Something that I get asked every once and a while by people who follow my Strava (https://strava.app.link/yce8Tmn3iJb), is something along the lines of, “RJ….what is up with your run titles?”

A fair question. Because most people’s run titles are something along the lines of “Afternoon Run”, “Speed work with Maggie”, or “Hill Repeats Round 2”. 

Meanwhile, my runs go like this: “Ro-bobo the Anime Music Powered Robot vs Deletatrix the Destroyer”, which may understandably beg a few questions. Like; are these episodes of a podcast? Chapters of audiobooks that I’m listening to while I run? The name of some obscure band? No, but in some small parts yes. I shall explain:

My brain is a chaos library. 

Allow me to explain further. 

A large section of my mindscape is taken up by active lore. Yes, this does include actual lore made by other people but mainly it is lore that I made in my mind about my own stories. Jumping in the way way back machine and scooting over to my childhood; early on I developed this habit I’m just now coining as storydreaming. We’re all familiar with daydreaming, this is pretty much that but my particular brand of daydreaming would be hoping right back into whatever story I had concocted in my brain and imagining it forward a few chapters. It was like I was directing movies in my head as a side gig for reality. It’s what I, a child with an active imagination, very few friends (but loving siblings), and, according to my parents, “a tendency to cause destruction when left unsupervised”, would do to be productive instead of causing said destruction or playing video games back when video game time and TV time was sacred and controlled. I’d give life to little stories, make characters and direct their adventures pretty much playing Dungeons and Dragons in my head with myself. And because I did also grow up HEAVILY influenced by video games, anime, and Power Rangers; these stories typically involved a hero episodically fighting some nasty baddie or ponderous trudging their way to an ultimate goal reflective of the media that I consumed. And eventually I did it often enough that it simply became second nature and just part of how my brain works. If you ever see my eyes unfocus and I’m staring off into space, I’m probably directing a story in my mind or thinking about what to eat 

But let’s return to the present and how this all ties into Strava titles. I joined Strava and also started actively running back in 2018, my first recorded Strava run was actually September 1st 2018! Back then I was of the thought that I would, like the previous times I tried running, give it up, also that no one would really be following me, which is to say I wasn’t planning on taking running or Strava particularly seriously. I wasn’t even going to use my real name since no one was going to be following me anyway and joked that I would go by one of the many names people thought RJ stood for. The name Robert Jordan rose to the top, which is the name of the late famed author responsible for the Wheel of Time book series (I never made it past chapter 1). The other thing about me is that I have no discipline, and motivators associated with that do not work on me. I am pure monkey brain meaning that something must be fun in order for me to continue doing it. So to optimize for my success of continued running I had to make aspects of it fun or silly. Fun and silly came in the form of thinking of how Robert Jordan (the author) would write about his runs and using that as the title. But what began to happen is that I actually kept running. My runs became longer and more frequent and that Robert Jordan joke was a well that was running dry. This was also the stage of my running career where I was running more BUT it still sucked and seemed to drag on forever. And in that dragging period where I would rather be doing anything besides running I began to turn back to my old storydreaming habits. I progressed to the point of running where instead of putting all my will and brainpower into not talking myself out of stopping or reflecting on the suffering of it all, I could effectively drift off into a story. And so naturally as my runs were effectively episodic, so were the stories I created. I started having a lot of fun with it and getting really into drafting up new characters and the worlds they would inhabit (I love me some worldbuilding) and I thought, “why not use Strava as a journal of sorts to keep track of the story and the characters since I’m recording the run anyway?”. And that was when the infamous RJ Strava title was born. 

Full disclosure I’m not actively composing a Lord of the Rings level story every time I run. The stories are pretty simple and quick, reflecting their heritage coming from an anime and cartoon influenced childhood. In fact, the first Strava run character I ever made was Ro-bobo the Anime Music Powered Robot. We won’t go into the deep lore here, but Ro-bobo arose because I realized my running playlists were 95% music from anime. This is because anime music compositionally has high bpm, “action chords” that sound heroic, and lots and lots of energy which did wonders for pushing through the early running days. I started to think about and roll with a weird concept, as speculative fiction writers often do, “but what if you COULD harness the power of anime music to fight better, run faster, be stronger? What would that look like?”. And thus Ro-bobo was born. Formerly a CD player with a well-worn bootleg anime music CD inside, Ro-bobo, was transformed by a mysterious technovirus that gave all advanced electronics in the world sentience and personality based on their original function. So for Ro-bobo this resulted in a personality built on the principles of shonen anime; heroism, fighting stuff, over-the-top action, love, peace, and justice for all! Unfortunately, he was still just a CD player. Fortunately, his owner was a brilliant engineer and roboticist and she built a robot suit around his cd core allowing him the ability to fight crime alongside her and fulfill his need for heroism and justice! Crime being many of the other evolved electronics and programs that were taking physical form and often had beef with humanity (Deletatrix the Destroyer is modeled after Alexa). 

Anyway, as you can see what became fun for me were the characters that I made and freedom to imagine what they would do next. It became something of a mental exercise and a way of ensuring that I could find running enjoyable and thus motivated to keep doing it. As strange as it might sound, I had to keep running because my character’s stories depended on it! And they just kept coming. After Ro-bobo came Ronin Jones the Middle-Aged Detective; a failed boy-detective giving it a second go. And then Captain Ruby Quasar; a mutant bounty hunter, pilot, and racer. And so on and so forth for 6 years! To the point where my brain is full of the lore of runs. I went back through all my Strava posts and did some stats; I have made over 1,200 posts that were tied to a story across at least 20 distinctive characters. Of course, none of the actual story content is written down anywhere besides inside my head, but I reckon if I had actually put pen to paper I would be rivalling some of the most prolific pulp novel authors of the time. 

You might be wondering at this point, why am I telling you all this? Well partly because as I have mentioned above, I like telling stories, but also because dear running fam I want to encourage you to take some time to think about what really motivates you to run. And I also want to encourage you to attach something meaningful to your runs and when I say that I mean meaningful to you. For me, I figured out a way to merge all of my most beloved activities (being creative, story crafting, good music for the background of the story) with running, and that has allowed me to see running as something other than just a means to an end. And seeing running as just that is totally fine! What’s important I think is that you make running yours because it will make you care about it and hopefully derive joy from it. And that is my sincere wish, for my running fam to find joy in their running 😊. 

This is also topical for me because it was just my birthday. Some people in the running community, whose names rhyme with Lara Raskin, celebrate their birthday by running their age in miles. 

I am 34. I will not be doing that. But my fervent support of those that do! 

Instead, I’ve chosen to celebrate my birthday the last few years by running every day from the 1st of April until the 19th of April and crafting and dedicating a special 19-part story for one of my characters. At the end of the streak, that character gets crafted their happy ending and rides off into the sunset, getting effectively retired from the Strava posts. But it is also when I birth out a new character, a one in one out scenario. It’s really the nexus of all the things I talked about above, running to complete a story, running to have fun with my ideas, running through the challenge because doing so is part of how I make running mine. Admittedly it does seem to get harder every year to push through the 19 days, there were a good few days this year when I had some serious concerns about my knee (I’m fine though!). But despite that, every day I would have feverish anticipation for the next part of the story and lace up anyway the next day. 

In conclusion, none of us are completely immune to our monkey brain, the part of our brain that really would prefer not to do anything that isn’t eating, sleeping, or having fun. But think about how you could make your monkey brain work for you, by turning your running into something you enjoy. However, you get there or choose to do it is up to you. After all, you always have the ability to write your own story.