Meditativeness down under.
Today is our national day, Australia Day, a public holiday of course and also my last chance to squeeze in one more long run before race day in Almeria. I decided to replicate my last long outing of a week ago: three hours in total, with two and half hours of continuous running, and pushing it somewhat above the low heart rate zone I've been concentrating on just to ensure there's some wriggle room should I need to crank the pace a little in Spain. After a long week of night shifts and much running, however, I thought this might be a lot harder than last time, and so it proved. This time it was not so easy, nor as comfortable, but the job was, of course, done.
Interestingly, for the first half hour I listened to a runners' guided meditation that I had found online. Meditation is not something I've ever found easy, but I wondered if it might be useful for long runs. In fact, it didn't really help me much initially, although some of the music was really nice, but as part of the exercise it told me to form a mantra of one or a few positive running words to focus the mind. This I did find helpful later when the run got much tougher. I had chosen "run all day" as my mantra, and repeating this to myself certainly helped overcome the desire to stop during those difficult periods. Whether or not I did this in a true meditative way I don't know, but it certainly helped shift my attention from the discomfort and negativity to seeing a positive, clear way ahead. I don't really understand the process, but hey, it helped.
Once Almeria is run I'll be able to focus more properly on slower running again, concentrating more on time spent on my feet rather than pace or distance, the idea being that these two factors will sort themselves out as I increase the time spent running and lowering my heart rate in doing so. A few more weeks of that, at the sorts of hours I've spent on my feet this month, and who knows what might lie ahead?
Well, I can guess. But one step at a time...
Jumpin' Januaries!
