Running naked

With a recent change in my telephone hardware and a stepping back from the general noise of the media world I have taken to running naked.  Not, I assure you, naked in the physical sense.  I still go about my runs fully clothed.  But, naked in the audio and psychological sense.  I am running unhindered by music, podcasts and telephone.

It has been a reawakening.

It is a curious thing.  At first it bothers you.  Like you are forgetting something.  You pause before heading out and look around, wondering what it is that is missing.  Than you remember.  Nothing is missing.  But, everything is absent.

I am not some Luddite old guy.  Well I’m not a Luddite.  (These were folks in England that went about smashing the machines in early industrial revolution England because they thought those infernal looms and engines and presses were taking over.  They were sure machines were taking over the world at the expense of good old humanity.  Sound familiar?)

I’m not smashing any machines.  I have a house full of electronics.  My home office looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.  I have been running with all forms of audio since it became possible.

I remember wearing FM Radio headphones on my long runs in the 90’s.  They looked like something you’d wear to land jets on an aircraft carrier.  The long antenna would get fouled in low branches and I could never get a good signal.

I also ran with the original Sony Walkman, that played cassette tapes.  On long runs I’d stuff 3-4 books on tape cassettes into my shorts and change them out on the fly.  I tried the original DiscMan but it couldn’t take the jostling.  Mostly I’d just get small, cheap FM ‘sports’ receivers that clipped on my belt with the understanding that I would sweat them to death every three months or so.

Everything changed with the invention of the iPod.  I got my first iPod in 2004-2005 specifically for long marathon training runs.  I uploaded my CD’s and began listening to music.  I Quickly grew bored with the music.  I discovered this other new thing that was being offered.  A sort-of amateur radio show thing where people just talked about how to do stuff.  Yes, you got it, I discovered Podcasts and they were the perfect thing for my runs.

At first I listened to marketing and business podcasts, because there really weren’t that many podcasts out there.  It wasn’t until I began producing a podcast of my own in 2007 that I realized there was a running community growing around that form.  I found Steve with Phedippidations and Nigel with running from the reaper and Nick and Dan from 4-feet running – and all those other early shows.

I could casually listen to some discussion of smart folks around some business topic and it would kick electrons loose in my wetware, spawning interesting connections and thoughts that I could bring into my own life and work and practice.  I would lose myself in a run thinking deep thoughts and their connections to life.  I used the audio as seed for spinning patterns into my universe.

Those early podcasts were different.  The big media houses and the professional performers hadn’t figured podcasting out yet.  It was a fringe community.  It was just people talking with no agenda.  That made it interesting.

Over the last 5 years podcasting has gone mainstream.  The shows are not so much a creative burst form an odd community member.  They are more structured and they are after something.  They are a form of big media now.  Another channel to get your attention and get into your wallet.  Like every other mom & pop industry the process of aggregation and capitalization has taken root.  But, I digress.

Over the last few years my ‘subscribed to’ podcast list has burgeoned to include many, many shows about many, many topics.  I find that I can’t get to all of them.  It’s a paradox of choice.  It’s the same guilt you used to feel when the magazines you had subscribed to piled up unread in the corner.

Somewhere along the line listening to podcasts on my runs became less of a choice and more of a habit.  I found I could get more audio content into my runs by playing them at 1.5 or 2X speed.  I went from sampling the audio to provoke thought, to rote consumption of information.  I would not go out on a run unless I could knock off a couple podcasts in the process.  I was multitasking.

Somewhere in this process I forgot the essence of the run.  Listening and running became another chore.  The run was not a run alone but a vehicle to a task that could be checked off the list of a successful day.

I still remember why I started running.  I remembered to peaceful salve of being out in the woods or on the road and having my mind drop into the zone, the runner’s high, when it feels more like flying than exercise.  I remembered how the creativity would jump from that sweat oiled mind. Whole stories, fully fleshed would cascade into view and cause me to laugh at how perfect they were.

Somehow I had lessened my running from meditation to a surrogate, classroom training session.

Running while consuming makes me less aware of my surrounding.  It isolates me from the energy of the trails and trees and ancient rocks that were my partners in these adventures.  It blunts the awareness of beauty.  It blinds you to your inner self.

One of my latest 30 -day projects has been to run naked.

With fewer things to carry with me I can run free or at least free-er.

What I have found, or I guess, reacquired is emptiness of mind.  When you run with no input it creates space for thoughts to germinate and flourish.  It creates open ground that can be seeded with thoughts and watered with sweet sweat.

Creating this empty space is a form of meditation.  You allow your mind to wander but you put yourself in the now.  You become aware of your surroundings and let them soak into the empty space.  You become aware of your body.  You notice your pace and form and especially your breathing.  It allows you to be present and synergize the mind-body connection.

I have found I fall down less when I’m running naked.

You may say this is a waste of valuable time.  That you’d be bored without distraction.  But, (and this is probably an ability I have developed in my long life), you are not wasting time.  You are practicing.  You are practicing being present with your mind and your body in your environment.

With this practice you gain a powerful skill set for running.  Have you ever had someone tell you to “Listen to your body”?  You are developing a valuable skill that will pay off in future runs or races.  The ability to interface with your machine, to understand what it is telling you and to control how it reacts.

When you get good at this practice you can use the empty space to think about problems or challenges.  I simply notice my quiet mind and bring a topic to the front.  I allow that subject to roll around in my mind. I let my mind, in flow, access the resources that a switched-on, stressed-out, working mind typically doesn’t have access to.

The creative juices flow when I’m in this practiced state.  Entire paragraphs jump directly into print, fully formed in my mind’s eye.  Amazing chunks if insight cascade in to fill the open space.  Extremely funny and odd thoughts jump out of the mental water like fishes to be caught in my boat.

It took a few long outings in the trails to find my open space again, to reconnect the mind and the body.  It has been invigorating.  A form of thoughtful meditation.  As opposed to just another distracted consumption routine.

Give running naked a try.  Especially if you are of the generation that grew up within the noise.  You owe it to yourself to find this quiet space.