Running on Fumes

Before beginning to train for a marathon, I met my running coach at a local Dunkin Donuts for some advice and guidance.  As he sat down, he placed two hundred dollars in cash on the table and said, “Here, this is for you.”  I must say it was a pretty strange sight to to watch so much cash slide across the table toward me.  Curious as to the direction this was going, I listened as my coach explained that we were about to play a game.  The cash represented my overall wellbeing, my energy levels, and my health. 

He asked me if I had run the previous morning and when I answered in the affirmative, he requested sixty dollars in cash, representing the depletion in my energy as a result of the strenuous run.  He then asked if I had eaten properly for the rest of the day.  When I answered yes, he returned twenty dollars to me.  Had I stretched properly?  Once again, with a positive response came another twenty dollars across the table.  Did I get a good night’s sleep that night?  This time, the answer was no.  It had been a late night and with not enough sleep, my body didn’t have enough time and ability to recover properly.  As a result, he kept the remaining twenty dollars, and very quickly I was down ten percent. 

We continued to play this hypothetical game.  Runs and workouts would deplete my energy levels; rest and recovery would restore my health.  The more I ran and worked out, the more money I gave him and the less I retained.  The more I maintained discipline in my eating and my recovery, the more he returned to me.  We played these scenarios out, imagining months of grueling and demanding training as money moved back and forth across the table.   

By the time we reached the imagined race day, out of my original two hundred dollars, I had only twenty left, far from the reserve of strength and energy one would want before such a demanding challenge.

His message to me was clear:  You can push yourself endlessly.  You can run, train, work out, and exercise constantly.  But if you fail to invest in rest, recovery, nourishment and sleep, you are setting yourself up for exhaustion, burnout, or injury.

I left that meeting with more than a training strategy. I walked away with a profound life lesson. 

Our wellbeing involves our mind, body, and soul.  We live with a finite reserve of emotional, physical, and spiritual energy. Every demand we meet withdraws from that reserve. Every act of restoration replenishes it. Ignore the deposits long enough, and the account runs dry.

The exercise with my coach that morning reminded me of another such experience, this time from a Rabbinic conference I had attended.  During the opening session, Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb asked us to draw a tree with deep roots in the ground and an abundance of leaves hanging from its branches.  We were then asked to fill in both the roots and the leaves.  Roots represented those activities that gave us energy, fueled our well-being, and made us feel more alive.  Examples included learning, sleeping, exercising, reading, or playing with our children.  Branches represented those activities that drained us of our energy and made us feel more exhausted or depleted. 

The exercise highlighted two powerful truths.  First, if our lives are filled only with branches, constant output, responsibility, and demand, without nurturing the roots, we will inevitably wither. No tree survives without tending to what sustains it beneath the surface.

Second, self-awareness is essential. We must honestly identify which activities drain us and which restore us. Only then can we build lives of balance rather than cycles of depletion.

Many people today live in a state of perpetual fatigue. We pride ourselves on productivity, responsiveness, and resilience, yet quietly run on empty. We push through tiredness, dismiss stress, and treat rest as indulgence rather than necessity.

But self-care is not selfish. It is stewardship.

The Rambam writes in the fifth Perek of the Shmoneh Perakim, his introduction to Pirkei Avos: “The purpose of his body’s health is that the soul finds its instruments healthy and sound in order that it can be directed toward spiritual growth.” 

Our ultimate aspirations may be lofty, growth in Talmud Torah, chessed, tefillah, and refinement of character. But the body and mind are the vessels through which all of that is achieved. When the vessel is neglected, the spirit struggles.

If we are running on empty, we become impatient more quickly, distracted more easily, and overwhelmed by things we would normally handle with calm. Caring for ourselves is not a luxury, it is what allows us to show up properly for our families, our work, and our responsibilities.

Like my lesson with the running coach, life constantly asks something of us. The question is whether we are equally committed to replenishing what life withdraws.

There is always more to do, more to worry about, more demanding our attention. The world rarely tells us to slow down. But our bodies do. Our minds do. Our souls do. The choice to rest, to breathe, to restore is not stepping away from life, it is protecting our ability to live it well. Because life’s holiest moments should not find us running on fumes.