It will come as no surprise to those who know me that running and reading are two of the most important aspects of my life, interestingly, they are also the most contemplative.
I'm not the first person to tie these two activities together, the accomplished author, Haruki Murakami’s penned an entire book on the subject: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, in which he describes his thoughts during his runs.
It's funny that two seemingly opposing acts, one, the height of physical activity, the other epitomizing the sedentary, can both have such a significant and similar impact on my thought process, but I guess one could argue that their ying and yang nature is what makes them so complimentary.
I call them contemplative activities, as opposed to meditative, because meditation to me involves letting go of everything other than your thoughts, whereas running and reading require full immersion and focus on the activity, which is how I understand contemplation.
Both running and reading focus my thoughts, drawing them into the surroundings, be it the characters, stories and plot that the author develops, or the area that I'm running in and the type of running that I'm doing. Hard runs are more focused on form and the effort, whereas easy runs allow me more liberties with my thoughts.
Interestingly, contemplation stems from the latin root: templum , or a place of worship and this is often the analogy that my friends and I use to describe our outings. The fact that our long runs usually take place on Sundays, furthers this religious analogy and books/texts, like the Bible and the Qur'an, and the ideas that that they contain are integral to many religions.
Much like books, few of my runs are truly memorable, but those that are really stick with me. I can describe them in great detail and I enjoy sharing them with others. Just because a book or a run isn't memorable doesn't make them unimportant, they all strike some cord with me. My fitness, knowledge and enjoyment of running comes from all the runs, good and bad that I have done, much like my knowledge and love of books comes from everything I read.
I also find it interesting how often I am asked, "what do you think about when you run?" by non-runners, much like how people who haven't read a book that I have ask for my impressions on the book and what the book is about. (***okay that's a stretch as an analogy).
One area where I hope there is no cross-over, is with the online world. While I love the physical aspect of books, the reality is I read more and more online and although I don't have an e-reader yet, I imagine that I will inevitably cave and get one, or be given one, at some point. I don't think that a virtual run will ever be a substitute for the physical act of heading out the door and putting foot to trail and enjoying the feelings, sights, smells and sounds that I experience on my runs and which have such a profound influence on my thoughts during my runs.
What does this have to do with my running? Not much, other than it's one of the many thoughts, some mundane, others more profound, mostly fleeting, that passed through my head when I was running this afternoon and I figured I would share it. So what do you think about when you run?
4 comments:
My internal dialogue in my day-to-day life is full of sentences that go unfinished, because my mind knows what I am thinking before I finish a single sentence or thought. On my runs, however, I seem to oscillate between thinking in double time, with sentences stopping before they even begin and the other extreme, with a full memory or idea or thought playing out in real time.
To me, what makes a run beautiful is that it is subconscious problem solving, with "problems" not necessarily viewed as bad, and more as "life challenges".
I love that Murakami book. I read it shortly after I moved to Boulder and started working in a bookshop. It helped set the tone for my time in the Front Range.
Great post.
Hey Krystyna, thanks for sharing. I agree with running being a great problem tool. I've wrestled with a lot of my issues out on the trail. Cheap therapy!
Hart, great to hear from you. Working in a bookstore on the front range with time to run is essentially my idea of heaven. How are the northern climes?
North is good. I live across the street from Great Slave Lake, so skiing/snowshoeing/ice road running have been keeping me active.
And yeah, if I didn't have this pesky student loan debt, I would still be in Colorado working for Patagonia (only because there's no Arcteryx there) and Boulder Bookstore. 'Twas an ideal year, that's for sure.
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