What I Think About When I Think About Running
I love running, I love meditation. In this blog I’m exploring how the two fit together.
I ended a run this week in the park near my house as First Nations peoples were singing to honour the children whose bodies were recently uncovered in a mass grave beside a residential school in British Colombia. Residential schools operated in Canada between 1883 and 1996:
- Odds of dying for Canadians serving in the Second World War: 1 in 26
- Odds of a student dying over the life of the program: 1 in 25
As I drafted this post, another mass grave was discovered in Saskatchewan.
#3 Run with Hal
This is a quick post to introduce you to one of several tools I use to track my mindfulness + run training.
Hal Higden is a running icon — a pioneer of the sport who documented its flurry into the mainstream in the 1970s and 80s as a writer for Runner’s World. The “running boom”, as it is know, saw tens of millions of amateurs and pros hit the streets to compete in marathons around the world (often wearing Nike shoes).
Before I discovered the man, I had downloaded the Run With Hal app onto my phone to help train me up for my race. After a few weeks using the free version I was hooked and purchased a subscription. I work in digital design and I found Run With Hal’s ease of use and personalised training to be hugely attractive — like, really good. I asked Hal why, after the dozens of books and thousands of columns he had written he wanted to build an app.
“When I competed in high school and college and even beyond at the elite level, I usually had a track coach with a stopwatch in hand shouting numbers, how fast I was running laps around the track. Today’s runner does not often have this option. A coach can be a strong motivator. But so now can an app,” he says.
I was curious if Hal thought mind wandering might be a coping strategy to avoid pain or boredom while running — or if runners should strive to be focused on the present moment as much as possible while in motion.
“When your mind wanders, you often slow down. Or it is more difficult to maintain a planned pace,” says Hal. And he speaks from experience.
One of Hal’s favourite workouts started by completing ten 400-meter sprints in 70 seconds, with a 400-meter jog in between. And then, over a period of 10 weeks, Hal would shave a second off each lap until he got down to ten 400-meter sprints in 60 seconds.
“In the first week I might hold my concentration until the back straightaway. Each week, it seemed I would be able to concentrate for just a bit further down the track until in the 10th week I could concentrate for a full 400 meters. The ability to concentrate for that length of time made it possible to run fast in workouts — and inevitably transfer that ability to races on the track or on the roads.”
So yes, focused attention clearly impacts running performance, at least for Hal. And while Hal has never practiced meditation, he suggests that “staying focused for segments of a workout or the entire workout [is] a form of meditation.”
I hear this often from runners, including my childhood pal Tammy Mercier who ended up on the east coast winning marathons in her late 30s. All in all, Tammy has finished 107 marathons, including some of the world majors. For her, running is not just about the competition. It’s a life affirming practice that has helped her through death, divorce an anorexia. “Running is my meditation,” she says.
What runner’s describe when they talk about “‘running as meditation” sounds a lot like a traditional seated focused attention meditation practice.
So what is focused attention meditation? Here’s a great explanation from Annabel Chang, a neuroscience undergrad in at the University of Pennsylvania who is interning at MI this summer:
“Focused attention meditation is where you literally focus your attention on a single object, like your breath,” she says. “And if thoughts or emotions pop up to distract you, which they inevitably will, you acknowledge them without judging and then bring your attention back to the object of focus. Over and over again. That’s focused attention meditation.”
Annabel’s project at MI focuses on mapping the neural correlates of different meditation practices to illustrate which brain regions which brain regions coactivate and how they interact with one another to produce a certain effect. In other words, what skills and benefits do different meditation practices deliver to those who practice meditation?
Stay tuned for more from Annabel on her fascinating research in an upcoming post, including how meditation helps to modulate physical pain.
