Running 50 Kilometers Through Rome To Understand Stoicism
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Why does Ryan decide to run a 50‑kilometer race through Rome?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.
I'm gonna run the furthest I've ever run in my life. I'm gonna run 50 kilometers through the streets of Rome. The eternal city. And I'm gonna pass some of the most important stoic sites in the world as I do it. But why? That's the question. Why? Why am I gonna run 50K? Because it's hard. That's the whole point. The Stoics said that doing hard things was good for you. I learned about this great thing from Jesse Itzler. It's it's this idea of a Mashogi. You you pick something hard you do every year, something really hard, something that doesn't matter how the rest of the year goes, you look back and you remember that's the year that you did that. that you climbed the tallest mountain in your country, that you that you lost a a and a certain amount of weight, that you
you put in a certain amount of volunteer hours or or you ran a marathon. I I'm doing one right now. I'm doing a fifty K in Rome to all the different stoic sites. And uh look it doesn't matter how it ultimately ends up going. Cause I got better for trying. That's the point of the Mashoge thing. If you succeed or you don't succeed, it's it's that you went after it and you were better for wrestling with this thing. It it has to be uh a stretch. It has to be outside your normal limits, it has to be beyond your capacities. Because if it isn't. you're not gonna remember it, it's not gonna mean anything. So you wanna go pick something that's big, that's ambitious, that that scares you a little bit and this this thing scares the shit out of me.
So last year I did the original marathon in Greece in July by myself and also in the middle of a heat wave.
What is the “Mashogi” challenge and how does it relate to Stoic practice?
And I remember I I just I hit this wall Oh. One of the things you learn when you when you sort of hit a wall. Is um is that you just keep going. You have m you have more in you than than than uh than you think. And I'm not looking forward to hitting that wall again today, but but that's one of the things you learn how how you how you push past that. I've never done this distance before. The what I did last summer in Greece was was the closest. That's like thirty w this will be thirty one plus miles. I've Not run on cobblestones like this before. Um But one of my one of my favorite quotes from Mark Swilis, he says um На тон ітс impossible just because it's hard. But to understand that that if it's humanly possible, you can do it also.
I I know physically people can do this. I I know plenty of people who have done this and further. Al also what they say about uh ultra running is that It's basically a math equation. If you've done the training If you have the calories, if you have the willpower, if you have the water, the body can do it. That's not the question. It's do you have The willpower, the fortitude, do you have the commitment? Do you want it bad enough? That's what it takes. So I know it's possible. I know it's possible for me to do it. So now it's just a question, and this is ultimately what stoicism is, is am I going to do it? Or Ама квіт сам лук, байдаве. Sometimes that's the prudent thing to do too. You're hurt, it's dangerous, whatever.
So sometimes you have to make a call like that. But but but I know that the the part of this that really matters, ultimately, when it boils down to it, the part of it that really matters is is in my control, whether I'm gonna keep going or not. And then there's the other factors that are not in my control. You prepare for those as much as you can, but you gotta take it as it goes and we're gonna do it.
Mm-hmm. Mm.
So Marcus Aurelius was buried in there. This is known as Hadrian's tomb. But I think fittingly, a after Marcus and Antoninus and Hadrian are buried there, it becomes a castle. It's a castle here on the Tiber River, protecting Rome from invasion. It becomes a citadel, which is actually one of the most powerful images in stoic philosophy, the idea of the inner citadel. Yeah, it's great to have fortresses like this, but the real fortress has to be inside, right?
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