Run For It! (The Rozzers are coming.)

Unless you're a die hard Eddie Izzard fan, that won't make any sense, so just read as far as Run For it!

Today was my bi-weekly long run in the effort to train for the Parks Half Marathon on 12th September. Today was also the day when I learned to eat goo while running and gave my state of the art running socks to my 5 year old son because they are not so state of the art.

Running socks are, I believe, a con. The run test between a 13 dollar pair of running socks and a 99 cent pair of white socks from Value Village shows me that hype, marketing and bollocks are very likely to give you blisters, where unassuming white cotton cheapies work just fine thank you!

Fave running shoes? Second hand Asics with a hole in the left toe (I put it there - they didn't come like that.) Matching holey socks somewhere too, I bought them new over 7 years ago but am endeavoring to run them away.

Gear change.

I love to watch other runners on the trail when I am running. Sometimes, I want to call out encouragement, like, "You've gotta dance when you run or you'll end up hating it!' (Of course I assume they are not enjoying themselves.) I see so many people who don't look like they are enjoying it, I wonder why they do it. So let me tell you a little about running that is not common knowledge amongst non-runners and wanna-be runners, in case you want to get out there but think you need to have a special talent for it.

There is no difference between running and any form of Spiritual practice. The venue may be mobile, there may be more gear involved and certainly more sweat but they are one and the same thing. That is because, I believe, Life and Spiritual practice are one and the same thing, so to think that running is exclusively about weight and fitness is akin to thinking that praying is exclusively about asking for and getting stuff.

Resistance is built into the run. If you think runners, who do so regularly, don't have a hard time getting out of the door, think again. This morning was a classic example - I woke to find a resistance avalanche had occurred overnight and before I could set foot on the trail I had to dig my way out of my house. Most unpleasant. Most enlightening.

Running is as much about what you think you can't do as it is about what you know you can do, and that edge is where long time runners run. I want to know what I can do, I want to know if the voice in my head is speaking the truth. Is this actually my limit? Does my body have a finite power source when out running, or is there an infinite counterpart that I can tap into? (Like the two sides of a coin... can I flip the coin?) Is there a place I can locate that will override all the effort and struggle so that I can enjoy the run more? (Or at all.) And in the more drama filled moments; am I going to keel over and die of heart failure right now? Will my hamstring/quads rip if I take another step? Is a subarachnoid hemorrhage impending?

When I began running it was for cosmetic and emotional reasons, shall we say. But to keep running for this many years, clearly I have had to regularly reassess my motives. Recently when I asked myself why I run, I answered (yeah weird that) 'I run to break free of my story': The Self limiting construct of Reality that I adhere to unquestioningly 99% of the time, which, in the absence of a full on Left Brain Narrative, gets to be debunked. (You gotta love endorphins.)It happens every time.

So why the avalanche of resistance this morning - you got me there. Could have been that I was about to run my longest run ever and I just wanted to put up a fight before hand. Not that I knew I was going to run THAT long...in fact I never know how long it's going to be until I am running and my Left Brain is drugged into submission.

Just short of 20 miles today. I think I've got the Half covered.

Vive le Résistance!