The Void

Yesterday morning I drove to our town square to run. I prefer to run in the city, such as it is, early in the morning. We live in a very, very safe community, but I feel just a little more secure jogging residential streets than I do running the routes near my house when I am by myself early in the morning. I parked in a familiar spot and was half hoping some members of my running group might be gathering at that time for a run. They weren't.

I traveled a relatively familiar route - nearly four miles around a 10 minute pace on a beautiful, if not a bit muggy morning. By myself.

I am a relatively recent convert to the group running dynamic. And it's not a perfect fit. The group I trained with for Dam to Dam was largely faster than me. A handful of women ran near my pace. Deb, Janel and Karey run slightly faster than me, so on the mornings they show up I am gratefully pushed to improve my pace to keep up with these kind women. But many mornings I was tagging along 100 yards behind the pack, perfectly content to watch them at their 8:30/min pace and stay within shouting distance.

One of the loveliest books I've read recently is "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami. Here is the passage that jumped out and stuck with me:

"I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.

On cold days I guess I think about how cold it is. And about the heat on hot days. When I'm sad I think a little about sadness. When I'm happy I think a little about happiness. As I mentioned before, random memories come too. And occasionally, hardly ever, really, I get an idea to use in a novel. But really as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning.

I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void."

Yeah, what he said. At times that void has been critical to me - to unplug, not think about much of anything. I am not generally able to create a void when I run with other people. And I've missed that in my group training. But here I am on the flip side, yesterday morning missing the group even as I slipped easily (and even gratefully) back into my void.