The worst run of my life

Yesterday I went on the worst run of my life.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the worst of my life, but it’s the worst I’ve been on in a long time—and I think, when you’re near a certain threshold of pain, that pain always feels like the worst.

If you can take it in, accept it, move beyond it, you can increase that threshold, and rise to another level.

But I haven’t run hard in a long time, and yesterday . . . Well, there were a few factors. First of all, like I said, I haven’t been running hard, or training hard at anything. Second, I don’t think I’ve been eating enough, and I didn’t have enough water with me (or any salt {electrolytes}). Third, yesterday was a really hot day in New York, and a lot of my run was in direct sunlight . . . I felt like I was cooking.

I had decided the night before it would be a good day to go for a run, and despite not having run in a while, I was going to push myself on the distance, try to go farther than usual for me. I’d done this particular run once before without training—around the circumference of Randall’s Island—and it was grueling, but manageable.

Something was different this time.

Before I’d finished the run I would end up lost, miserable, and desperate for water.

I was feeling good for the first part of the run, the first quarter or so of my target distance of eight miles. Even so, I noticed I was fatiguing faster than I expected, and I knew the remainder of the run would be tough.

Going into mile 3 I was pushing, and as I was working on mile 4 I was struggling. I was also running low on water, with just a few sips in the small 16oz nalgene I’d brought.

(It’s such a cute little bottle, it fits perfectly in my hand . . . it seemed like a great idea to take that, instead of a larger bottle. Maybe on a cooler day, but not when it’s pushing 90 I guess)

It should be easy enough to follow the perimeter of the island, or so I thought, but close to the end of my fifth mile, I realized I was lost. The path I’d been following was closed, my sense of direction was shot, and I gave up—I couldn’t keep running.

I finished that mile, found some bathrooms, and refilled my water bottle—walked a while, got my bearings, and even started running again after a while, to get up to 6 miles total (the idea of doing 8 was long gone by that time).

But this story isn’t about the moment of giving in to the pain and giving my body the rest it needed. It’s about the last two miles I ran, and how I kept going.

What I found as I was running along, committed to finishing the run I started, and making it around the island, was that I couldn’t think about anything outside the moment. I could, I mean, but then my suffering would increase, my running would get sloppy and inefficient, and I would start to lose my will to run.

I had to find something to focus on, something that would keep me going, step by step.

Almost without realizing it, I found myself falling into the patterns of breathing I teach—two breaths in, one longer breath out. When I couldn’t do that, I would simply keep my attention fixed on my breath, the way I’d practiced for many years in meditation.

I know this from many past experiences, but this was such a clear illustration of the importance of mental training.

I had to stay in the moment to keep running.

I had to focus on my breath to stay in the moment.

I had to practice that focus for years to be able to use it in that moment of intensity—and that moment of intensity gave me another opportunity to practice.

Many people, when talking about mental training

will stress the importance of staying in the moment. We know it’s important to do, but the practice remains elusive, hard to grasp. I have practiced this for many hours by focusing on my breathing through all other distractions, and I coach each of my clients on this at the very beginning of our work together.

But we need these moments of intensity, these moments where being present is THE ONLY OPTION to hone this skill.