I am currently in Dallas, Texas. This morning, I went for a run around White Rock Lake — one of my favorite training locations — but I was feeling unmotivated. Just run a mile, I told myself. If you want to quit after that, you can.
When I hit the mile, the sights grew more visually interesting. Just get to three miles, I said. Then you can stop. But three miles is close to four, and then you might as well hit 30 minutes for a good, round number. Once you exceed four miles, you are approaching five-and-a-half miles — the halfway point around the lake. From there, you are just running home. How else would you get home, if not run there?
Eleven miles later, I stopped my watch — satisfied, yet aware that my run was a castle constructed out of lies. I never intended to stop early, but I told myself that I would. I think I believed myself in the moment. As a moral philosopher, this gives me pause.
The author running around White Rock Lake, Dallas. All photos courtesy of Sabrina Little, unless otherwise noted.
Running on Lies
I often lie in training, though not in the way you might expect. I don’t exaggerate distances or overstate what I am capable of. Rather, I often explain running away or make it smaller. A tough 10 miler becomes a “relaxing hour outdoors.” An American record becomes an inconsiderable and arbitrary feat, given that national records are contingent upon a state’s present borders — a consequence of geopolitics and something that is out of my hands. A 100 miler is “not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.”
I lie for two reasons, as far as I can tell. In my peak athletic years, it felt as though honest explanations of racing sucked all the oxygen out of a room. They directed attention to me in ways that were uncomfortable. Also, running became an obstacle to hearing about other people’s lives, because they wanted to talk more about my running.
Sometimes I lie for the sake of myself. When big runs are called “easy,” this makes them more palatable. You don’t have to psych yourself up to accomplish something that you have already told yourself is small.
I am not unique in lying to myself either. In a study involving swimmers, elite-level performers self-deceived more than those who performed at lower levels (1). Lying is thought to deflect “anxiety-provoking stimuli,” and to shield an athlete from threatening information so they can focus on their craft (2).
There are many other ways that runners lie. Some exaggerate their feats. Some lie about what they are capable of, to entice sponsors or market themselves in a crowded professional landscape. Runners lie at races when they tell themselves they are almost done, miles away from the finish.
Others self-deceive about their commitment to the sport. It is easier to self-deceive about how committed you are than it is to submit wholly to the task of training. It is a form of self-protection to know, on some level, that you did not go “all-in” on a race, just in case it goes poorly.
Training optimism is also a kind of lie. It presumes too much of one’s capabilities (3). And then there is cheating behavior, which is a subset of deception and a virus on the sport. Currently, the Athletic Integrity Unit’s Global List of Ineligible Persons is 635 people long (4).
Cheating is certainly not new. Cheating behaviors were recorded in the Classical world, in the earliest surviving records of organized sports (5). But it remains a serious problem for us, too. There are likely many more cheaters in running than just the ones who are caught. Because ultrarunning is a young sport, it is notoriously poor at monitoring for, and sanctioning, illicit activity.
So, are runners just a bunch of liars? If so, why should we care?
White Rock Lake on a sunnier day.
The Concepts
Honesty is a virtue concerned with truth, which conveys truth to others and to oneself (6). It is an excellence that involves “reliably not intentionally distorting the facts (7).” That this distortion is “intentional” captures the fact that deceiving happens on purpose. For example, if you make a false claim (“There is no rain in the forecast.”) because you do not know better (“A weather front rapidly advanced into the area.”), this can misdirect others. But this is an error, not a lie (8).
Self-deception is an odd subset of lying. It is odd because it is unclear whether we actually believe ourselves when we self-deceive. On some level, I knew I would complete my run around the lake because I know my own intentions better than anyone else does.
Self-deception is also odd because the motivation is unclear. Lying is often used to exploit, or take advantage of, others. How can we self-exploit for our own benefit (9)? In one way, I win. In another way, I lose.
I have already noted that lying is sometimes done for prosocial reasons — like redirecting attention to other people or maximizing performance potential. These sound like good things. So, why should we care about deception in distance running? There are at least three reasons:
1. To Preserve the Legitimacy of Ultrarunning
Ours is a sport that often straddles a line between incredible and not credible. Someone accomplishes a great feat — summiting a mountain in record time or completing an obscene distance on foot. For a moment, you pause to wonder whether they really did achieve that seemingly impossible feat. For this reason, ultrarunning requires precision to maintain its legitimacy.
If participants have a habit of fudging numbers or exaggerating what they have accomplished, this invites speculation. People start to question the veracity of athletes’ claims, even when doing so is unwarranted.
2. Duplicity Has Costs
There is an image I like in Dante’s “Inferno.” It is of the hypocrites in Canto XXIII. They wear beautiful golden cloaks, but the gold is a thin veneer. On the inside, the cloaks are lined with lead. The hypocrites walk bent over with fatigue — beautiful and tired, with insides not matching the outsides (10).
These are divided people. There is a disconnect between how they seem and who they are. Living this way — deceiving others about who you are — comes at great cost.
An engraving by Gustave Doré illustrating Canto XXIII of Divine Comedy, Inferno, by Dante Alighieri. Photo: Scanned, post-processed, and uploaded by Karl Hahn, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There are relational costs. If the same pattern of duplicity translates from running into your relationships, the people in your life bear the brunt of your dishonesty. Maybe you say you will go for a quick run; then you extend it. Well, someone may be worried or need to assume more household responsibilities in your absence.
There are character costs to dishonesty. Vices are like cavities; they compromise the integrity of the whole mouth. When you lie, you become a person whose words hold less weight. Also, honesty is connected to several other virtues — such as trustworthiness, respect, humility, and justice. Philosophers Ryan West and Bob Roberts point out that “the virtues of truthfulness and justice overlap significantly, bound together … by their high degree of relevance to one another (11).”
There are also psychological costs to dishonesty. Maintaining untruths about yourself — even to yourself — is exhausting. You have to remember what you said previously. Also, if your training lacks motivation so regularly that you consistently self-deceive to complete runs, this is a bad sign. Maybe you should examine whether your training is well-ordered or sustainable (12).
The author, getting out whatever the weather.
3. Honesty Has Training Benefits
Knowing precisely what you can do — and what you cannot do — is an asset in sports. It means you can draw closer to your physical limits when it counts, without either underperforming to your capabilities or going out too hard and imploding.
By contrast, dishonesty is like wearing warped glasses. It offers practice in seeing yourself in ways that distort who you are, and what you can realistically achieve. So, if for no better reason than a concern for performance, honesty is something we should cultivate to maximize competitive outcomes.
Final Thoughts
Runners, like all people, lie in many ways, for myriad reasons. It would be impossible to assess them all adequately here. Even so, a concern for truth is valuable in our sport and in our lives more generally. Honesty is a constitutive feature of a good character, and it is a virtue we should aim to cultivate — me included.
The author, putting in an honest effort.
Call for Comments
- Do you tell yourself white lies during training or racing?
- Do you think you could benefit from being more honest with yourself and others in your running?
Notes/References
- E. Starek & C.F. Keating. 1991. Self-deception and its relationship to success in competition. “Basic and Applied Social Psychology” 12(2): 145-155.
- E. Starek & C.F. Keating. 1991, 146.
- Hope is a better target than optimism because it is grounded in reality.
- See Global List of Ineligible Persons. 1 January 2025. Athletics Integrity Unit. Web <https://www.athleticsintegrity.org/downloads/pdfs/disciplinary-process/en/Global-List-JAN_25.pdf > Accessed 4 January 2025.
- Skillen A. 1993, as found in G. Reddiford. 1998. “Cheating and Self-Deception in Sport, in Ethics and Sport,” 225-239. Ed. by M.J. McNamee and S.J. Parry. E & FN Spon, 225.
- C. Roberts and R. West. 2020. “The Virtue of Honesty, in Integrity, Honesty, and Truth Seeking,” Ed. by C.B. Miller and R. West, 97-126. Oxford University Press, 106.
- B. Miller, 2021. “Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue.” Oxford University Press, 30.
- B. Miller, 2021, 34-5.
- Funkhouser. 2019. Self-Deception. Routledge. 3.
- Dante Alighieri. The Inferno, Canto XXIII. “The Divine Comedy.”
- C. Roberts and R. West. 2020
- This is a message to me, from me.
