"John attacking the hills at the Binbrook Tri"
"John crossing 1st at the Binbrook Tri"
Have you ever been on a run where everything that was going on inside your head was completely tuned in with everything that was going on with your body? It is when running just seems effortless. You can go faster or slower with ease. You feel like you could just run forever that day, and never fatigue. A run when you feel like you are more machine then human. You tell yourself to pick it up and automatically you are going faster...and faster seems effortless, seamless, perfect. Then you tell yourself to ease back, and enjoy the view, and suddenly you are seeing everything around you as if it is in slow motion.
This is what sports psychologists refer to as being in “the Zone.” It is that sense of having total control and total freedom all at once. Your mind and body are one and the same and the transition from thought to action is instantaneous. Most personal best performances come when an athlete is able to tap into this “zone”. These athletes will speak of how the run was just effortless and how they were running totally within themselves the whole time – even though they were running faster than they had ever gone before – and for some, faster than anyone has ever gone before.
If you have been running long enough, then you are sure to have had a few of these “zone” experiences. Unfortunately they seem to be quite random and quite rare. The dilemma is that once you have one of these runs you begin to chase for them with each subsequent effort. It is this chasing that often begins the downward spiral of one bad running performance after another. The pressure builds with each new run to find this magic place once again and is met each time with further loss and hardship. The search to find this state once again immediately goes outward and becomes a never ending quest.
What was it that triggered this terrific experience you had out there on that most random of runs? Maybe it was the shoes, or the music you were listening to, or the nice day, or the beautiful trail you were running on? On and on it goes. You look everywhere to get it back, but to no avail because that search never takes place within.
This same feeling of “chasing” is depicted in the story of “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse. The main character leaves his family and home in search for enlightenment and what he believes to be the attainment of his most precious goal in life. After years of wandering he comes to understand what it was that he was truly searching for:
“Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: “But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?” And he found: “It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!”
Running "within" is about staying in tune with the moment. Running "within" is about entering into a place when you run that is free of searching, solving, finding or chasing. It is about nothing more than running. It is about the internal and external harmony of putting one foot in front of the other a thousand times over. What you find when you run within is that you don’t come upon the “zone,” rather it comes upon you. By not searching, you arrive exactly where you want to be. By not trying to run faster through extraneous effort you find fluidity in your stride and calmness in your breath. Running within is about respecting the beauty of the sport you love, respecting the body you have that allows you to run and realizing the honor that both deserve. The more you practice running in this state of mind the better you get at it. The more often you can just run the more the “zone” becomes a daily state of being.
We are all left in awe when we see great runners like Chris Solinsky or Ryan Hall cruise along with seamless ease - at a pace few of us could match. But what is it we are in awe about? It is not about how amazing they are at running fast- it is about how amazing they are at running easy.
Look within, and I will see ya on the roads,
Johnny Boy
p.s. A big thank you for the photos to my good friend and race photographer par excellence,
Mike Cheliak @ www.mysportsshooter.com
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