Running without distraction

A suggestion to leave the tech at home and focus inward

This will be a short post because a mutant cold/flu took over my body the last 10 days and wiped out my ability to run. That, in turn, has made it difficult to focus on writing. For me, there’s a clear symbiotic relationship between the two activities. 

Running allows me to tune into my thoughts without dwelling on them; to observe rather than react. Invariably, my brain feels clearer by the time my run is over, and that helps my writing process immeasurably. 

A major component of getting into that productive headspace is running with as little technology as possible. No phone, no ear buds, no outside stimuli (beyond a GPS watch) that might otherwise distract my brain from focusing attention inward. 

Many of the people I know think that makes me some sort of weirdo luddite. In actuality, running without distraction is a form of mental toughness training, as Steve Magness writes in his Growth Equation newsletter. 

“Endurance athletes often train this capacity without realizing it. It’s a side effect of long runs, rides, or swims with not much else to focus on. Writers tend to excel in this area, as well. Long sessions, staring at the screen, with just the words on the page and their inner dialogue. But the skill of being alone in your head, as I outline in my new book, is a foundational piece of developing toughness. And most of us are horrible at it. We’d rather be anywhere but inside our head.” 

Magness points to an experiment conducted at the University of Virginia where participants were left alone in a room for 15 minutes with nothing but a table, a chair, and a button they were told would produce an electric shock. Two thirds of the men in the study opted for painful stimulus over quiet stillness, with one dude smashing the buzzer 190 times! 

There’s a joke in there about how men would rather shock themselves than go to therapy, but it doesn’t seem funny. Women, by the way, were far less likely to opt for self-inflicted pain as only 25 percent pressed the buzzer. (I have a theory that female runners are better at managing pain than their male counterparts, but I’ll save that one for another time.)  

Magness goes on to suggest that becoming comfortable in our head is something we can train. A good place to start, he says, is by simply leaving distracting devices at home when we run. I’ll add that if you need your phone for safety or logistical reasons, turning off notifications and stashing it somewhere inaccessible works as well.    

If you’re used to running with tech, this will probably feel weird and uncomfortable. When I first ditched headphones, it took months to get used to the idea of not having music on my runs. Over time, it became normal. 

Has running without distraction helped me become a better runner? I believe so. It made me tougher, smarter, and more honest with myself. That’s allowed me to have an ongoing conversation with my body, which has helped avoid injuries and improve performance. 

None of this is easy or obvious. It’s not like the secrets of the universe will be revealed just because you went running without a phone. We’re talking years of practice, and even then there will be more questions than answers.     

What I can say is running without technological distraction has made me calmer and more empathetic. Not only to myself, but to the outside world in general. Give it a try sometime and let me know how it goes.