Bad Angel Rule #84

Unplug.

I’m a slave to my music when I run, so this tip comes with a bit (OK, OK, a lot) of hesitancy. But I strongly believe that every once in a while, it does a body — and a mind — some good to just … be.

I was reminded of the power of unplugging on a recent run. Prior to that day, my running partner (who’s a bit of a running novice) had never really gotten comfortable in a run. It takes a couple of miles to warm up and fall into your rhythm, and when you’re just starting out, it can be hard to get far enough into a run to reach that magical place.

We had just grabbed some water three miles into a six-miler, and when we started running again, she *GASP* forgot to turn her Nike+ back on. But that’s not the awesome part. She didn’t even realize she didn’t have it on for almost an entire mile.

You know what that means? For the first time, she was just running. Not worrying about pace. Not worrying about music. And not worrying about our next stop.

That’s the beautiful thing about unplugging, even when it’s unintentional. When you lose the earbuds, forget the watch and shut off the Garmin, you can just enjoy the activity at hand.

There’s a great quote by John Bingham that reminds me of this concept:

It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else.

And that, my friends, is something we should all do every once in a while. — Aidz