Simple words of inspiration reinvigorate my daily running habit

For the past few weeks, my daily run has been….well, less than ideal.

It seems my pace gets slower and slower. We’ve had some really hot, humid weather already this summer, and our new neighborhood is a lot buggier early in the day than our old neighborhood was; even if I protect myself with a hat and sunscreen, the horseflies cluster around my dog’s ears and annoy both of us.

So even as my daily streak approaches its four-year anniversary next month, I’ve cut back just a little on distance, reducing my typical weekend 5- or 6-milers to just four miles the past couple of weeks, and not even trying to go beyond my weekday 2-mile route the other five days of the week.

But even though I’ve maintained my daily running streak – which is at 1439 days as of this morning – it just hasn’t been fun. In fact, it’s been a drag. I drag myself out the door. I drag myself along the road and back. I drag myself through the paces of running, day after day, without my usual enthusiasm.

And then yesterday morning, I was going through my usual early-morning routine, the one that begins even earlier than my daily run: I write Morning Pages and then check email before I lace up my running shoes.

Normally, waiting in my email box at this early hour is a daily inspirational quote from gratefulness.org. And most days I find this helpful. Some examples are more meaningful than others to me, but I almost always find something insightful, encouraging, educational, illuminating or thought-provoking in the words of the daily quote. But over the past several days, no daily inspirational email had arrived. And then yesterday the bottleneck was apparently broken, and there were five. But none of them struck me as inspirational at all.

“All attack is a call for help. When you know this, you begin at once to look deeply into the question of what kind of help is being called for,” said one, attributed to theologian and writer Neale Donald Walsch.

“Let us accept the invitation, ever-open, from the Stillness, taste its exquisite sweetness, and heed its silent instruction,” wrote the late British philosopher Paul Brunton.

Some days these missives inspire me, but on this particular day, they neither made me feel like going out to live a better life nor like going out for my daily run.

And then on Twitter I found this one, from Maurilio Amorim, a marketing and technology entrepreneur and runner in Tennessee: "Morning workouts help me clear my mind and awaken my creativity."

That’s right, said the ever-present voice in my head. That’s the part I’ve been forgetting recently. Running isn’t just about the physical sense of well-being and strength. Sometimes, on hot humid days or for any number of other reasons, that sense of physical wellness just isn’t part of the experience. But this is the part I’d been overlooking as of late. I don’t run just for the physical power surge it gives me; I run because, as Maurilio Amorim says, it helps me clear my mind and awaken my creativity.

Stop thinking about how you feel, I reminded myself – the humidity, the sleepiness, the ever-annoying horseflies – and remember this part: the mind-clearing part. That’s still the most important reason. Rather than thinking that your muscles are moving slowly, think of the run as the part of the day where you gather together your dissipated mental energy and channel it into the creativity and initiative required for the day ahead.

Those thoughts stayed with me as I headed down my driveway. Somehow in recent weeks I’d forgotten about the mental clarity I gain from running; I’d let the physical aspects, most of which have been negative lately, overrun my consciousness. And it wasn’t philosophers or theologians, motivational speakers or athlete-gurus, who put me back on track. It was one cyber-acquaintance in Tennessee, with eleven words that I needed to hear.

I suppose it goes without saying that running hasn’t felt so good all summer as it did yesterday.

The Little Engine Whose Mom Hoped It Could

Over the past week or two, Holly’s interest in biking has caught fire. Early in the season, she cast aside her beginner’s two-wheeler in favor of Tim’s larger, outgrown bike, delighted by the extra power its greater size and number of gears gave her. Since then we’ve taken about a half-dozen rides a mile or so up and down the road.

Yesterday afternoon she asked again to go for a bike ride. Holly was in the mood to try something a little more ambitious than our usual aimless jaunts, and I wanted to see what she could do, so I suggested we ride into the town center. It’s a little less than three miles, and not a difficult route, though the last mile is along a fairly busy road. But it wasn’t yet rush hour.

The ride into town went well. Holly pedaled steadily and cheerfully. At the general store in town, I bought her a cookie, and we sat out on the store’s porch while she ate it.

The ride home was more difficult for her, though. I think she just burned out. She whined and fussed and eventually cried about how hard it was. She stopped often to rest.

I knew I had myriad options for how to handle it. I could be a cheerleader, trying to boost her spirits by emphasizing how well she’d done on the ride already and how I was absolutely certain she could do the rest. (I wasn’t.) I could cajole, urging her to give it her best shot. Or I could do the opposite: point out she had agreed to the ride, she had already made it one way, and she needed to be a good sport and push herself a little to make it home.

If one of these was the right answer, I certainly didn’t know which one. So I didn’t do any of them. I just rode behind her, listened to her complaints, told her in as objective way as possible – neither cheering nor cajoling nor scolding – that I was fairly sure she could finish the ride, and waited it out.

The last third of the route is the easiest part. Once we reached that section of road, she stopped whining and wiping away tears; she coasted along and seemed to cheer up. When we arrived home, I knew once again that there were all sorts of approaches I could take – making a big fuss over the accomplishment; pointing out that she’d overcome the challenges and triumphed; trying to make an object lesson out of the fact that we’d completed the ride we set out to do.

But again, I opted for none of the above. Just as earlier in the ride I’d figured whatever strength Holly needed to finish the ride had to come from within her and not from me cheering, cajoling or scolding, once it was over I believed her sense of pride and accomplishment also needed to come from herself and not from me. So I told her I was glad we’d gone for the ride, but we didn’t discuss it much further than that. We went inside and started getting ready for dinner.

This was just one of the many times that I knew I had a lot of options but I simply had no idea which one was best. All of those approaches are tacks I’ve taken at some point in my parenting history, and I know each one sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.

But it seemed to me no matter what that I couldn’t go wrong by stepping back and letting Holly’s own inner voice guide her: first in telling her she could probably complete the ride, and then in making her feel a sense of pride in having done it. The Little Engine That Could didn't have a mother engine urging her along either; the strength came from within.

Holly had cheered up to her usual self by the time we sat down to dinner. She was tired by bedtime, but not unhappy. There are so many approaches to parenting challenges. It’s hard sometimes to remember that sometimes the best approach is no approach at all. I don’t actually know where Holly found the motivation to finish the ride, or how she felt once she had. We just went along with our day and didn’t have much discussion about it. But however she did it, my guess is she’ll be able to draw on the same method again. And that surely beats any amount of praising or cajoling I could possibly muster.

How running starts

A friend emailed me to ask for advice. “How did you start running?” she asked. “I can't seem to get past thinking about starting running. I guess that's a start.”

Oh yay! I thought when I saw her question. There’s nothing I like better than talking about running! I rolled up my sleeves, metaphorically speaking, and flexed my fingers over the keyboard, literally speaking, as I readied myself to answer her question.

Except I didn’t know the answer, as I discovered when I tried to begin to write. I started running so long ago that I can’t remember how I did it or what motivated me.

I mean, I remember on an intellectual level. I was home from my freshman year in college, where I’d become familiar with the weight room and had lost some extra pounds doing long workouts on the stationary bike. I wanted to keep up the good work but I didn’t want to join a gym at home, so I decided to switch over to running.

But I don’t remember how it felt. I don’t remember if it seemed easy or difficult, or how I kept myself motivated to stay with it all summer. It was too long ago. Just a few months short of twenty-five years.

Since I couldn’t answer her question about how I started running I wrote to her instead to talk about what keeps me running.

“I can eat more,” I told her. (Less and less true now that I’m in my forties, but at one point it was definitely an operative factor.) “It gets me out enjoying nature and the outdoors every day.” (In sleet, snow or hail. In heat and humidity. In windstorms and downpours. But yes, it gets me outside every day.) “It reduces my level of mental stress.” (True, always. I give myself a pass from thinking about, well, anything, while I’m running. It’s just one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, without thoughts of home, family, work, or the world. I require myself only to think about the road under my feet. I let everything else slide out of my head for those twenty or thirty or sixty minutes.) “I listen to NPR podcasts, so it’s intellectually as well as physically stimulating.” Ah yes, NPR. I’ve listened to NPR while running for years, but once I learned about MP3 players and podcasts, running became almost secondary to the priority of getting to pick and choose my own NPR-listening schedule.

So even though I can’t remember how I got myself started, it’s easy to explain why I keep going. That and my membership in the United States Running Streak Association (USRSA). According to the quarterly registry I received from the USRSA last week, I’m currently # 185 on the list of active “streak runners” in the U.S., with 1,305 days of running a mile or more under my belt as of yesterday. The fact that I’ve already paid my $20 in USRSA dues for the year motivates me to try to make it another year.

I hope my answer was helpful to my friend, even though I wasn’t able to address her question precisely. And whatever finally gets her to go running, I hope she finds it satisfying and stays with it for a long time. Long enough that she too eventually forgets the reason she began.

Motivation and "streak running"

This post from a Cool Running discussion board asking runners what keeps them motivated made me start thinking about the question. Then over the weekend I came across this quote from Walt Guzzardi as replicated in Kevin Nelson’s book The Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration: “I don’t make a decision every morning. I made a decision once, long ago, to run every day. When I wake up, the decision is already made.”

Exactly. As a member of the United States Running Streak Association (USRSA), a membership organization of runners committed to running a mile or more every single day and therefore maintaining a “streak” for as long as possible, I’ve heard this question a lot in the two and a half years since my streak began, and those USRSA members whose streaks are a lot longer that mine – like three or four decades – no doubt have heard it thousands more times than I have. But the funny thing is that motivation was much more of an issue before I pledged to run every day, when there was still a “Will I or won’t I” question each day. Once I decided to do a running streak, I stopped thinking about motivation, because I was no longer in the position of deciding whether or not I feel sufficiently motivated to go. As Walt Guzzardi said, the decision is already made.

Still, there are days when I feel decidedly more enthusiastic about running than others. Since I live in New England, the weather is probably the biggest factor in how much I feel like going running. But it doesn’t have to be a crisp sunny fall day or a mild spring morning for me to feel compelled by the weather to get out. A light misty rainfall brings out my running urges, and so does a day like today: snowy and wintry by appearance but with temps in the mid-30’s predicted, a good fifteen degrees warmer than any of the days I ran last week. I’m excited today just to get out without neck warmer and face mask on, and without my skin chafing from the bitter wind.

It’s a common phrase among runners that “the hardest step is the one out the door,” meaning all you have to do to go running is get started and then the run takes care of itself, but for me the hardest step can be the one just before that: getting dressed for the run. During the work week, I usually run midday, and especially on cold days, the idea of changing clothes can seem like a hassle. So sometimes if I don’t have to be anywhere else first, I just dress for the run from the time I get up in the morning and remove that step altogether.

The dog motivates me. Around midmorning, she starts poking at my typing hands with her snout. I know she’s ready, and I know that if I give her a good workout now I’ll be rewarded later in the day with the endearing sight of her curled up contentedly on the couch, face on paws.

Podcasts, too. I load up my iPod every week with highlights from a variety of podcasts available through iTunes from NPR, the New York Times and the New Yorker. Knowing that going out for a run means 45 minutes – or even 15 minutes – of Terry Gross, Peter Sagal, Adam Gopnick or any of my other favorites makes it seem not so much like running as entertainment.

But more than anything else, it’s the streak itself that motivates me. Streak running is not right for everyone, but I maintain that it does solve the motivation question once and for all. I keep track of my streak days on a dry-erase white board that hangs in our mudroom. Not only my family members but several friends and neighbors know they can check it any time to see what day I’m on. Ever since getting into the triple digits, I’ve benefited from the added encouragement of the “Wow!” factor: people who glance at the white board and say “Wow, you’re past 100 days!” “Wow, you’re in the 500’s!” My son, upon seeing yesterday that I was up to 892, said “Wow, Mom, you’re going to get to 1,000 days soon!” (Not all that soon. Late in the spring. But eventually.)

Several years ago, my younger sister worked in an office building overlooking Boston’s most popular running route, the paved pathway along the Charles River. Many of her co-workers were accomplished athletes and took advantage of the setting. “What’s great about you as a runner is that you don’t talk about it,” my sister commented to me once.

“Talk about it?” I said, puzzled. “It’s just running; what’s to talk about?”

“Oh, you should hear the people I work with,” she replied. “They talk about it all the time. ‘What time are you going? How far? Who are you running with? Which route are you doing? Do you think I should wear shorts or tights? How many water bottles are you bringing?’ Believe me, they find plenty to talk about.”

Coincidentally enough, not long after that, I went to work for the same company and saw what she meant. Up until then, I had no idea there was so much to say about running – or, more specifically, decisions about whether to go. Of course, in a way the last laugh is on me and I had no right to feel supercilious. I may not have talked about it ad nauseum, but I went on to write a book about my running and start a blog dedicated to the topic. I guess I’m not immune from the running conversation either.

At this point I’d need far more mental impetus to break the streak than it takes to maintain it. Why go running today? Because I’ve already decided I’m going to. And so it’s one less decision to make today.