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I’m in a beautiful park in the South Center of the US, surrounded by a great number of diverse people who are, for this little moment in the day, your equals.
If you run a race, any distance it doesn’t matter, when people cheer you on and you cheer people back, you share kindness and compassion. It actually gives them energy and it gives you energy back.
If you’re not receiving many kudos and cheers in a race (or life), try starting by cheering others or giving nice compliments to people. I bumped into a guy who was running in minimal shoes, which is something I get happy about because we’re still a few who are into this natural/minimal running thing. I said to him something like “congrats, nice shoes!” and he answered back the same way. It felt good.
I started with a high-intensity pace, which I shouldn’t have done because this run was supposed to be a “zone 2”. I didn’t consider the humidity and heat of this place. I hydrated before, and I think I was managing myself well, but when you get happy and excited you start to run faster. When I realized this mistake, I slowed down a little. However, it was too late to fully get back to the zone. My heart rate was already in the 160bpm, which for my age is around Zone 4… but if you’re happy, it’s OK, you can manage things. So I started thinking about how to deal with the heat and put my mind on something else.
At that point, I remembered a note from a year ago or so where I questioned if running was a meditation. I’ve been recently doing meditation every day, twice a day, for 20 minutes, using the TM technique. You embrace your thoughts, let them pass or take mental notes and come back to your mantra. If you want to stay on those thoughts for creative purposes, focus or either let them flow and lower your anxiety and stress, you can do all that.
So I started repeating the mantra in my head (mainly to use for meditation), and I realized that it’s also a powerful tool while running—especially when facing actual pain. As I continued repeating the word/sound, it really helped me take my mind off the heat and my declining performance condition. Then, one of those flowing thoughts came by: “If you focus on your technique—such as the mid-foot strike, high knees that drive down to the center of gravity, a slight forward lean, and a strong push-back—you’re also directing your attention away from the pain, just as you do with the mantra.”
If you focus on the stride and technique, there’s a natural repetition and attention that becomes similar to meditation. You move your attention away from where you don’t want to be. So anyway, I think it’s great to keep that in mind when you’re running, especially whenever you start to suffer.
Another thing I thought today is that the “critical mass” of design adds up to the experience. This park is beautiful, amazingly well maintained, and everything helps the people who are using it. The neatness, maintenance, lamps, benches, water fountains, ponds, parking lots… everything is amazing.
When you are in places like this, you realize that everything can be upside down in the world, and people can be fighting with each other, but for a small moment in the day, you are one with everyone. You share the common ground of a running park, with no borders, no sides or parties. No digital anything except your Garmin.
You have kindness for everyone because you are suffering or enjoying with everyone at the same time.
I would say running is the ultra-human experience, a meditation. Every day.
h.