All runners know that a training partner can push them on to greater heights. My ‘Thought for the Day’ on BBC Radio Ulster reflects on training with others, in light of Ethiopian athletes’ belief in the concept of idil.
You can listen here, or read the text below:
Greater Heights
After my son was born, I gave up training with my running club. The new demands on time and energy meant that I usually had to hit the roads myself, at unsociable hours or as part of a run-to-work commute.
The latest lockdown has provided me with a new opportunity to run regularly with an old training partner. The first time we met for hill repeats, I found that I was sprinting up the slope four seconds quicker than I would have done on all those long, lonely sessions by myself.
Four seconds may not seem like much. But it’s almost an eternity over this particular 400 metre incline. Of course, I knew that training with others can push you on to greater heights: this is one of the reasons running clubs exist. Still, my improvement seemed truly magical.
‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ is a common trope in our sporting lexicon, conjuring up images of a solitary, heroic athlete toiling in isolation. Success is presented as solely down to the efforts of the individual.
But in the great distance-running nation of Ethiopia, running is not thought of as an individual sport. To train alone is viewed as suspicious and problematic – not to mention ineffective for producing the Olympic champions for which the country is famous.
Ethiopian runners believe that running together generates its own sort of spiritual energy, propelling individual athletes beyond themselves through the power of the whole.
Working together in this way helps Ethiopian athletes cultivate an inner state known as idil. Idil is an Amhara Orthodox Christian concept that is similar to fate, but encompasses the idea that God rewards not those who work hard for themselves, but rather those who work hard for the common good.
The concept of idil keeps athletes striving, in hope that God will reward them with running performances far beyond what they could ever have dreamed.
Anthropologist Michael Crawley found that aspiring Ethiopian athletes’ belief in idil meant that they had almost no concept of talent or genetic ability: it was spirit, not flesh, that explained excellence.
Cresting the top of that hill alongside my training partner, I can’t help but believe those Ethiopian athletes are right.