After an eight-hour drive back to Kansas for the Christmas holiday, I dropped my bags and headed out the door for a run. I left my watch inside.
I鈥檝e gone through a variety of phases in my running life: a GPS phase, an iPod phase, a fancy gear phase鈥擨鈥檓 probably still in that last one. But now, with nothing more than shoes, shorts, and a shirt, something felt different. Maybe it was the colors鈥攖he green grass poking through the black tilled fields; the brown, bare tree trunks; the chalk white of the winter sky. Maybe it was the smell of wood smoke in the chilly air or the frantic clatter of deer hooves as they scattered across the road. After thousands of miles in my running life, maybe I was finally paying attention.
鈥淩unning in the Rockies on an awesome trail does not go with listening to music or finding out how much elevation you鈥檝e climbed to the millimeter,鈥 says Duncan Larkin, author of . 鈥淩unning should be something more spiritual.鈥
A 2:32 marathoner, Larkin says he wrote his book as a 鈥減rotest song鈥 after seeing running become increasingly complicated in the Internet age. His book runs the gamut of the running life, and it鈥檚 an all-encompassing philosophy that goes far beyond shoes. But there are a few easy things, he says, that you can incorporate now to simplify your run.
First, once a week, go electricity-free. Leave the iPod at home and your GPS on the charger. 鈥淟isten to the birds. Hear the world,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t sounds really yogi-esque, but that鈥檚 the basics.鈥
Next, in your goal race, don鈥檛 wear a watch. With nothing around your wrist, you鈥檒l learn to pace yourself by feel. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e glued to a device, you鈥檙e going to depend on that device,鈥 Larkin says. 鈥淲hereas if you鈥檙e in tune with your own body鈥檚 clock, you鈥檙e going to run the way you should run.鈥
What鈥檚 the point of all this? It鈥檚 peace of mind. It鈥檚 noticing the green of the fields and woodsmoke in the air. 鈥淚n our world, we鈥檙e so plugged in, and we need to make running the time to unplug,鈥 Larkin says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not robot-people. We鈥檙e humans, and we should be connecting in an animalistic way with our environment.鈥
Even after my Christmas run, I probably won鈥檛 go completely off-grid. Those recovery runs are great for podcasts, and I鈥檓 only halfway through Serial (nobody spoil it for me!). And even if I don鈥檛 have a set time to run, I do have a set time to be at work. The watch will probably stay on Monday through Friday. But Saturday, when my cat wakes me up at her discretion and the training log calls for a slow five miles, I might just leave the watch at home and see, smell, and really listen to the world around me. After the past 10 years of remembering to bring all my high-tech doodads with me, running in its purest form, devoid of electricity save for the body electric, might be the one thing I forgot.