I’ve been doing a lot of hiking this year. The biggest reason is a standing date with my friends twice a week to climb a local mountain. It’s a short 2-mile up and back, but it’s pretty steep. It’s always been difficult for me. My assumption is that it would somehow feel easier at some point.

I’ve now done that same hike over a hundred times in the past year. Week in, week out. Sometimes less than twice a week, but also sometimes more.

The biggest surprise for me is that while I’ve gotten a smidge faster during that time (about 4 minutes faster), my perceived effort has been about the same. My cardio has improved, certainly. But it has not gotten easier. This was very disappointing. I thought maybe the “I’m bad at cardio” line I’ve been telling myself my whole life was just true.

A few weeks ago, a friend and I drove to Hood River, Oregon to hike Dog Mountain. The peak is known for being covered in a dramatic blanket of wildflowers during a narrow window of the year, and we wanted to see it. It’s about 6 miles up and back, with similar steepness to our local hike the whole way.

It was tough, but we paced ourselves and felt great. My muscles were definitely feeling it by the top, and my knees and shins were feeling it by the bottom, but despite the tiredness and shakiness it felt like I could definitely do that again.

The next week when we got back, my time on our local mountain improved by an entire 4 minutes—double my previous improvement that took a whole year. Not only that, but the hike felt markedly easier for the first time since I started.

—-

This probably shocks no one who understands how fitness works, but it’s an experience that has changed the way I look at so many things in my life.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve taught myself consistency and steadiness. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve taught myself the drudgery of repetition. I thought this would be like the “final battle”. If I could defeat my internal chaos and resistance to doing anything in the same way twice, it would make my life easier from every angle.

Turns out this isn’t true. Consistency is valuable. It helps you establish and understand what your baseline is. But even if you do what is hard for you, very very consistently, it will remain hard if it is the hardest thing you ever do. You will certainly improve, BUT. The hardest thing you do will remain hard, even if you do it week after week, 100 times or more every year, year after year.

And this makes sense, because we are physical beings, and existing in the world requires efficient use of limited resources. If you can do the hard thing over and over, that’s enough, according to your body, mind, and spirit. It did its job. It’s adapted perfectly to make you capable of doing the things you asked it to do. It doesn’t really care about how you perceive the level of effort it required.

But if you want it to be easy, or even markedly easier, that’s a different thing. You have to make your body, mind, spirit do something HARDER. You have to make asks of your body/mind/spirit that require adaptation at a higher baseline.

The hardest thing you ever do will always be hard, perhaps very hard. But now the things you do repeatedly, day after day, will be easier.

You don’t have to do the hardest thing every day. Just every once in a while. But the thing you want to be easy cannot be the hardest thing you ever do. Because that’s the thing about the hardest thing, relative to all the other things you do. It will never not be hard.

—-

My dad and I are making the trek to Dog Mountain again tomorrow. I’m so curious what it’s going to feel like this time. I expect it won’t be markedly easier, since it’s currently the hardest thing I ever do. So I’m even more excited to see what it will feel like when I get back.

Thanks for being here,

Sarah Avenir