Mechanics

"It is in the repetition, of movement, of feeling, of sensation, from where I gain the deepest satisfaction, and it is here where I will always go to find the most resonant solace which is really the ultimate drug."

~My Dad

Dad was talking about fly-fishing, when he wrote that masterful quote which begins this entry. Of course, I absolutely know, and love, and crave, that feeling of which he is speaking. How many trips have we taken, together, standing downstream from one another, casting, in our own rhythm and envelope of focus? Time seemingly stands still. Until the sound of silence, above the rushing water pushing against my legs, is broken by the tightening of one of our fly-lines to a perfect machine of aquatic excellence and survival: the trout.


Yeah, standing in a river while metronomically levitating a fly-line mere feet above cold water streaming by, using the weight of the line on your rod tip as a sensor; it's not too difficult to envision just how deep in trance one can be. It almost begs for submission of the conscious self to a sort of ethereal nature.

Singularity.

It probably sounds like a stretch, but he unwittingly described, for me, why I love to run. The repetitive mechanics and immediate environment of running, for me, form the same solitary moments of concentration and yet complete relaxation that I feel as I strain to sense the weight of the fly-line behind me, lingering against my fly-rod.

My brain is incapable while I run of not narrowing itself upon the repetitive series of motions and fine muscular details necessary to carry out each motion the way I intend, which embodies with it a string of overwhelming sensory inputs. And from each sensory input I further refine each movement. And the hundreds, thousands, of movements I may sense are but a speck of the complete picture of stimuli initiated by each step. And this is yet another reason I adore running in my Vibrams, so much. The sensory input with normal running shoes is all but non-existant for my feet, aside from some more general feelings of the inside of the shoe. Vibrams add the ever changing dynamic of the perfectly evolved site of impact, the foot, interfacing with the imperfect surfaces upon which we land, over and over and over.

This is partially why I can't run with music, and never have been able to. It distracts me from being perfectly present in my running.

And this is when the miles begin to pass by so rapidly and without notice; I am lost in something that spans time and energy as I am aware of them.

I further realize that the reason I want so badly to help other runners improve is so that they may feel this when they run, as well. It is why I smile when I run, no matter how difficult it seems. It is why I can run through the pain for hours and hours.

It is perfect.

It is why I run.