sábado, 18 de enero de 2014

We’re all naked on the track


Yes, the track shows all you are. Like it or not.


Running isn’t just about taking a long ride showing your expensive last season sneakers, boasting about your personal best, making state or national teams, getting a scholarship and winning any medal. There’s more to this than meets the eye.  


Running is what helps you to discover who you really are.


How we run, it’s exactly how we are. There’re many things in our personal lives that we don’t handle as it should be, so we just decide to ignore them or even worst, to hide them. But, the river has to run: somehow you have to let it go, consciously or unconsciously. 


It’s there where running appears as that catharsis technique that you need to take that out of you.
So when you, your coach or the people around you identify any problem with the way you run, don’t blame the shoes, don’t blame the track, don’t blame the size of your shorts…Go and look what is wrong in your daily life!


Try to find what is making you raise your jaw when you shouldn’t, what is it that makes your neck to be tensioned, why your steps are shorter or longer, why you’ve got a hump while you run, what keeps your mind so busy that you can’t react on time, why it’s so difficult to get ahead of the race, why you hold your pace to avoid fatigue, why you look so forced?


You don’t need to have vast knowledge in Psychology to know what your mind is expressing through your body language. And what a better way to do it than running!


When you decide to look at running as a liberating experience, you start to see things that you didn’t ever imagine to have.  And when you finally start to see yourself, you can see others. You start to understand all the different kinds of personalities: the ones who wait until the end to attack, the ones that start so fast that they can’t even finish, the ones who hide among the others, the ones who grind down the others, the ones who make themselves unattainable, the ones who would rather retire than being last, the ones who don’t have any idea of what they’re doing…


Don’t be shy to be naked. We all need it to know who we are. WE’RE ALL NAKED ON THE TRACK!


Image: Body Issue ESPN.