John Novak, a running buddy since the 1970s, is an even-tempered guy. I don’t believe he’s ever had to agonize over his training. He feels what’s right, and because his feelings aren’t wildly emotional, he gets the right answers.
When we last ran together, several years ago, I was floundering. My running was no longer enjoyable. I had lost sight of the big picture.
I knew the details of good training. I knew, for example, that a long warmup gets the body ready for fast running, and it helps harmonize my heart.
But I had gotten tangled in the details and couldn’t find my way out.
I was spending too much time running slowly, waiting…and waiting for the body to say when it was ready to kick up the pace. But it rarely did.
When John and I ran together, I wore my heart monitor. The monitor helps me hold an easy pace of 65% to 67% of max heart rate during the warmup.
John said, “Oh, you wear one of those things? I don’t! I’ve got one at home in a drawer someplace. I run for enjoyment.”
I was speechless. Was he saying that heart rate training was inconsistent with enjoyment?
I respect John’s insights. I sensed he was hinting at something I needed to learn. I was unhappy with my running.
After jogging for 100 yards – that was a warmup?! – John picked up the pace. I glanced at the heart monitor and saw that it had climbed to 78% of MHR – we were trotting a lot faster than the warmup pace I was used to. But I said nothing and went along with the program.
We ran five miles on a levee that extends far into San Francisco Bay, through the beautiful Palo Alto Baylands.
Hundreds of runners train in the Baylands, and many smiled and said a cheery “Hi” to John as they passed. He’s like that – he’s very much in his heart, and people feel his kindness.
On the return leg, I noticed that I was enjoying the brisk pace. I realized that my running had “awakened” from the months of zombified slogging.
Back at the start, I told John I would continue another 2½ hours, because I was training for a 50K as a school fundraiser. We parted, and I continued at the pace we’d been running. It was one of the happiest runs of my life – the true runner’s spirit had been set free and was rejoicing.
I’ve thought often about that day, yet the lessons remained unclear until recently. At last, I realized that I needed to shift my focus away from the details (warmup, heart monitor, etc.), to the larger issue of training: energy.
Energy is everything. It fuels all of a runner’s “tools”: body, heart, will, mind, and soul. Energy makes the body responsive. Energy stimulates positive feelings. Energy is the fuel for will power. It’s the hallmark of a keen mind.
John showed me that energy is the key to enjoyable running. I’m no longer waiting for the body to “tell” me it’s ready to run.
Yes, sometimes I’ll need a long warmup, and at some point I’ll fall easily into a faster pace. But I’ve realized that I can “test my edges” during the warmup.
After 10, 15, or 25 minutes, I’ll pick up the pace tentatively and see how it feels. I’ll check the feeling in my heart, and if it’s positive and harmonious, I’ll stay with that pace; otherwise, if there’s a subtle warning, a discomfort and unease, I’ll back off until I can speed-up with a feeling of natural “rightness.”
Here are five stories about energy.
Story #1
As I tried to learn the lesson of the run with John, I prayed and asked how it’s possible to “get up to speed” quickly. I wanted to avoid a too-long, energy-killer warmup. I wanted to use the warmup to generate positive feelings and get the body ready to run fast.
Two days later, I ran at Foothill College, where Mary Ellen and I use the gym. We planned to drive 100 miles to Sacramento to sing in a concert on the weekend, and I wanted to get in a hard workout before the trip.
I began the run with an exuberant burst of speed. But I didn’t slow, as usual. I was feeling very energized.
There was no sense that it might be better to throttle back and take a long warmup. Instead, I ran the three-mile loop at a brisk pace, just under 80% MHR, feeling joyful and enthusiastic.
Early in the run, doubts entered my mind: “Is this right?” “Maybe I should be careful.” The doubts lingered, like trolls beside the road, trying to steal my energy.
My mind tried to drag me down: “Do the conventional thing!” “Be ordinary!” “Who do you think you are!” “You can’t run this fast!” But my body and heart pressed on with joy.
It was easy to shake the doubts. The flow of positive energy washed the hesitation aside. It was a wonderful run.
I had found the right training for the day, not by careful logic but by doing whatever it took to keep my energy high.
In fact, what kept the energy flowing strongly was running hard for a while, then backing off and relaxing. It was fartlek, speed-play, and it felt exactly right.
Entering the enormous main parking lot, I felt that the intelligence in my body wanted to run hard, and so I picked up the pace.
At first, I ran diagonally across the empty lot very fast, bringing my heart rate to 92%, then backing off and recovering. During an hard effort, I got my heart rate to 97%, but it felt too fast.
I ran 13 or 14 fast intervals of 200 to 400 yards. The running became easier, and the intervals got longer. Afterward, I felt very good, and I was able to have an enjoyable weight workout.
Lesson: Sometimes it helps to work with the tools of the mind and heart. But, other times, it’s better to go with a strong flow of positive energy. On the high-energy days, not much mental tinkering is required. As long as the heart is moderately harmonious, the mind isn’t crippled by negativity, and the body is healthy, there’s no need to wrestle with wisps of negative thoughts. They’ll be swept along in a flow of positive energy.
Story #2
Last winter, I decided it would be cool if I could do pull-ups. I hadn’t done a pull-up in 45 years, and it hardly seemed possible now, at age 66. Hanging from the pull-up bar, I could barely bend my elbows.
After months of doing “negatives” – jumping up, grabbing the bar, and letting myself down slowly – I was able to do a single pull-up, and several weeks later I was able to do two.
The first pull-up was a huge high. For the rest of the day, I soared in happiness.
Oh, and immediately after I walked away from the bar, an old man – even older than I – walked up and effortlessly did 12 pull-ups. Let it never be said that God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
Several weeks later, I had finished my two pull-ups and was attempting a third. A big Latino football player with an orange-dyed afro saw me struggling grotesquely. Behind me, I heard a scornful snicker.
The next week, the young football player was at the gym again. I was feeling extremely positive. I jumped up and grabbed the bar, bursting with confidence, and did three pull-ups without strain. I didn’t hear a sound, but I felt the young man’s respect, and apology. (I later learned that he was no dumb jock – his major was microbiology, and he’d had been accepted at UC Santa Cruz.)
For weeks thereafter, I remained stuck at two pull-ups. I didn’t have the same enthusiasm, and my energy sagged. My spiritual teacher said, “The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.” And a major component of will power is enthusiasm.
Last week, I tried an experiment. Before I did pull-ups, I prepared my mind and heart. The “stuck” period had sapped my confidence. I needed to rebuild my enthusiasm.
I strolled around the gym and prepped my attitude. I visualized the zest that it takes to make exercise fun and enjoyable. No big ego-trip, just rip-snorting, energy-making, light-hearted joy. Wahoo!
I leaped up to the bar and did three pull-ups. The last was a stretch, but that was fine.
The lesson? Without enthusiasm, is exercise worthwhile? Every landmark run I’ve had, has been fired by enthusiasm.
Story #3
Energy operates on many levels. It can be very subtle, as this story illustrates.
In the mid-eighties, my ex-wife and I joined friends for an afternoon of volleyball and swimming. I had been fasting for three days on orange juice, and felt spacey and wan. But I also felt wonderful. It was a five-year period when I spent lots of time in spiritual practice.
We shared a big home in a Bay Area suburb with 17 followers of the same spiritual path. It was a great situation. It was lovely to cook dinner just once every two weeks, and to be close to people who shared our ideals. The downside was the boring house meetings on Friday evening. When the house parents urged me to attend, I would say, “Sorry, I have an appointment in Marin County to see a friend.”
The “friend” was God. Skipping the meeting, I would drive around San Francisco Bay, 180 miles in 3½ hours. I drove south to San Jose, north to Berkeley, across Marin County, and back across the Golden Gate and down the Peninsula, chanting all the way.
To be perfectly frank, I didn’t know squat about chanting. I did it all wrong – I bellowed a lot. I was desperate to feel love for God, and I worked hard to open my heart. But I was doing it from the outside, as if my heart was a fortress to be stormed. I believed my feelings had to be big, or God wouldn’t respond.
Later, I realized that God answers quickly, when we give him the least grain of love from our heart.
Even though I did it “wrong,” the chanting changed my life. It was similar to when I began running. Becoming fit for the first time, at age 26, was glorious. It was like entering a spacious new world, the world of the fit body. I could run up stairs, carry heavy loads, and work all day without fatigue. The range and force of my capabilities had greatly expanded.
Chanting let me enter a second new world. I realized that the heart held answers to problems for which the mind didn’t have a clue.
I remember a dream I had at the time. I saw a lotus flower that was small and just starting to open. I knew it was my heart. It was discouraging that it had barely begun to unfold. Yet it was, by golly, opening. I knew I was headed in the right direction.
God felt closer than ever. He was with me in an intimate way, even though I rarely succeeded in opening my heart to the degree I thought He expected.
During those five years, I was completely out of shape. I had given up running, because it was making me irritable and was endangering our marriage. Later, I discovered I had a serious vitamin B deficiency, and that running had made it worse. Looking back, I believe God wanted me to forget about running for a time, and concentrate on opening my heart. When I came back to running, I discovered that the heart’s feelings held important keys for training.
On the Sunday when we gathered to play volleyball and swim, I felt washed-up and wan because of my three-day fast. A house mate had invited a friend to join us. An former college basketball player, he was proud of his athleticism. Seeing me looking fey and dizzy-headed, he decided to show me up. He began flirting openly with my wife, in a macho-jock way. (She was beautiful.) I was indifferent; I was seeking a love and joy that had nothing to do with petty one-upmanship.
The game began and the score see-sawed. Then it was my turn to serve.
Really, it was pathetic – I’m a runner, not a “real” jock. I can’t jump, catch, field a scorcher at shortstop, or make the hard throw to first. I certainly can’t dribble.
But I reasoned that if I held the ball in my left hand and swung my arm in a horizontal arc, I stood a fair chance of actually hitting it and getting it over the net.
I served and the ball went straight to the former basketball player – who missed it and fell on his butt.
Second serve – to the basketball jock, who hit a net return.
Third serve – well, you get the picture. I scored 4, 5…10, 11 points off Mr. Macho. At the end, I felt so sorry for him that I was sending big, loopy airballs high over the net, yet he missed again and again.
God exercises His boundless ingenuity to teach us the lessons we need, working with whatever resources are available. I couldn’t do a jump-serve to save my life; yet my nerdy side-swing was enough. Evidently, God decided to teach the young jock a lesson in humility. I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of God’s devastating irony, my share of times.
I didn’t have much physical energy; but through the sincerity of my spiritual practice, I was connected with the energy of God.
Story #4
At choir practice, we sang a piece called “Brother James’s Air.” Flipping through the music, I remarked quietly: “I hate this song!” The tenor beside me was surprised. “You hate it? Why?”
I said, “Because it pulls my mind away from our spiritual teacher’s music.” The song’s insidious prettiness activates the terrible brain region where bad songs hide until we think of them, to emerge and repeat in a crazy-making loop.
After practice, I walked to the car and waved to the woman who’d been standing in front of me. She turned away coldly, clearly upset over my remark.
I drove to Stanford and started my run. I felt hurt by her judgment. I realized that if I wanted to shake it off, I would have to pray for her, until I felt genuine love flowing in my heart. I would have to get into “giving mode” instead of waiting weakly for her to change her attitude.
The prayer was dry as dust. I was repeating the words mechanically, without feeling: “Bless her with health, love, strength, wisdom, and joy.” My brain was tired, my thoughts unfocused. I couldn’t hold the prayer together.
Occasionally, I had prayed for people who had hurt me, until I felt a flow of love and blessings that washed away all resentment. But this time – nothing. There was no tiny shift of energy that portended a flow of love. The prayer remained mechanical.
Jogging into the hills, I realized that I would have to go deep in my heart and find a little speck of genuine love. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find it by vomiting forth words. I would have to work with energy.
I thought of something my spiritual teacher said: “Before there can be an expansion, there must be a certain grounding first.”
I thought, “Yes. I’ve been able to feel love most strongly when I pulled back from my emotions and got centered in an impersonal desire to do the right thing.”
I worked hard at it. I stopped praying and straightened my spine so that the energy could flow freely in my heart.
I ran erect in the spine, pulling my energy back and into my heart, restraining my little self so that I could serve as a channel for God’s love. I got very “grounded” – grim with impersonal self-control, yet tenderly watching my heart, and offering myself to God’s inner presence. I refused to allow my energy to be distracted by lingering wisps of negative feeling.
Soon I was feeling remarkably light and loving. There was a fresh feeling of wholeness and positive energy. The run was wonderful – at the end of the 2-hour run, I ran at a fast clip for 20 minutes.
In her sermon that morning, the minister talked about how our deeper reality isn’t the tiny personality, but the vast Self of God within, on top of which the little ego and personality float, like leaves on the surface of a lake.
I thought: “Yes, I’m pulling back from the little self. And now I’m feeling that larger Self whose nature is love and kindness.”
I no longer felt defensive. I didn’t need to “work out the issues” with that woman. By tapping into a larger kindness, I automatically felt kindly toward her. I didn’t need to crank out a particular feeling. By restraining my reactions, I was united with the larger Self whose nature is love.
It was a wonderful experience. It’s wonderful to escape the pain of contractive feelings. Since then, I’ve felt only appreciation and kindness toward her.
It was also a wonderful discovery. Because it showed me, in a direct way, that changing the quality of our energy is the answer to changing negative feelings. Not twiddling thoughts, or “working with” feelings, but drawing inward, establishing control, and offering our energy to the higher Self, to use us to express Its love.
In Chapter 7, I described research on how raw emotions and mental concentration travel by separate paths in the brain. The surprising thing is that the path of raw emotion, and the path of concentration are mutually exclusive. “Grounding” oneself with intense concentration is an effective way to drain energy from difficult feelings, so we can direct it into expansive channels. Runners know that an effective way to defuse the pre-race jitters is to focus intently on the details of preparation – the warmup, shoelaces, the race plan, etc.
The moral? Energy can be used to make us happy or sad, reactive or self-contained, contractive or expansive. Mental focus, withdrawal from our reactions, and self-offering to a higher power can accomplish a remarkable change in the quality of our energy, beyond what mental twiddling can do.
Story #5
Sickness prevented us from going to the concert in Sacramento, so I was able to have a long run on Sunday. It was only an hour and a half, because my 67-year-old body was recovering from the speedwork three days earlier. But I was able to run briskly almost from the start. And, once again, there was a lovely flow of positive energy, which held nearly to the finish.
I was free from mental doubts about how I “should” run. My mind and emotions were subordinated to the strong flow of energy. There was enough energy to run a notch under 80% MHR and enjoy it. No prolonged warmup was required.
The overall moral? I spent years trying to understand the details of training. I learned many wonderful lessons. But my focus has shifted to a larger picture, a more holistic view: to “just run” and invoke the details only insofar as they help keep energy flowing strongly.
