I just found a specific nuance on the idea of running as a meditation, and that is similar to observing your thoughts and breath while you’re meditating, some people have talked about this concept but I think they have to be more specific, not all types of running are meditational.
I’ve been running lately in zone 1 as part of the Norwegian Method training for a Boston Qualifier, this requires to be running very slow the 80% of your training time in order to maintain your heart rate zone and fitness/fatigue load in a low intensity or Z1, but there’ll be moments when you start to feel good, that comes with a beautiful correlation of positive thoughts, aspirational thoughts... good ideas will start to pop up and suddenly you’re running in a faster pace! And if you look at your training watch, you’re about to jump into Zone 2… which for this particular part of the training you don’t want to.
Back in 2013 I ran my first marathon and I remember having one of Ayrton Senna's famous quotes in my mind all the way during the full marathon, “With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high." I repeated this like a mantra, I believe it made me run faster and stick to my pace, this one being in high intensity which for a race is OK, sort of that Flow state some people argue exists.
But at this part of the process, at this level of “slowness” you have to bring back your thoughts to a more neutral zone, you have to breathe deeper and try to be more grounded, just be in the present moment, here and now… even though your thoughts are positive… a detachment of them is an exercise in meditation.
I’m actually writing (dictating) this while running, my steps and voice are like a metronome, it helps me to center the pace or better said, put the heart rate where I want to… and the racing mind.
Nice!