The Zen of Running

(originally published September 8, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

5 a.m. Dark outside. Quiet. Just me, my feet, and my thoughts. For lack of a better word, it’s a “zen” moment. I’ve been having a lot of those recently.

Warning: the following paragraphs may be a bit warm-fuzzy-touchy-feely-just-short-of-silly. If that’s not you, there are plenty of articles on the web about kitchen appliances, the stock market, and how to stain your deck. If, however, you’re at home with the less quantifiable side of life, then please read on.

Johan Larsson, licensed by Creative Commons

As I was saying, it’s 5 a.m. and I’m already hitting the ground running – literally. I keep surprising myself. Anyone who knows me would never think to mouth the words “morning person” if asked to describe me.  Yet, as I wrote a few weeks ago, the unforgiving summer sun of the Middle East has forced me to choose between early morning runs or none at all.

While I have not grown to love getting out of bed at an hour when most sane people are enjoying a good night’s rest, I have grown to love what unfolds when I begin to run before the rest of the world has awaken.

The air is quiet – all around me is so still that I sense the slightest sound, the merest movement. The street lamps offer the only light to break the blackness before me. The birds puncture the silence with their pre-dawn conversation.  And then I offer my own contribution - the sound of feet on pavement. I begin to run.

Slowly at first. I’m not yet fully awake, and I would much prefer a good cup of coffee to the twelve miles of putting one foot in front of the other that lies ahead of me. I console myself with the thought of how good that coffee is going to taste once I manage to get through this.

At first, each foot lands heavily on the sidewalk, laboring sluggishly to make some progress. I try not to think about the next two hours or the many hills I have yet to climb or the pain my leg muscles will feel. At this point, I’m content just to move forward, employing my “mini-goals”strategy that I described a few weeks ago. I simply focus on running for the next two minutes, then two minutes after that. Sometimes I just run from light post to light post. If I think about anything beyond that, I’ll be tempted to stop and ease back into the house for that cup of coffee.  

Taking things a few steps at a time is a good strategy to get through a run, especially when the mind and body are still begging to return to a comfortable bed. Good, but not ideal. I’m getting the job done, but nothing more. There’s no flow. I’m not, as they say, in the zone.

But I continue, nonetheless – light post to light post, minute by minute. I still have only the light of the street lamps to guide me. But I also have my own cheering squad – the birds’ conversations have swelled into a chorus (or a cacophony, depending on one’s view point).

As the minutes pass by, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the world announces the start of a new day. The street lamps recede, replaced by a skyward haze that is neither dark nor light.

My town is still asleep, but it is beginning to stir as the sun struggles to vanquish the haze. A paperboy gets out of a car to make his morning deliveries. The sound of footsteps not my own comes into range, giving me the satisfaction of knowing that at least a couple of other runners are also crazy enough to be up at this hour.

I am running northward – toward Jerusalem. City of faith. City of hope. City of peace. And for me, city of dreams – that I am running in this special spot of the world, running where patriarchs and prophets, shepherds and kings also trod, is as surreal as any dream could be.  

I don’t notice exactly when I stop counting minutes and streetlamps, but a moment stealthily arrives when I’m just running. My feet connect to the earth. My breath connects to the air. My eyes connect to the path before me. Everything is as it should be.

A bus engine revs. A few car headlights pass me by. Then, the sound of more footsteps – not runners, but worshippers moving purposefully toward the first early morning service.

I scale the crest of a hill, and as I descend the other side, there it is before me – the sun is shimmering, half suspended over the next hill in a swirl of purple-yellowish-grey light. The world is waking up.

An hour passes by, and I’m now running in a different reality. From darkness to light. From stillness to busyness. Now, it is the streetlamps that lay dormant and the birds who are silent as car horns blare and children laugh as they trek to school.

I miss running in the quiet, but I’m almost done now. A few minutes later and I’m sitting in my kitchen, luxuriating in the aroma of that coffee as I take my first sips.

Like the coffee, life is not meant to be mindlessly gulped, but deliberately savored. Sometimes step by step. Sometimes in a continuous flow. Running in the just-before-dawn quiet has taught me how easy it is to stop noticing the beauty of it all once the noise starts. If we’re not careful, we can numb ourselves with the noise. We can get swept up by the din. We can lose ourselves in the bustle that swirls around us.

And many of us do. A pity, because the bustle is not reality. Our true selves lie beyond the din. Our purpose for being can never be discovered in the noise. Sometimes it takes running in the quiet of 5 a.m. to realize this.

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I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!

The Big Secret to Getting It Done (Whatever "It" Is)

(originally published August 6, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

I woke up before 5:00 this morning. I am not at all a morning person. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I’d like to be a morning person. But I hate mornings. I’ve tried all kinds of strategies to get out of bed and avoid that snooze button. I’ve put my alarm clock clear across the room so I would have no choice but to get out of bed to turn it off. I’ve set two alarms. I’ve tried stretching immediately upon awakening. Breathing exercises.  Mind games like telling myself I only have to stay awake for 5 minutes and can then go back to bed if I want (I usually do).

I wish I could to say I’ve figured it out. At best, I’ve had mixed success. Most mornings, that snooze button is too tempting to resist. I aspire to be a morning person. But I’m not.

Yet there I was, out of the house and starting a two-hour run long before the sun had thought about making an appearance. And wondering how I pulled it off.

I think I know how I pulled it off. I had no choice.

My neck of the woods saw an extreme heat wave this week, making day time running unsafe and unwise. I usually run at night, when temperatures have begun to taper. But this week, the heat was so intense that even a night run would have been grueling.

If I wanted to continue my marathon training schedule, my only option was to get up very early and try to beat the sun. But I’m not a morning person. It’s hard enough to get out of bed when that alarm goes off. To attempt getting out of bed with the thought that I will soon be running up and down hills is a setup for failure.

But I got up just the same. I have no doubt I would have been more comfortable lying in bed for another hour. But then I wouldn’t be doing what I need to do to get in shape for these marathons.

I managed to do this once before, toward the beginning of the week, creating a sense of hope that I could pull off this early morning routine for as long as the heat wave would last. Only two more runs this week, I told myself. But then the next day, that snooze button worked its magic. And the day after that.

This morning, I found myself staring, not only the snooze button, but prospect of a week gone by without doing what I must to get in shape for Marathon number 3.

So I got up. I ran. I lived to tell about it. And now, I only need roll out of bed before the sun once more this week.

I’d like to write something flowery about how less than ideal situations can create new opportunities. Because I had to run in the early morning, I got the chance to experience the calm stillness of my town before it awoke. I got to see a beautiful sunrise over the mountains. I got to start my day knowing I had already finished my run.

I did enjoy the quiet and the sunrise and feeling of accomplishment at the beginning of the day. Still, I would much rather have enjoyed a little more sleep than get up at a crazy hour. What I did learn was, I think, much more valuable.

I did it because I had to, because I had no choice if I was going to accomplish the goal I have set for myself. All of us can accomplish exponentially more if we think we have no choice.

When you have a 7 a.m. flight, you just get up in the middle of the night, at a time you would never consider otherwise, so that you can get to the airport on time. If you don’t, you’ll miss your flight. More dramatically, we’ve all heard the stories of the slender woman who manages to lift a car off the ground to save her baby trapped underneath. She has no choice. If she wants to save her baby, she lifts the car. She doesn’t stop, as she would in any other circumstance, to consider whether it might be too heavy.

We don’t need a crisis, however – or even an early morning flight – to go beyond what we perceive to be our limits and accomplish things we otherwise would not do. A friend of mine has just started work on a second book. The book will require hundreds of hours of research, poring through archival materials in a foreign language, and then another few hundred hours of writing. That is in addition to the work required to get an agent and publisher and promote the book. He has a full-time job, a family, and a robust side business. How will he pull this off? I don’t know how, but I know that he will. Because he did it with his first book. As he said to me, “When you have the bug to do it . . . .”

Most of us don’t live this way. We think we have time. There’s always tomorrow. But what if we decided that we simply must find a way to achieve those dreams we’ve always had?  If we felt we had no choice, we’d find a way. We’d get up early. We’d do the work when we’re tired. We’d cut something else out of our schedule. We’d get creative.

As the famed composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein once said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time."

When we stop to consider it, we really don’t have a choice, and we don’t really have enough time. We have one life. We can accomplish what we want with it – or not. If we want to achieve our dreams in this lifetime – then we have no choice and limited time. And we’ll find a way to get it done.

Living a life based on achieving our dreams is much more inspiring than retreating to the comfort of the moment. I’m going to try it. I might just get rid of that snooze button once and for all.

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I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!