Whenever I hear someone use the phrase “hit the wall,” I get immediately pissed off. Who’s hitting what wall? Nobody. There is no wall. And I know, I get it, it’s a figure of speech right? Yeah, well it’s a stupid figure of speech. If I’m running, and I see a wall coming up in the distance, I’m either going to go around it, or I’m going to start running backwards. That’s it. I’m not going to hit it.

Or, and I’m just thinking about this now, I could go left or right of the wall, find a way to run around it, except, I guess maybe if I’m in an alleyway, I don’t know if I’ll necessarily be able to go anywhere, really. Nowhere but backwards. Yes, I think the important thing to remember, if you get to that wall, in an alleyway, just run backwards without stopping to think about where you’re at. You’ve obviously made a wrong turn, and you’re not going to make any progress standing there pensively rubbing your chin.

No, the more time you spend looking at the wall, the greater the chance that you’re eventually going to hit it. Do not hit that wall. See if you can climb it. That’s not a solution you hear often when people talk about hitting walls. “Man, everything was going so great, but then I just hit the wall.” I want to be like, well, did you try climbing it? Did you?

Did you try burrowing a tunnel underneath the wall? Stop talking to me about figures of speech. I’m talking about you either burrowing or not burrowing underneath that wall. It’s been done. Sure, you might lose a lot of time, like if you’re actually racing somebody, assuming they also haven’t confronted this wall. In this case, I might suggest a team-up, because that tunnel’s not going to burrow itself, and there’s no sense in you each burrowing two separate tunnels.

Maybe a tunnel isn’t the answer. In fact, it probably isn’t. I just didn’t want the possibility of a tunnel to be totally discounted, especially not if your only other viable option is to hit the wall. Nobody wants to see anybody hitting any walls. When the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, everybody was so happy. Not me. Even though I was only like four at the time, I didn’t get it. Why hit the wall? Why can’t they just move it somewhere else? Like there aren’t any other spots without walls that could’ve used that wall?

Question: What if you’re running a race and you take a wrong turn and it turns out that you’re in China and all of the sudden you come face to face with the Great Wall? And you think, OK, I’ll just backpedal a little here, but the organizers of the race are right on your heels, and seeing as how it’s China and everything, there are all sorts of Labor Ministers and Party Officials and they’ve got their guns trained right at your head and they’re like, “No backwards. Only forward. Hit that wall.”

Answer: I’ll answer with another question. What if you’re taking part in a different race, this one’s on the Great Wall of China, and it’s the entire length of the wall? It’s like a hundred miles long, at least, I’m totally making it up, but it’s big enough, obviously everybody knows this already, but you can see it from space. I remember reading an interview with some astronaut and he was like, “Actually, that’s not entirely true,” and all I kept thinking was, shut up you stupid astronaut, trying to hog all of the space glory for yourself, staring down at the earth, right at the great wall, you’re thinking, “This is great! I’m going to make up some lie about not actually being able to see it from space so that way I can keep this experience all to myself!”

That made less and less sense as I wrote it out. I think the astronaut was actually talking about other manmade stuff that you can see from space, or common space misconceptions, I don’t know, my mind must have taken a little detour. I got off topic, but back to that race on top of the Great Wall. How can you hit the wall if you’re already on the wall? That’s what I meant to say. That’s what this whole thing has been leading up to, that sentence: how can you hit the wall if you’re already on the wall?

So for all of you endurance athletes out there, if you’re worried about hitting the wall, just remember: only race on top of other walls. Problem solved. And yeah, I get it, it’s a figure of speech, I’m listening, OK? I’m not stupid. I know it’s just a saying. But what I’m saying is, come up with a new saying, on top of other walls, because you can’t hit a wall on top of a wall. There’s got to be something else, a little clearer, something a little less confusing.