om body
Forget PBs and take the time
to smell the flowers on your
run today. By Zoë Plöger
I
used to run half-marathons. I ran because it was thinking-
time, ‘me-time’. I wasn’t fast, but I was determined. Maybe
I was also running away from something, from being the
chubby, un-athletic kid who’d abandoned team sports
because she was so short-sighted she got hit in the face
anytime someone threw a ball at her. I also ran because I liked to eat
and running seemed like a good way to offset all those calories. But
my feet pronated, my knees torqued, and I punched the air as I ran;
more to the point, a lot of the time I didn’t enjoy the obligation to run
further or for longer or faster. Though cardiovascular exercise is vital
in maintaining health, it was not a healthy lifestyle I was pursuing –
‘pursuing’ being a key word because what was it, after all, that I was
running after?
The perfect body? But those who seem perfect to others rarely
seem so to themselves. We all know, moreover, that the concept of
beauty, of perfection, is highly subjective. Was I after a winning time
then? A winning time that was wholly unachievable with my body
shape and anatomy?
I was setting myself up to fail. Hardly great for cultivating
equanimity of mind.Stop competing
Three years ago, I stopped running. The catalyst was my teacher
training. A lot of us on the course admitted to being runners and
Sanjeev Bhanot, one of our teachers, asked one student why it was
that she ran. She answered something along the lines of “to win” or
“get a better time” or “to become fitter”.running
“And then what?” Sanjeev asked.
Silence.
She thought; gave an answer; but he kept pushing: “And
then what? What happens after you win, or get a better time, or
get fitter?”
All us runners knew the answer: of course, you set a new goal. The
original, once achieved, is never ever enough.
We are in endless competition with ourselves and with others. And
it’s not just the case in running – but in how we run our lives.
“I wish you’d all stop running,” Sanjeev said with a smile.
I took him literally; it was good to let go. I’d been brought
up competitive. I won scholarships to schools; read English at
Oxford; wrote for national newspapers. None of this I considered
an achievement, seeing only the limitations of my personality,
my intellect, my success. Perhaps this was a contributory factor
to the depression I suffered for 17 years, that began around the
time I started running. The novelist, Kate Armstrong, had a similar
experience, which she writes about eloquently in her blog. But,
whereas Armstrong was forced to give up running after a breakdown,
I had – crucially – been given permission by Sanjeev to drop that
competitive ‘alpha’ persona.
Not running brought out a different element of my ‘self’. In the
past, the competitive part of me sometimes jeered at others’
physical weakness (laziness, I thought it). Now that I was not goading
myself about being lazy, I stopped goading others. Good for you, I
thought, if I saw someone else running – whilst not feeling the need
to join in or compete.A yogic guide to...