I’ve fallen into a habit of jogging for 40 minutes to an hour at the start of every run. The long warmup is my old-guy ritual, my homage to the lesson, which it took 20 years to learn, that the body prefers to get moving in its own good time. And, with an ancient body like mine, it takes longer. When the body announces that it’s ready to stretch out and run, it’s a clear feeling in my heart: Okay…Now!
Today, it took an entire enjoyable hour of slow rambling before my body woke up. I came around the stables by the golf course and there it was – an urge, a release: Go!
A thing I love about the long, slow warmup is how beautifully it sorts my innards. My mind becomes focused and calm, so that when I meet the urge to go fast, I’m able to run at the right pace. And, during the long warmup, worries and tensions melt away.
Science would probably say that my ready-to-run feelings occur through a kind of entrainment, where the rhythm of running sets up vibrations that synchronize the brain, followed by the emotions, and so on.
And, well, okay, if that’s the mechanism – yet it feels as if there’s a conscious intelligence at the tiller, wise and loving. And it’s odd how those experiences come more easily when I ask that intelligence to help me find the way.
At the end of an hour’s warmup, I was running deep in the harmony zone, and I decided to test it with some faster running. I wanted to see if the zone would hold while my body generated higher energy.
I had fallen into a relaxed running form, and when I zipped across a busy road, it felt like flying. I felt like a champion – poised, powerful, Olympian – which was more than a little ridiculous, considering that I’m 62 years old.
From that point, I played with the zone, running slowly for several hundred yards until I felt the harmony grow strong, then going faster to see if it would hold. Finally, I fell into an enjoyable lope and stayed there. I’d been running for an hour and a half.
Near the gym, the inner synchrony weakened a bit and I eased into a jog. I wondered if it would return if I jogged around the track at Angell Field, but after five or six laps it hadn’t, so I headed toward the sports complex, happy to extend the run to two hours.
I passed a field hockey pitch where several women were taking practice shots on the goal. Absorbed in watching the goalie, I forgot about my running, and I realized that I’d slipped quietly back into the zone. I thought, “Fascinating – you can’t force it; you can only set up the right conditions, which include mental focus and a certain self-forgetfulness.”
When I find my way into the zone, it’s simple and non-striving. It has more to do with being than with doing. With receiving rather than grasping. With now rather than then. With melting-into, rather than flowing-over. With relaxing rather than pushing. With inner communion, rather than outer expression. It’s a quiet in the midst of activity. It’s a bird, quietly absorbed, dancing its lyric in the sky for the pleasure of an appreciative universe.
