The Mindful Runner (eBook)

Tanzanian marathoner Juma Ikangaa was a top competitor in the 1980s. Slight in stature at 5′3″ and weighing only 117 pounds, he was a lion at heart and a fierce frontrunner. Other runners knew a marathon with Ikangaa was never going to include an easy first-half pace. Ikangaa would charge off the line at what commentators called a suicidal pace and then wait for his chance to surge so long and hard that the race would be over when he was done.

He came to prominence after winning world-class marathons in Melbourne, Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Beijing. He had three consecutive second-place finishes at the Boston Marathon (1988-1990) before winning the New York City Marathon in 1989 against a field that included Olympic champion Gelindo Bordin of Italy, the then world record holder Belayneh Densimo of Ethiopia, and the previous year’s NYC Marathon winner Steve Jones of Wales.

The author fully engaging with the mental side of running© Rob Mann

It was a crowning victory for the diminutive artillery major from Africa’s Great Rift Valley. His time of 2:08:01 was the new course record, putting to bed the controversy over Alberto Salazar’s 2:08:13 record, which had been under a cloud since officials determined that the course Salazar ran was 120 yards short of being a full marathon.

The sight of Juma Ikangaa at his best, the small man out in front of his taller competitors leading the most competitive marathons in the world, was incredibly inspiring. But beyond this image, perhaps just as memorable, was something Ikangaa said, “The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.”

This quote captures so much about the mind’s role in the act of running. Ikangaa’s will to win evokes what runners come to understand the first time they really push the pace or run themselves beyond their comfort zone. Running suddenly becomes a mental exercise, a test of will power, a measure of mental toughness. The real drama when you’re running is going on in your head, not in your quads or your calves, as dramatically painful as they may be.

In a similar vein, Steve Prefontaine, the outspoken Oregon miler who was also a notorious take-no-prisoners frontrunner, famously said, “Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts.” When Prefontaine says guts, he is referring to a mental ability, the ability to marshal the courage, determination, will power, acceptance of pain, and extreme toughness of mind that it takes to run at one’s ultimate capability.

It is telling that both runners invoke the mind when they comment on finding success as a runner. They do not make reference to miles run per week, interval speed drills, running technique, workout routines, or VO2 max levels. In fact, Ikangaa broadens the notion of the mental side of running being a key to a runner’s success by talking about the will to prepare. Again the role of the mind is brought front and center. The preparation to run your best, as physical as it certainly is, is still dependent on the mental dimension. Can you summon the will to get out of bed in the dark for your first run of the day? Can you force yourself to keep running after fatigue sets in? Can you remain patient through long runs? Do you have the determination to hold your pace as the miles pile up and the training hours go by?

It’s All Mental, Isn’t It?

The old joke is that running is fifty percent physical and ninety percent mental. Runners recognize the truth behind the bad math in this joke; they don’t need any convincing. When I tell people about my first book on running, The Tao of Running: Your Journey to Mindful and Passionate Running, I usually say something like, “It’s about the mental side of running.” More often than not, runners hear that and immediately smile with recognition. “It’s all mental, isn’t it?” they often say.

What they are referring to, I believe, is the unmistakable mental struggle that takes place when the running gets really hard. You are in the final mile of your attempt to set a new 10K personal record. You hit the final hill just hanging on to the pace you need to succeed. You are giving it everything you’ve got. Every muscle and fiber in your body is signaling you to slow down and stop but you don’t. You will yourself to continue. Your mental toughness wins out. You push on, you hold your pace, you even speed up. It’s clearly mind over matter.

There will be a lot in this book about that difficult moment of truth and how to cultivate a mindset that will keep you running when the chips are down and when it seems most hopeless. But we are going to explore a much broader notion of how the mind plays into running, starting from the premise that the mental aspect of running is operating all the time when you run. You may not be focused on what is going on in your head when you’re just breezing down the sidewalk, but your mental activity or your mindset while you’re running is always of interest.

Mindfulness

A point I make at great length in The Tao of Running is that running is a natural fit with mindfulness. In fact, I believe many runners fall into a natural state of mindfulness without even realizing it. Mindfulness can be simply defined as a focused attention on the present with acceptance. By focusing exclusively on the activity you are engaged in, you experience all the impressions, sensations, thoughts, and feelings about that activity very directly and without interference from thoughts and worries about some problem you had earlier in the day or some concern about tomorrow. You try and engage just with the present.

The acceptance part of mindfulness involves those thoughts and concerns that occur to you about the past or future while you are attempting to stay focused on the present. You want to acknowledge such thoughts but not become attached to them. Instead of going off on some emotional tangent about the issue you are having with a co-worker, for example, you let that thought recede while focusing back on what you are doing. You accept the thought, but then you move on.

Temporarily freed from worries about the past and future, you get off the emotional rollercoaster of careening from one problem to the next that often characterizes our thinking, and instead, you experience the present moment with an attention and a depth that is quite uncommon. The result is a reduction in stress, a greater appreciation of whatever you happen to be doing, and an increased sense of satisfaction and well-being.

Now apply that whole dynamic to running. Running provides a wonderfully rich supply of sensations and impressions to focus on in the present. You have the whole world around you to see, hear, smell, and feel, and you have all the sensations from your body generated by the act of running. Stray thoughts intruding on your mind concerning a work problem will stick out to you like a sore thumb. You can easily trap that thought and move beyond it. The more you stay in the present, just absorbing all the wonderful sensations of running, the more your running becomes a break from the rest of your difficult day.

Similarly there is a lot of shared real estate among running, mindfulness, and meditation. They all operate by pulling you away from your day-to-day stresses and having you focus on the here and now in some fashion. A classic meditation technique, for instance, is to focus on your breathing. You can do exactly that when you’re running or practicing mindfulness. All three practices result in similar outcomes: less stress, more appreciation for life, and more self-satisfaction and self-esteem.

All that is certainly good in regards to the positive effects of running on your life, but let’s cast an even wider net with this discussion of running and the mind. If you’re reading this book, chances are you’ve already discovered that running seems to do a lot more for you than just provide a little exercise. Running provides a framework for the very satisfying act of setting and reaching goals. There is a social dimension to running. People meet and become fast friends through running. Running promotes health. It is practically a fountain of youth for seniors. In many cases, running transforms people’s lives, helping them break addictions, overcome depression, or recover from other severe health or emotional problems.

Quality of Life

Let’s consider two more quotes here. The first is attributed to Kara Goucher, a two-time Olympian in long-distance events, a silver medalist in the World Championships at 10,000 meters, and a top finisher at the Boston Marathon. She said, “That’s the thing about running: your greatest runs are rarely measured by racing success. They are moments in time when running allows you to see how wonderful your life is.” Well-known physician and running philosopher, George Sheehan, said, “The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.” In these quotes, our running sages seem to take the benefits of running to a whole new level. They link running with the quality of life itself.

The point is that when running is...