How "mindful running" can help you run faster, farther, and more peacefully

Ditch the headphones. Skip the smartwatch. It's time to meditate on the move.

The “Asics Blackout Track” is not like the one that sits next to your old high school football field. It’s a temporary indoor structure, built in a large warehouse on the outskirts of London. At only 150 meters, you have to complete 11 laps in order to finish a mile. The most noticeable difference, though: Inside, it is dark.

How dark? If it weren’t for the presence of a small traveling spotlight, runners wouldn’t be able to see more than a few feet in front of them at any given moment. In June, I ran 33 laps on this specially-built track as part of a study designed to determine how things like mental fatigue could impact performance.

This isn’t the first time scientists have studied physical exertion in low light conditions. In a study published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, researchers examined 15 cyclists through four 20-kilometre cycling trials, paying attention to how “optic flow” affected “perceived exertion”—in other words, the ways in which visual cues influenced how hard athletes thought they were working. Performing when you can only see things right before you encounter them, they learned, provides greater senses of speed and of effort, but no significant difference in heart rate or cadence. The London experiment was an attempt to replicate these findings in the track setting.

My first 5K was very different than my usual runs: It took place in total darkness, with fog machines blasting and only that spotlight guiding me forward. The baritone hum of white noise (read: not Drake) played through giant speakers. By the eighth lap, I had lost track of how far I’d gone, but I felt very in tune with my breathing and my exertion levels. When my pace felt laboured, I dialled things back a bit. I felt like I was cruising, and I also wasn’t sweating my usual buckets. For jetlagged exercise, it felt great.

Five hours later, I repeated the experiment, this time with the lights on. People were cheering for me on the sidelines, and music (still not Drake, unfortunately) was bumping. This time, when I was able to track how far I’d gone, I felt like I was trying much harder. My heart rate was higher. I was breathless, and dripping sweat. It showed: Runners finished an average of 60 seconds faster with the lights on than they did in blackout conditions. But why?

“External feedback about the number of completed laps, distance covered, elapsed time, and lap time increases the ‘temporal demand’ of the task,” said professor Samuele Marcora of the University of Kent’s School of Sport and Exercise Sciences. When the lights were on, we felt like we were supposed to be performing. “On the dark track, runners felt less time pressure, which is clearly a good thing for people that run for relaxation purposes.”

What does this mean for those of us who don’t have ready access to a specially-constructed blackout track? “Over the years, the focus in sports has primarily been on physiology and physical conditioning,” says Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe. How hard can you go, and how fast, and how far? “This aspect of training often neglects the importance of the mind and of mental conditioning in our preparation, performance, and recovery.”

The “mindful running” school of thought dictates that if you can focus on how you feel while running, unencumbered by the compulsion to set a new personal best every time, that sentiment should factor more into the way you exercise. If you’re ready to chase some zen during your next run, try using these expert-backed tips.

1. Start small

For some, just ditching the music is hard enough. Instead of embracing the silence all at once, focus for five minutes at a time. “Even in that period, you can begin to zoom in a little on the running stride, the movement of the legs, and how your foot comes into contact with the ground,” says Puddicombe. “This gentle foot strike is your point of focus. Come back to it anytime you realize the mind has wandered off.”

It will wander off at first, assures Puddicombe. Probably a lot, actually. That’s okay. “Over time, this focus on rhythm allows both the body and mind to relax, so that we find a greater sense of ease and enjoyment in our running,” he says. “Soon, you may see an improvement in your performance, too.”

2. Make use of mantras

“When you find your mind wandering or thinking about the finish line, invite the intention you created into your awareness and silently repeat it, like a mantra,” suggests Danielle Mika Nagel, the director of mindful performance at Lululemon. Yes, a mantra is a sort of thought, but this particular thought helps to focus the mind instead of overwhelming it.

What makes a good mantra depends on things like your tolerance for affirmations and your affinity for expletives. One tip, though: Using the word "I" when talking to yourself can stress you out instead of bringing on waves of self-love and acceptance, according to research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Try swapping “I” for “you,” and addressing yourself as if you were addressing a friend. “You may not have control over the 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts streaming into your awareness each day, but you do have control over which ones you hold on to,” says Nagel.

3. Learn your lessons

Sometimes it feels good to bang out a ten-miler or crush treadmill sprints. But once you start integrating this mindfulness training into your running workouts, you’ll come to realize that the lessons you learn can help you during those more intense runs, too. Taking this step back has taught me, for example, that The Suck only lasts so long—and that if I persist instead of panic during races, I’ll be cruising again within a mile or two.

4. Appreciate the little things

Maybe you’re good at staying on task for like, the first two miles of four. Hey, that’s progress! The more often you practice running mindfully, the more you’ll see full-body benefits.

“As the mind-body relationship improves, you will know when to start, stop, speed up, slow down—and when you’re about to get injured,” says Chevy Rough, a London-based human performance and mindfulness coach. “Running without distractions means you can stop basing your performance on what your smartwatch says and bring it in house.”

5. Go try it

If you don’t have a private blackout track at your disposal, a few gyms now offer dimly-lit treadmill-based classes in which you can give mindful running a shot. If you’re on your own, though, a do-it-yourself set-up isn’t hard: Trying covering up the treadmill console at the gym, putting your phone on silent, and grabbing a pair of earplugs. (Don’t blindfold yourself, though. That tends to be frowned upon.)

posted Sunday July 19th