Unless you have a training partner who's schedule matches yours perfectly or you have a bunch of runner friends to call upon whenever you decide to pound out a few miles, odds are, you have spent some time running alone. I run at least 20 miles a week alone. Although there are other people around me, I am alone with my body, breath, and mind. No one but me is able to summon the strength to continue moving one foot in front of the other over and over and over.
I believe that for some, the hardest part of running is being alone. The distraction that another person's mere presence provides is enough to avoid actually spending time in your own mind. Have you done it? Have you tried quickly willing your body forward while keeping a steady breathing pattern even when you want to stop with no one there to tell you to keep going? Where does your mind go? How do you pass the time in your mind so that the strain on your body doesn't become your focus? Have you allowed your mind to wander- to dream and to doubt? To hope and hate? Have you mulled over your shortcomings and embraced the thoughts you can't stand? Have you celebrated what you love about yourself and debased what you despise about yourself? Have you looked into your own heart? Have you come face to face with your own shortcomings and lame excuses for those shortcomings? Have you gained knowledge of who you are, what you are not, what you wish you did not have to be, and what you know you could become?
In my experience, you do when you are alone with your mind and body. And sometimes, it is the hardest thing about running. Your mind goes where you do not want it to and you still have to depend on it to get you through the run. Running is never as simplistic as it looks.
Perhaps the next time you wish to get out there, you can consider refraining from yanking at the sleeves of others around you and insisting "come with me! come with me!" and go alone. You might get to know someone you don't spend a lot of time with. With all the group exercise classes and tv's built in to cardio equimpment and ipods and mp3's and whatnot it's so easy to avoid yourself.
I do most of my running alone, and it's a sometimes interesting and sometimes excruciatingly dull or even depressing mental experience.
ReplyDeleteOften, what fills my head is work, the thing that I am running to take a break from. However, as much as I don't want to think about work, sometimes when I'm out for a run, I feel like things fall into place that might not have as I'm sitting at my desk, and I come up with good ideas.
Other times, when I'm struggling or in a distance I haven't done before, it's extreme self monitoring "Watch the breathing...slow down..I can do this...my knee hurts a little, just tired, right?...etc."
That's kind of neat during a race because it seems very strategic, but on the other hand there are times I would have killed for my iPod so I could just turn the brain off. (I usually run w/o because my typical running route has very narrow, winding roads with little or no shoulder so I want to make sure I hear cars and don't zone out too much.)
I run the boardwalk regularly and I do listen to music. It's never deafening enough to turn my brain off though.
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