Had a really cool experience during one of the 800 meter intervals in tonight’s track workout with the New Hampshire Athletic Alliance. The workout was two 400 meter intervals, four 800 meter intervals, and two 400 meter intervals (with a mile and a half warmup and a mile and half cooldown run). I’d been hitting all the times I’d been aiming for, but not quite halfway through maybe the third 800 meter (half mile) interval, I was feeling ragged, winded, not breathing well. I felt like I was all out and then some – and didn’t expect to be able to hold the pace I was running to the end of the interval. I started trying to focus on the ground and my feet, sort of like I imagine the runners of the Tarahumara tribe do in the book I’m reading (Born to Run, Christopher McDougall – a terrific book which I recommend and will write more about when I finish). I tried to stop fighting the track and start going with it. I started thinking of the ground as welcoming my feet and pushing them along. And immediately I was startled to feel a flow and efficiency come back into my stride that I hadn’t realized had slipped out of it until that moment. And I got my breath back – without slowing down – and ran the second half of the 800 – faster than the first. Now I do believe that running can bring on some spiritual moments, but I’m not suggesting this was metaphysical. This simply reminds me of how much of this (running, life?) is mental, perhaps, or reminds me how the mental and physical are inextrictably intertwined in both running and the rest of life. I suppose this would all be much more obvious to me if I’d done athletics in high school or college, (and I suppose I have often recognized its utility under other names in other arenas in life) but it’s wonderful to be stumbling on it a bit at a time and exploring it as it relates to running now.
Tags: Running, tarahumara
