Earlier this year, I stumbled upon an August 29 Instagram post by Sean Einhaus called “Optimized to Death.” A professional golfer and mental performance coach, he was pondering the loss of artistry in sports where science, training, and metrics were becoming more and more important. He worried that in the face of too much data, too much structure, sports could lose their soul.
Zach Miller running with heart at the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
Sean seems an interesting guy: born in Germany, half Nepali, a professional golfer, a yogi, a man of both eastern and western ways of thought. This piece isn’t about Sean, though, yet perhaps a bit of context about his background is interesting, as this article is about the ideas in his post.
And yes, it’s the internet, a space that has unfortunately become very hard to trust. Is Sean for real? Is he a man to be trusted, or is he just waxing poetic, fishing for dollars and clicks? That, I cannot tell you. What I can tell you is this: His words struck me. They hit a chord, and perhaps they hold some truths. I hope they are real. I know the feelings and thoughts they provoked in me are real.
I recommend you go read his words in full, but I’ll share some of the post here:
“Athletes aren’t fun anymore…
Everyone’s just…
Uptight. Dead serious.
Trying to optimize every bit of their existence. Perfect recovery on Whoop. Crunching numbers like accountants. Turning practice into a science project. A team of 12 coaches dissecting every move like surgery. 3-D body scans, radar guns, and slow-mo cameras measuring the soul out of the game.
Where’s the artistry?
Where are the instincts. …
The game used to be a canvas.
Now it’s a spreadsheet.
It used to be about intuition, feel, and deep trust. Now it’s analysis, metrics, and performance models. …
The most important attributes can’t be measured:
Passion. Joy. Hunger.
Creativity. Presence. Flow.”
Embracing the unmeasurable. Photo: Zach Miller
Freedom of Trail Running
For me, these words weren’t a single to first. They hit all the way home. The romantic in me sees eye to eye with Sean’s ideas. It grows leery of our obsession with stats. Stats are fun. They feel like points in a game of pinball. When used in the right way, they’re beneficial.
I suppose what really concerns me is the soulless practice of sport that Sean depicts. That’s not a place I desire to be. Unfortunately, it’s an easy place to end up.
My thoughts drift to high school and college, years filled with paved miles and left turns. As great as those years can be, I spent enough time in that space to know that they can also be quite challenging. In the world of track and cross country, it’s easy to become obsessed. Constantly chasing qualifying standards, PRs, and wins, college can quickly become the hunt for an ever-moving target. Goals are achieved, then replaced by new ones. The more you accomplish, the faster the hamster wheel spins. It’s no wonder so many people burn out.
Leaving college, trail running was a breath of fresh air. It was still running, but in a different context. I couldn’t analyze things quite the same, and that was freeing. I like to think that I enjoyed more and judged less.
Zach Miller descending into Maggie Gulch during the early stages of the 2025 Hardrock 100. Photo: iRunFar/Bryon Powell
Fast forward to today, and it’s quite obvious that trail running is getting more and more dialed and scientific. We have coaches dishing out training plans, dietitians explaining what to consume and when, strength coaches, mobility routines, sleep aids, heat training chambers, and gadgets galore tracking all of the metrics, and then some. I’m sure there are still people going about it the old-fashioned way, doing workouts on feel at the click of an old Timex watch, but more and more, this seems to be the minority.
Such trends raise some important questions: Are we taking the wildness out of the trail? Are we killing the sport by dialing it in? Are the dietitians, coaches, sports psychologists, apps, and gadgets robbing the sport of its soul? Are we making science instead of art?
Zach Miller and his coach share a moment at the finish line of the 2023 UTMB. Photo: Luke Webster
In some cases, maybe, but I don’t think it’s a universal truth. The presence of these things does not necessarily drive a stake through the soul of the sport. Science is not the death of art. The death of art is a lack of expression. Science, running, and many other things in life can be dialed in, yet expressive. In other words, they can be art. Not because of what they are, but because of how they are done.
So, as the sport of trail running continues to grow, let’s not forget to proceed with passion. We can hire the coaches, use the gadgets, and science the heck out of the training plans if we choose. There’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s just ensure that we do these things with heart, preferably a big one.
Call for Comments
- Do you worry that science is taking the soul out of trail running and ultrarunning?
- What steps do you take to keep metrics from overtaking your running and life?
