As early winter finds the northern hemisphere, runners often experience the sensations of a season closing. More darkness means less noise. Birds are migrating and trees are shedding their summer décor. Earth emits a smell of consuming those summer layers, to turn them into soil and nurture growth when spring arrives once again. For humans, it’s a time that feels full of transition, moving from very active days to perhaps a less busy way of living.
When summer runs end and darkness leads us to moving at different times of the day, we might need to shift our routines to connect with our communities. The tendency might be to push against this natural ebb of outdoor movement, even increase training hours or weekly mileage. The temperatures have cooled, but beautiful weather persists in many regions. Do we need more reasons to beckon us outdoors? It’s normal to want to move as much, or maybe even more this time of year, but what if we try measuring our miles differently? We’re only limited by our imagination, and I think that monicker holds true here. A good friend recently floated this idea when he said, “What if we measured a run by the number of different tones of red we see, or bird calls we hear, or flowers dropping their seeds?”
Coincidently (or not), about two years ago I wrote about running “analog style.” By this, I mean running without tracking our activity using a digital device. Themes tend to re-emerge at similar times of year, as we tend to be cyclical beings. So, in the reoccurring theme of allowing some changes, like romping about on our usual trails while not wearing a watch, I wonder how many ways we can come up with to measure our runs? Could it be how many times the sun peeks out on a partly cloudy day, or how many insects buzz by now that many of them have perished or gone underground, or how many people we pass? Try saying hello to fellow trail users, especially if that’s not typically your style. Does it feel different when you reach the end of your session? This is an opportunity to tune into the world around us on a deeper level without the distraction of numbers on our wrist.
So often we play the comparison game. While I think comparing numbers can be motivating in a positive way, there are countless other ways of inferring meaning that get overlooked. These interpretations might be just as valuable as our conventional measures. Don’t we ultimately get to decide how things are weighed? It seems like this should be the case, but I think we forget, and autumn feels like the perfect season to reassess.
However, we don’t need to opt completely out of technology to be more fully immersed in the natural world. Honestly, I think the ultimate challenge is to continue utilizing our familiar tools like watches and heart rate monitors while simultaneously valuing the metrics they reveal a bit less and allowing other aspects to have equal or more value. Humans are incredibly creative and adaptive. It seems unfortunate that we would limit ourselves to measuring our running using numbers alone. Try integrating one or two new measures of goodness that hold merit. We each have the opportunity, even the responsibility, to decide what is most and least important to us.