Run With Mu

In his book Running With The Buffaloes: A Season Inside With Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men’s Cross Country Team, Chris Lear quotes CU Cross Country Coach Mark Wetmore on the annual Bolder Boulder 10K, run in Boulder, CO: “There’ll be 40,000 people running the Bolder Boulder, but only maybe 500 people will be racing. The rest will talk about it for six months, train for one to three weeks, then pay twenty bucks so they can run six miles. Amazing.” Amazing, indeed, that one of the leaders of running seemed to have forgotten the joy of simply putting one foot in front of the other, and what that can mean to each of us: the cancer survivor, the obese person fighting a hard personal battle to lose weight, a family celebrating a long overdue reunion by breathing together for 10 kilometers. I am continually inspired by stories I hear about ordinary people and what they have accomplished through running, practically none of them running very fast at all. Certainly the achievements of the gifted athletes Wetmore coaches are amazing, but to look beyond the numbers on a watch dial is to open our eyes to countless daily wonders, many of them modest in terms of time – but, for all that, no less amazing.

I was out running past Flagpole Hill not too long ago, the giant American flag at the top of the hill, like so many flags I had seen in recent days, drooping at half mast in memory of more fallen innocents. It was a pace run, meaning that I was testing out my planned half-marathon pace over 8-9 miles in preparation for what will be my final race after 35 years, the 3M Austin Half Marathon on January 13.

Dipping into old lessons still being learned from my Zen practice, I focused hard on my breathing and my body, and the mile splits rolled by less than 3 seconds apart for 6 miles … then, with tiring and a loss of concentration, they gapped now slower, now faster. But for a little over six miles, I had run nearly even mile splits in a crosswind and over rolling hills — simply by paying closer attention than I normally might.

One person, concentrating a bit harder than usual for six miles worth of running. What if our entire nation, at every level of government and society, focused its full attention and energy for just six weeks — or even six days — on finding a solution to the deaths of innocent children by gunfire? And then, continuing that focus into other pressing issues? The potential power of an entire nation of people simply paying attention could spin the world’s tired old axis in a new and invigorating direction.

The best thing you or I can do in 2013? Pay attention!

Many people have a strange relationship with their running shoes. I know this because they come into our store — sometimes limping, sometimes on crutches, sometimes (no joke) even in full leg casts — and want to know one thing: where are the magic shoes? Where are the shoes that will cure my IT band syndrome, my plantar whateveritisitis, make me run faster, jump higher, get me a PR and a BQ, PDQ? People want their shoes to win things for them, to heal them, to make them happy, right here, right now. Supershoe, we’re in deep despair: where are you? Save us!

But Shoeman doesn’t hang out in the Shoecave, waiting to save your life when you send the Shoesignal. Shoes are just strips of unpronounceable synthetics and fossil fuel by-products, sewn together by a machine, that you wrap around your quivering, expectant feet. They’re zero drop, 4 mm drop, 8 mm drop, dynaflexed, gelled, lunarlonned, and torsionbarred. Some are firm as oakwood, some squishy as a half-deflated beach ball. In our store there are nearly 300 different kinds of shoes, a somewhat disturbing rainbow-colored display of our choice-crammed, technology-obsessed society. A society seeking the Answer, and never satisfied with what they find.

“What am I supposed to feel?” many customers ask, looking at me as if I had somehow morphed into their bodies and were trying the shoes on myself. My answer is always the same: whatever you’re feeling! Feel what you’re feeling. If you feel too much, it’s probably the wrong shoe. You’re looking, I tell them, for the shoe that feels least like a shoe when you have it on your foot, the shoe that feels like nothing, the shoe you put on and forget about. There’s an unconvinced look in some eyes when I say this. I’m not spending $130, they want to say, without feeling something really amazing.

People are overthinking their shoes and their running in general. “Is running in minimalist shoes better than running in conventional training shoes?” is another popular question. My answer is always: it’s not an either/or situation. Instead of looking for the Answer, look for answers. Try finding 2-3 pairs of shoes you like and mix up your shoes and road surfaces: run on pavement, trail, cross-country, high school or college tracks. Expose your feet to different stress points and pressure points, instead of hitting the same joints/spots the same way every time you run. You’ll learn more about your running and your body, and, if you’re even a little like me, you might find yourself getting injured a little less.

Customers want the Answer, and when they do I know they’re probably a little disappointed with me. But whenever I start to feel a little overwhelmed with technical details, I reconnect with that place in my head labeled Personal Experience, and I realize the answers are much simpler. Find that place in your own head, think for yourself, and learn to put your trust in that. I can certainly help you pick out a shoe, but neither the shoe, me or anyone else can save your life. I recently saw a parody of a running shoe ad with callouts pointing to various parts of a shoe, and all of the callouts said the same thing: “Does Nothing.” The parody ad tagline? “It’s Just A Shoe.”

When the legendary Badwater 135 ultramarathon starts deep in the salt flats of Death Valley this July, one of the 90 athletes toeing the start line will be U.S. Marine Corps Captain Mosi Smith. As part of his application to enter Badwater, Captain Smith wrote an essay which included the following memory of running in the Javelina Hundred ultramarathon in Arizona:

“On that cool evening in November running the JJ100, I came face to face with a previously unexplored depth of my soul. I felt stripped away and as open as the sky above the Sonoran Desert.”

I’m no Mosi Smith, but I can certainly relate to this experience with ultramarathoning: when there is nothing left but pain and fatigue, when you literally become pain and fatigue, you are indeed stripped bare — as naked and open as you can feel on the seventh day of a week-long sesshin. It’s as these times, when we’re at our most vulnerable and egoless, that the greatest spiritual growth can occur.

And this, for me, is a reminder of why ultramarathoning can be a vital and instructive part of Zen practice. Not that one has to run ultramarathons to practice Zen. But if one can realize a significant spiritual link in their running practice, then running simply becomes Zen. And vice versa, of course. Zen is all about the vice versa.