It takes a lot to shut my brain up.   Usually only sleep and even then not so much.   I can never do just one thing at a time.  I usually like to have multiple things happening at once because focusing on one thing just seems silly.  My mother would tell you that’s how I avoid things.

Even running, my brain is never silent.  I run thinking all the while how hard it feels.  Or on good days, how easy it feels.  I think about my shoes or how my shorts fit.  Do I look funny in this outfit?  What am I going to eat for dinner?  Do I want to cheat or be good?  How can I talk about this run in a blog post?  Is it even worthy of that? Oh look, there’s that person who glares at me every time we pass each other.  What did I do?  How was work?  What more do I have to get done tomorrow, have things been going ok or do I need to make adjustments?  When’s that system upgrade happening again? I need to make sure we are ready.  How’s my pace? Am I running too slow or too fast?  And so on and so forth.  For all the miles, all the time.    I just can’t shut up.   🙂Thursday was kind of a funny day.  I had finally listened to my soreness from Firehouse and rested on Tuesday and Wednesday so I was looking forward to getting in a few miles after work.   I was feeling better but still sore- I think the trail re-aggravated my hamstring issue- so I was just aiming for an easy run as opposed to the speed work on the plan.   Previously mentioned system upgrade started that day and I was supposed to attend a business mixer after work but I just didn’t feel I had the capacity to mingle.  I was feeling very off, not cranky but not exactly sociable.   I decided to pass on the mixer and just run.   But I could not decide where to run.  I wasn’t feeling work town so I headed to the lake path.  However when I got there I just kept driving.  Ok, guess I wasn’t feeling that either.  I ended up at the river path and really wasn’t expecting much.  5 miles later, I was done.  I stretched out some and went home.  It wasn’t until later that it hit me, I hadn’t thought of a single thing during that run.   No work thoughts, no blog thoughts, no body thoughts, no life worries, not even any running thoughts, nothing.    I just ran.   And my brain was quiet and calm.  So quiet.

That’s not to say that I was unresponsive to my surroundings.    I remember nodding to everyone I passed.  I looked both ways before crossing each intersection and there were 10.  I dodged a praying mantis and then a stink bug about 20 yards later.   I recall wrinkling my nose and trying not to breathe deeply when the smell from the brewery hit me in the face.*  I saw that the guy driving the lifted Chevy was likely to blow through the cross walk but I wasn’t even mad when he did.    My earphones fell out of my ears but I just put them back in and kept running.  Normally these last few things would piss me off and linger for awhile.   I even changed my route and ran more on the trail than normal just because.  It wasn’t really a conscious decision, I just did it. It was nice to not think.   It really was.  How do I make that happen more often?  I don’t even know what prompted it this time.  🙂       I checked my splits the next day and was pretty pleased with what I saw.  Don’t give mile 4 too much credit, gravity was very helpful.  🙂

Now those annoyances- my headphones.  I recently purchased wireless ear buds because I was tired of getting tangled in my other ones.   The new ones are worse.  I cannot get them to stay in my ears at all.  I know I have odd ears but come on!   I have switched the little rubber pieces 3x.  Ugh.   *The smell- a local brewery is having a little problem so as a result there has been a yeasty stench wafting around town for the last month or so.   Sometimes it hits when you least expect it.   😦

How was your weekend?

Any headphone suggestions?

Ever run yourself silent?