Running Meditation – Improve Your Mindset to Run Further & Faster

Running Meditation Mistakes: Try This
Mindful Run Method Instead
Why Mindful Running Is Not What You Think (And How to Do It Right)
Alright, let me tell you a story that might bend your mind a bit – it’s about the time I almost
blew up my own running progress by being way too mindful. Sounds wild, right? How could
being present and aware ever be a bad thing?
I can almost hear the skepticism in your brain right now – “Being conscious and focused is
supposed to be a good thing, how could it hinder performance?” Well, do me a favor and
parking lot those doubts for a moment.
This story is for all the runners that want to squeeze out performance from all aspects of
their physical and mental training.
What I’m about to unpack will show you how to disrupt your brain’s “I’m bored mode” and
find the right balance of mindfulness for embracing discomfort during a run. You’ll also
understand the delicate balance between conscious presence and unconscious flow that
every runner needs to master for peak performance and daily 1% gains.
Before we start, who am I and what do you get from it?
WHO AM I?
I’m Daren a sub 3 hour marathoner, 10 hour ironman finisher
and this is the one percent better runner.
Since 2012 I’ve researching, experimenting and talking to experts on how to get 1% better
in my training, racing and life to make it easier for you to learn from me and do this yourself.
Let’s get into the episode.
It all went down during a 14-mile training run as I was gearing up for an upcoming
half-marathon. I was trucking along, finding that nice, meditative cadence that usually
makes those long-distances feel almost zen-like. My body was on autopilot, each stride
smooth and automatic after 25 years of mindless miles.
But then I made the crucial error of getting too damn mindful. Maybe it was the gel I had at
mile eight or the song that came up in my headphones, but suddenly I was hyper-aware of
every single sensation – the pounding of my feet, the way my left sneaker made a slight
squeak noise, and how these particular shorts never really fit right. Instead of zoning out
into that euphoric flow state, my conscious mind cranked up the awareness to an 11.
In a few quick seconds everything went to poop. My stride turned sloppy, my breathing all
over teh place. It was like my body’s natural ability to cruise on muscle memory got
hijacked by my overly-conscious mind obsessing over every little detail. There goes
mindfulness being the golden ticket to enlightenment.
As crazy as it sounds, there is research that actually backs up the idea that obsessive
mindfulness can be counterproductive, especially for activities that thrive on automaticity.
But before we touch on the science, let’s go back to 2001 so I can give you a bit more
context into why I’m questioning running and being too mindful.
Where This Came From
Back in 2001, there was an awesome movie I saw back called “Waking Life”. This movie
proved to be a pivotal life experience. It introduced me to the idea of going against the
status quo, thinking outside the box, and generally being more “woke” but not in the left
wing political sense. More in the NEO WakeUp Matrix take the red pill woke. It had
concepts of quantum mechanics/physics, lucid dreaming, and questioning whether dreams
are “real” or not, etc.. Yeah, some heavy stuff and not for the usual Netflix and Chill crowd.
There was a scene about the “now moment”. It went something like this, “If you are so
aware of the now, then the now is not the now that you were passively in. This is because
you are observing it. In quantum mechanics, when particles know they are being observed
they act differently than when they are not.” As a runner, this concept of being too aware
of the present moment resonated deeply. During long runs, I’ve found that if I become
overly conscious of my stride, my breathing, and the sensations in my body, I lose the
meditative flow that propels me forward.
The solution: You need to strive to be in a hybrid state of being. Aware just enough that you
are in the now, but also not shining the light right on it to scare it away. You can’t really be
“in the present” if you are 100% aware that you are “in the present”. They are mutually
exclusive. This balance between awareness and surrender is crucial for runners. We
need enough mindfulness to monitor our form and push through discomfort, but not
so much that we interrupt the unconscious rhythm our bodies have cultivated over
countless miles.
With meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhism making a radical pop culture shift in society,
people are starting to make it cool and cliche to be mindful and present to feel good. That’s
fine and all but I also want to argue why I think that’s extremely hard to do and why in some
instances you shouldn’t. For runners, being excessively mindful can actually hinder our
progress by disrupting the muscle memory and automatic processes that allow us to
find our stride.
Your Brain On Boring: Default Mode Network
Different people define mindfulness in various ways. Let’s go with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s
definition: “Paying attention, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and
non judgmentally.”
This isn’t to be confused with overthinking or paralysis analysis. When I talk about
mindfulness, I’m talking about really paying attention to everything happening right now.
Not worrying about future events that haven’t happened yet, aka anxiety.
But for runners, this level of hyper-awareness during a run can be detrimental, causing us to
overthink and lose the unconscious flow that makes the miles feel effortless.
Default mode network Is a scientific term for when your brain gets bored – it’s not a good
thing. It’s when you don’t want to be bored but you start thinking about other things so that
you’re not bored. It’s the automatic mode your brain goes through to avoid the discomfort
of being bored.
A real-world example: You can utilize all your senses and think about how you feel about
those senses being stimulated. Not how you react, but how it makes you feel. Most people
can’t control their emotions and feelings but they can control how they respond to them.
I think the argument against being too mindful and creating a state of mental laziness is bs.
“Too many people are sleepwalking through our waking state and wake walking through our
dreams.
Either way, we won’t get much out of it.” – Waking Life
How does this work for running? for runners, there is a risk of being too mindful and
disrupting the automatic processes that allow us to find our stride and enter that
transcendent flow state.
How to find the balance between too mindful and not mindful enough
Georgetown Psychologist Chelsea Stillman found that highly mindful people struggle more
with implicit learning – the ability to subconsciously pick up complex skills and form good
habits without even trying. When you’re so focused on being aware of every stimuli, you
can’t let your unconscious mind just vibe and groove into those subliminal patterns.
She stated based on testing and observations that “People high in mindfulness — a state of
active attention to what’s going on in the present moment — are worse at automatic
learning” For runners, that’s kind of a big deal. So much of our sport hinges on logging
mile after mindless mile, allowing our bodies to entrench those movements into pure
muscle memory until they become second nature. Once you start overthinking and
obsessing over every stride, you interrupt that flow and stumble out of that glorious
autopilot trance.
Author Christopher Bergland puts it best “The Georgetown study confirms that it is
counterproductive to be overly cerebral when trying to create good habits, but that
everyone needs to flex some mental muscle to break bad habits. Taking a dual-pronged
approach that combines conscious willpower with unconscious conditioning and practice is
the key to making healthier habits a part of your daily routine.” This balanced approach of
mindfulness and unconscious integration is optimal for runners working to build an
effortless, high-mileage routine.
Mo’ Mindful Mo’ [Good] Problems
Fortunately, for most people, they don’t have to worry about this problem. This is like the
“More money more problems” theory. Most people don’t have enough money (or think they
have enough) so it’s less of a problem for the majority of the world and more of one for a
small percentage. The rest of the population finds it hard to relate to this. For dedicated
runners, constantly striving to improve by a small margin daily and heightening their
awareness is important. However, being overly mindful can become a real concern that
hinders their progress.
Because of our inherent nature of always striving for positive feelings, we tend to only be
mindful when it’s an associated good feeling. Being mindful and aware when things are
negative like stress, discomfort, and anxiety is one of my favourite tools. I practice it a lot in
meditation and also in my running. When things get hard I try to get down to my core and
ground myself and “feel” everything. I let things be. Sometimes, I’ll personify the
uncomfortable feeling by giving it a face, colour, texture, or anything! I’ve found this to help
blunt the discomfort. And on more than one occasion, the pain actually starts feeling kind of
“good” in a masochist sort of way.
It would be great if ‘being too mindful’ was an actual problem for most runners out there.
Like ‘being too dedicated to training’ or ‘being too focused on proper form’ or ‘being too
concerned about injury prevention.’ Insert whatever habit we wish more casual joggers
would embrace. If obsessive mindfulness during runs was the biggest issue facing the
running community, to borrow a line from Marlo Stansfield in The Wire: ‘Sounds like one of
them good problems.’”