earn you Strava kudos than a run where fun was the main objective. Play gets brushed off as childish or unproductive, especially once we hit adulthood. We’re constantly bombarded with productivity “hacks” to squeeze every drop out of our day. Baroque morning routines, color-coded bullet journals, HIIT workouts, even meditation—because apparently even our relaxation time needs to be optimized. Active recovery, anyone?
And let’s be honest: if you’re an ultrarunner who’s made it through 800+ words of science about how to get more out of your training, you’re probably a little Type A. Goal-chasing, structure-loving, discipline-driven. Welcome to the club. Should we get jackets?
Social media makes it almost impossible not to compare ourselves, turning even our quiet moments of joy into a performance of optimization. Should I snap a pic of my morning trail run? You know, so my followers can see I’m putting in the work. Like and subscribe!
Our obsession with efficiency squeezes out joy. If you’re playing, are you still progressing? Are you still maximizing your potential?
Here’s the twist: play is progress. Loosening your grip on rigid control—ditching the illusion that you can perfectly optimize every moment—actually builds the kind of mental flexibility strict training plans can’t touch. Play strengthens your adaptability, helps you weather the inevitable chaos of endurance sports, and honestly? Doing something just for fun feels like a tiny act of rebellion in a world that wants to monetize and measure every part of your life.
It’s just for you, just for fun.
So, this is your permission slip to splash through mud puddles on purpose. Stop to pet a couple of dogs, high-five the next runner you pass, or just pause to marvel at a view. Explore a new trail with no route planned. Join a group run that feels more like a social outing than a workout. Throw your watch into the ocean. Seriously—set it free.
I always race my best when I’m at my most playful. Last summer, racing the Leadville 100, I had my pacer keep their phone out so I could dictate ideas for jokes for a stand-up set mid-race. Stay tuned for my Netflix special: Holy Sh*t I’m Out Of Breath.
Burnout and losing the love of running are some of the biggest reasons runners don’t reach their potential. Play is like a secret shield against the mental fatigue of endless goal-chasing and the feeling of being stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Playful runners still have goals, sometimes very ambitious ones, but they chase them with curiosity and lightness, not desperation.
Performance and play aren’t opposites. They’re training partners.
After all, we’re just out here eating pie and walking around in the woods.
Truly lovely perspective and so easy to forget. To paraphrase Danny from Ted Lasso, “Play is Life!”