Is this a good pace? Is that car going to stop? Did I put the chicken out for dinner? Am I running too fast? Why am I so tired? Did I eat enough before this run? Was that a grasshopper up my shorts? AHH, it's a grasshopper up my shorts!
I think about a lot on my runs. The longer the run, the more time I have to think about things. There are some Saturdays when I'm running long distances where I could easily be gone for several hours. I never take an iPod with me, mostly because I can't ever get the ear buds to stay in my ears. The question always comes up though, what are you thinking about on your long runs?
I'd love to say something about how I focus on my pace and my time and that I focus on making sure my gait is proper and that I'm running in the proper form. The truth though is that I don't even know much about any of that. I know what a good pace is and I know how hard I can run and still feel okay, but I don't really stress about how I'm doing and if I'm staying on track. I've found that when I do keep track of times, I generally do worse, probably because I'm so stressed about making time instead of enjoying the run.
And so in terms of what I think about while on the run, I think about my day and the scenery and let my mind wander to whatever it feels like, mostly because the distraction keeps me from focusing too much on the fact that I've only ran 2 of the 15 I'm supposed to run for the day.
Today, for example, I ran 7 miles. I had been in class for most of the morning and was pretty stressed about a lot of different things. The weather was nice and sunny, but not too hot so I only sweated through SOME of my clothes. I still had things to do this evening and so at the beginning of my run, I really started to think about what I needed to do for the rest of the day. What was left on the schedule that REALLY needed to get done and what should I do with my weekend?
I'm also aided and hindered by the fact that my location forces me to run a very similar route every single time. I can't decide to run in a different direction because to safely traverse the roads, I really only have one route, and the first chance to change that route is already almost 2 miles into a run. Every time you run out 2 miles, you still have to run back 2 and automatically you have a 4 mile run. This is why I say I'm aided by this, because automatically I have a good distance to get started on. I call it a hinderance because I have to run the same stinking 2 miles EVERY time I go for a run. This is where it really helps to think of something else besides the same patch of grass, the same stinky swamp, and the same cracks in the sidewalk that I see every time I go out.
Today my mind wandered into ideas of planning. As I mentioned, I spent a lot of time thinking about my day and my weekend, but that led itself to a thought we discussed in my theory class, that all humans are planners. Planning as a profession didn't really exist officially until around the early 1900s, and even then, planners didn't identify themselves as 'planners.' This is why I think its so hard to tell people what I'm studying. A field that is barely a century old doesn't have much on something like engineering or even philosophy for that matter. And as a discipline, it's still learning how to define itself.
However, in theory class today we talked about planning in ancient civilizations, mostly because planning was present, even if unintentional. The reason being that humans are innately planners. While we all have our degrees of how much and how finely we plan, everybody likely wakes up with some plan in mind for how the day is going to go.
This thought helped me get through a mile or so. And that thought led me to think more about my other class for the day, legal aspects of planning. It isn't something I've ever thought much about, but planners much constantly think about land and the law. Why? Because everything a planner does is related to it. The way we plan places and shape things are entirely dependent on the laws we have established to govern them. It is easy to suggest that Detroit should do more for development, but where and how development is determined is very dependent on the law that shapes it. As I ran on the sidewalk past the movie theater I thought a lot about this.
The final mile is usually the one where I'm ready to be done. And thus I begin the thought process of, I'm going to run to the end of this road. I'm going to run to that next sign. I'm going to run to the next intersection, until finally, the last goal is to run home. I trick my mind this way, you see, and its a lot of fun. It's also generally how I approach a long run. I start with different phases of where I can say, now I'm in the second part of my run. Now I'm in the final part of my run. Without these phases I often end up running aimlessly, and nothing sucks more than being on a run where your only marker for progress is the halfway point of a wide open field. Blech.
That should sum up thoughts in my head. They are often interrupted by traffic and stop lights and questions of whether a grasshopper did go up my shorts. I can only imagine what this must look like to drivers when they see a runner kicking his legs violently while running on the sidewalk, a look of panic on his face. But that happens every time I run through what I call, 'grasshopper row.' Its a pleasant neighborhood, but the residents sure are jumpy.
No comments:
Post a Comment