G.4: I Don’t Run

Post 6 of 11 in a series on the intersection of data and fitness.

Click here for the rest of the series.

The two-mile run is stupid.

It’s not just me saying that. Reportedly, it’s also the people we hired to design the ACFT. I’ve been unable to properly source the rumor, but I’ve heard it enough that I’ll share it here with the caveat that I only have medium confidence it’s true.

Supposedly the ACFT was pitched as a five-event test. But when they briefed the army leaders, born and bred on a gazelle definition of fitness, they couldn’t countenance not having a run event. Apparently, the sprint-drag-carry doesn’t count.

The two-mile run only checks one of the six operational fitness demands the army found when it looked at two decades of combat employment. But there are plenty of different and better ways to assess a soldier's ability to sustain ‘long periods of aerobic activity’. Hell, if they opted for a 5k run instead of 3.2k, units could easily just knock it out in conjunction with a regular local race — timing chip included. The ACFT, with its tighter intervals between events, makes the whole test one cardio assessment.

We kept the two-mile run because we have whole generations of GOFOs who think it’s the best way to assess combat leadership, despite exactly zero data backing that up. It’s something we all know, but somehow only Duffel Blog has the courage to say out loud. But, just like my old commander who didn’t give a shit about a 300 APFT, while I think the two-mile is dumb, it is the army standard, and so we all have to be ready to pass it. Ready means always.

My ‘Mode’ of Fitness

I have become somewhat infamous for constantly telling people, ‘I don’t run’. This isn’t entirely true, as I’ll detail below, but I run very little and for very short amounts of time when I do. Yet I consistently max my two-mile run time. When one of my CSMs, who was a runner, came in behind me on our first APFT together, I think he had an existential crisis. ‘You don’t run…’ he spent the rest of the day saying in shock. Yup.

That’s because you don’t have to run to max the two-mile.

Two weeks ago, when I pulled the data, I had run a total of 161,406 meters in 2024, which is just over 100 total miles.¹ This averages out to barely 440 meters a day, though if you only count my typical five-workout-days-a-week it bumps up the average to just over 620 meters. That’s only a hair over a lap-and-a-half around the track per day of gains.

My ‘mode’ of running is I don’t. 72.8% of the days last year, I did not run. I only ran 68 days; it’s still only barely over a quarter if you count only workout days. Of those days I did run, 38.2% had a total daily distance of less than one kilometer. 45.6% of the time I run between 1k and 5k. I only ran a 5k or greater distance 11 times this whole year; less than once per month.

And this year actually had more than typical running because of a lot of TDY and a PCS move — that’s that spike you see around the 4th of July. I run more when I travel because good gyms can be hard to find on the road. Clean and jerks scare people I guess.

Despite averaging less than half-a-mile run a day, I consistently max the two-mile run on the ACFT. I also consistently meet the five-mile (8k) run standard in the UBRR. All without doing much actual running — and zero cadence calling. Hell, I don’t even own a reflective belt.

Short And Sharp

I do get more traditional cardio in other places throughout the year. I grew up a competitive swimmer and I still enjoy getting in the pool, often during lunch.² In the same 50-week time frame, I swam 113,600 meters — just over 71 miles — which averages out to just shy of 440m per day (2/3 the average daily distance I ran).

Swimming certainly helps my cardiovascular fitness, but the pool isn't where I principally train my heart rate for the intensity I need for the two-mile run. I do that in short, sharp sessions, most less than five minutes in length.

I start each workout day with a hard, but not flat out, three minutes on either the assault bike or the rower. I also sometimes do it on a curve treadmill. 1/10th of my total miles run was on a curve treadmill spread across three-minute chunks throughout the year. But most of the time, I’m on the assault bike or the rower. Just summing these three-minute sessions comes out to 305,754 meters — just over 191 miles. At an average of just over 1,200m per workout day, my three-minute start to each day accounts for roughly twice the distance I run per year. But distance isn’t the measure, ‘counting coup’ is.

The pace for those three minutes is uncomfortable — especially on the assault bike.³ I often try to see how long I can go before looking down at the screen. I know I’m at the right pace when I think I’ve done 1:30 only to glance down and find out I’m just :50s in. As you start minute two, you should be feeling it, and you should want to slow down. Don’t slow down. Keep pushing. The final :30s are probably going to be up at an anaerobic heart rate. Don’t throw away your whole workout destroying yourself on just this warmup but reach out and taste the first failure of the session. To steal a quote from a great workout partner, ‘You know what hard work feels like’. You set the pace.

You don’t want to drop off the bike / rower / curve crushed, but you should be feeling a lactic acid burn when you start your mobility work. I typically get about 10 to 15 minutes of stretches and mobility in, which gives me plenty of time to get my heart rate back down to a resting rate before I start my lift set. This also helps me train the exact kinds of recovery I need for combat and the unexpected. Flushing the lactic acid and getting your breathing back under control are key to #2, #4, and #5 of the army’s typical mission profile. It’ll also help you manage the transitions in the ACFT, from the sprint-drag-carry to the plank and then to the stupid two-mile run at the end.

A One-Way Function

When I was a captain a lot of my army leaders were reading Christopher McDougall’s ‘Born to Run’ and championing it as a must read. Runners love a book about running, especially one that said the human species evolved to run so we could capture large game. Cat Bohannan probably has the right of it though, ‘It’s probably more true to say we evolved to be endurance joggers and walkers.’ Regardless of the pace, the human species doesn’t need to practice jogging much, we’re evolutionarily selected for it.

Being designed to run means you don’t actually have to run to get better at it.⁴ Our bodies translate just about anything that improves our cardiovascular health into improved running ability. This means a good METCON set of cleans and burpees will help improve your two-mile run time. But that’s a one-way function. Running will not improve your cleans. Aerobic fitness doesn’t improve your anaerobic ability very much. But anaerobic sets can have huge aerobic gains.

It comes down to efficiency for me. Instead of spending hours slogging up and down the pavement running, I spend three minutes a day actually preparing my body to be ready. Ready to flat out sprint to the next thing. Ready to reset and be prepared to do it all over again. By training my anaerobic fitness I get aerobic fitness for free. And then I can invest all those long hours I didn’t waste running into more impactful, better RoI activities.

I do other things that get my heart rate up, and without a doubt the failure based METCON’s I do go a long way to preparing me for 14 minutes of running. But I have to acknowledge the impact those first three minutes each day have on me. They get me warmed up and ready to mobilize and stretch. They give me my first taste of failure for the session. They get my head right.

I am well aware there are plenty of commanders and sergeants major in the army who are losing their minds at the suggestion that running isn’t the most important thing we do for fitness. I commend any of them who managed to read past the title of this post. But that bias is in no small part because of a failure to engage with the data. It stems from the same lack of data literacy that I’ve argued against elsewhere and was the catalyst for this whole substack.

Plenty of army leaders might argue it’s impossible to get workout gains in just three minutes. So next week, I’m going to introduce a pair of Japanese gentlemen: Koichi Irisawa and Izumi Tabata.

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It’s Just A Mile

Sometimes you do actually have to run. These two WoDs are the ideal run sets. Upside, they require zero equipment beyond a watch or a smart phone. So even being TDY doesn’t give you an excuse.⁵

You’ll start out ‘It’s Just A Mile’ doing about :20 seconds of air squats, and :40 seconds running. But quickly the squats add up and the time inverts. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself squatting your last round well within view of the finish line, wishing you’d just gotten 20 meters further. Your score is total rounds it took you to complete the mile.

'It's Still Just A Mile" is the same as the previous, except you get the added perk of being able to lunge forward. Given that lunges take longer than air squats, you’ll probably end up finishing around the same time. Score is total rounds it took you to complete the mile.

I actually cycle three different ‘mile’ WoDs every quarter. I do ‘It’s Just A Mile’ in the first month, ‘It’s Still Just A Mile’ in the second, and the ‘Stupid Mile’ the third.⁶ Together these three WoDs cover all six recurring themes in the typical army mission profile, hence why I repeat them each quarter.

1. When I said I keep detailed logs of my workouts, I wasn’t exaggerating. I’m not calling this series ‘Where Data Meets Gains’ for nothing.

2. For too long a time, I felt guilty slipping out of the office at work for a lunchtime swim, like I was doing something I shouldn’t be. It comes from too much working through lunch and eating at your desk. If you find yourself in a similar mental trap, STOP! You’re allowed to eat somewhere other than in front of your email, and if you spend your lunch hour getting in gains, that’s an unequivocal good. Swimming at lunch has the added perk of not leaving me smelly in the same way a typical gym session would.

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4. If your definition of being ready involves marathons and triathlons, you will need to put in longer hours running to toughen up your feet and joints for the repetitive impacts they have to endure. That said, I’ve completed a half-marathon and placed well in sprint triathlons without deviating from my ‘no running’ training regimen. When I did a marathon and later an ultra, I did — briefly — trade lifting for running.

5. There’s a myriad of apps out there for fitness tracking and timing. Two I use regularly are A HIIT Interval Timer and Timer Plus - Workouts Timer.

6. That one doesn’t have running though. It’s a set of walking with kettlebells. Message me if you want the breakdown.