Tag Archives: Running

On My Mind

Once a Runner

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I gave up running a number of years ago while managing an illness, and because I realized something important. While my relationship with running had always been love/hate, I had discovered sports that I really loved, which proved to me that I didn’t have to settle for love/hate. So I gave up running after a final bad run, and have rarely looked back since.

This month, in preparation for a higher, more technical alpine tour than last summer’s Berliner Höhenweg or climbing the Zugspitze, I started to run again. Casually. Slowly. Work on a little endurance and don’t make a challenge out of it. Just do it. That kind of running.

And this time, I liked it.

This time, I felt like there was a reason for the running rather than just to run, and this allowed me to let go and enjoy the air, the quiet path, the trees. The weather was the very beginning of summer rather than the depths of the tropics; the water source a river rather than the ocean; the vegetation oaks and larches rather than palms and frangipani. After so much time away, my body felt different, reinvigorated by the new challenge rather than worn down by the habit. The knee that had so often twinged made itself known once, a “welcome back” greeting, and went quiet.

Interestingly, over the same time, I realized that I had stopped looking forward to going to the climbing hall. After a few days out on real rocks, the thought of plastic grips and footholds lost its appeal, and I was happier spending my time outside than indoors. So I traded two nights a week in the climbing hall for two nights a week going for a run, just a little one.

I find myself beginning to miss the climbing hall, so I’ll be heading back there soon after some time in the mountains. Hopefully the body will make use of the endurance that comes from running. And even if it doesn’t, it’s a comfort to the mind to know that ten years as a runner are still in there somewhere.

New York City – October 2016
On My Mind

Waiting for the Rain

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with a visual arts class about the reconstructive nature of memory. This came at a time when I was reeling from two nights of nightmares, the sort in which the dreamer is screaming, screaming, and no one hears or even looks up. I did not remember the content of the dreams when I awoke.

The mind is a powerful place.

I thought about this on my run later in the afternoon, a run that I didn’t want to go on but I know my mind and body well. Not wanting to go due to mental fatigue meant that the right thing to do, without question, was to go.

As it was, the gathering clouds beckoned. The wind blew in a way that hinted at a gift of cool afternoon rain but that could, in the tropics, blow over and leave us with nothing at all.

I watched my mind as if from a perch high above the treetops as I ran along the canal. I watched it growing negative, judgemental, downright nasty in its commentary of the strangers passing by. And I laughed because I understood – because I knew.

What I criticized in others was precisely what I feared in myself.

The sequence of thoughts did not come as a surprise – after all, I know my mind and body well. It was easy to draw a line from a book I’d read to the dreams I’d had to the venom my mind conjured. Easy because I’d been there before.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a very long time.

And I laughed when the sky darkened further and the wind danced through the trees. A child again, I danced with it.

At the end of my run, I spent a few minutes stretching in the park. And that was when it began to rain.

And that was when I felt my mind breathe again.

The view from Lazarus Island – July 2020
On My Mind

Three Pops

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I was stretching after my run on Tuesday morning when I heard three pops. Uh-oh. I’ve been a reluctant but reasonably dedicated runner since university and I’ve been a dancer my whole life. It is not good when something pops while you are stretching.

My right hamstring grew stiffer as the day went on and I did what I normally do, which is to forget that icing immediately is a huge help. Tiger Balm later in the day helped instead.

I felt much better the following morning but I’ve learned a few things in a highly active life and one is not to push it. That being said, working from home has brought an entirely different pace and shape to the day and feeling my body move before settling in at my makeshift standing desk has been an anchor, something that signals to me that I have transitioned from my world to the work world.

About ten years ago, I started practicing yoga early in the morning to support a roommate who was trying to build a healthier lifestyle. We practiced in our living room in our university apartment with the aid of a video series. It wasn’t until many months later than I actually took my first yoga class but videos are still the most common way that I practice. And so, unable to run but no longer limping and feeling a need to anchor my day, I modified the poses in a yoga video.

The point of yoga is to breathe, which is easy to forget. I understand that many people use yoga as a workout and it certainly can be. You’re supposed to get the blood and body moving and it feels really good. Especially at the beginning, the poses are new and it takes time to get used to what to move and when and where. But the point of yoga is to move with the breath. The poses are simply a way of moving the body to follow the breath.

As I breathed through each pose, modified differently on the right side than the left, I thought that this actually made for a nice metaphor of living in our Covid-19 world. I know that countries are tackling this pandemic differently and I have certainly seen Singapore’s response develop since January. But no matter where we are, life is different than normal and we are finding ways to modify our lives in order to keep breathing, to keep doing whatever we can to hold onto what is important to us. And in the situations where we cannot do so, where the relationships or activities or work that bring us meaning have transformed unrecognisably, we have found ways to modify our lives to cope with this reality.

The depth of human resilience has brought me awe in the last few weeks. I’ve written about human fragility but I think I’ve overstated that and neglected something that I now understand about human determination, dedication, and flexibility. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that everyone I know is stronger now than they were before, and probably stronger than they thought they could be. I’ve been looking for silver linings and perhaps this is yet another one.

I went for a run again this morning before work after last night’s rain and immediately found my socks and shoes soaked from the muddy ground. I shrugged off the discomfort and laughed with the childish joy one experiences running through a mud puddle.

And then the body moved with the breath, perhaps slower than a few days earlier, but the body moved with the breath.

On my way to practice yoga in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia – January 2020