Running in silence

I don't run with music.

I never have. I tried it once, and hated it because I spent the entire run paying attention to something other than running. Which is, I get it, why most people (or at least, the people that I've talked to about running with music) do it: they use the beats to run faster or to keep from being bored or to go further than they would if they were only focused on their body and their run. But I run to be with myself and in my body and I am completely taken out of that and out of the moment when I listen to music and run.

During one of the many courses I have taken with Eric Franklin, we were talking about the pelvic floor and he asked us to contract it. Most of us, myself included, didn't know where to begin and his response was, "But you've lived with it your whole life and you can't access it?" It was a rhetorical question that served as a jumping off point for the duration of the weekend-long class in accessing, toning and stretching the deep stabilizers but I have kept returning to the idea over the years. We live with and in our bodies during our entire lives and yet, when things go haywire, we hardly know where to begin in responding to and fixing the issue. Most of living takes us out of our bodies so when we experience pain or discomfort or a chronic or overuse injury, it shocks us back into our physical selves.

I run without music because I like to be present in my body, with myself and in the landscape I am moving across. When I run, I slowly re-align and discover things about myself. I ran five miles today, much longer than anything I have been able to do in months. My IT bands began to get really tight right away and I noted that I was landing on the outsides of my feet. I shifted my gait and began landing more medially on the ball of my foot. My posterior tibs, the muscles which run from the inner arch up the medial side of the shin, immediately started firing and within steps, my IT bands relaxed and I began to run with smoothness that came from a more harmonious interaction between foot and knee and hip.

During the rest of my run, I kept returning my attention to my gait and adjusting it, landing towards the inside of the ball of my foot. My run today felt graceful, a quality that has eluded me for some time as I have struggled with sick again, and I think that it had much to do with being present, paying attention to me and making adjustments.

The body remembering

I haven't been moving very much in the past three weeks. Or rather, I've been stuck in a hunched over position: at the computer, over my handle bars, propped up against pillows. I've been sick, there was my sister's wedding, I've been sick. A cold and not enough sleep was all it took to give Lyme some room to play. I'm feeling much better now. Not completely back to where I was a month ago, but better.

The past week, I've felt stiff and stuck in my upper back and neck and locked up through my ribs. I knew the whole time that it was because I've done not really much of anything at all. This morning the sun woke me up at eight am and I knew that it was time to get out there. I laced on my shoes and hit the road, promising myself that I'd take it slow and steady, nice and easy.

This is what I love about running: my body reverts to ideal posture as I go. I only ran three miles, nice and slow, but the second half, my abs turned on and shifted my ribs back and my spine opened up. I felt long and fluid and easy. I felt so good, I couldn't even remember what pain and stiffness had felt like an hour before. I felt perfectly right in my alignment.

The body knows, the body wants to heal, wants to maintain perfect alignment (which, of course, is dynamic). I just have to remember to give it the space it needs to find it.