While perusing Flotrack this morning, I came across this piece on what we think of when we run. Nicely done, and serves best to define stuff we all inherently understand. "Associative" thinking is paying attention to our bodies during a run, while "Dissociative" is a preference for distraction. I recognize each sensation and connect them with a specific performance expectation. Take the other day, for instance. I went out running my team. We dropped down onto a trail that had recently been battered by the Biblical rains that thumped California over the past two weeks. This trail is one I have run more than any other in my entire life, so I know each twist and turn by heart. But the rain had caused tree branches to break off, entire trees to topple, and cut great gashes in this path. The grass along the trail, normally dead and dun, had broken into a green riot. Small rocks which had once been hidden by a layer of topsoil, now littered the ground like so many ankle-breaking obstacles. 

       These are all the things I noticed during the first two miles of our run. The pace was light and the physical act of running was incidental. My ears and eyes and ankles were the focus. I guess this is what it means to dissociate. Or, as I like to think of it, looking at the scenery.

         After those first two miles we raced some mountain bikers up a switchback, then I broke them into groups for a fartlek run - two minutes on, two minutes cruise, three minutes on, two minutes cruise, four minutes on, etc. Normally I'm an observer, but I've been trying to get myself back in shape lately. I've cut out a lot of the garbage from my diet, made a point of training in some fashion every day (running, mostly, but also a couple weight/plyo sessions at the House of Pain. I'm also giving serious thought to getting back on the bike), and have prepared for an upcoming few months of intensive writing by raising my level of fitness. So I thought it would be fun to jump into the fartlek session. "Fartlek" being Swedish for "speed play" it all sounded like a whole lot of fun. And it was. But it took everything I had to keep up with my runners. I was cognizant of each footfall, my arm angle, the pattern of my breathing. I kept track of each runner in front and to my side. I'd like to say there was someone behind me, but that would be a lie. I knew the pine-scented loop we'd be running, but had forgotten how impossibly far it was to the turnaround point. What had seemed like a short trot on an easy (dissociative) day, was actually more than a thousand meters. The grade, which once seemed so flat, was actually slightly uphill on the outbound portion and wonderfully downhill after we rounded the cinderblock public restroom and pushed back to the start, where we would do it all again. This, as Flotrack tells me, is associative running. I paid attention. I was in the moment -- so in the moment that time slowed down, expanding itself into the minutiae of running. The two minute rest periods, on the other hand, flew past in what felt like five seconds.  

     Racing feels like this, too, only with a higher level of focus and clarity. I know that some people like to dissociate during racing, to take their mind off the pain. But I'm so ADD (or ADHD, or whatever I am that makes me so easily distracted), that a moment's dissociation takes me to some other emotional place. Suddenly, the race seems unimportant. So I don't go there, because bad things happen when I do. At the Raid Gauloises in Ecuador a few years back I dissociated on the fourth day, while walking across an Andean plain. Within minutes, I was thinking of all the better ways I could be using my personal time. Out of nowhere I decided to quit the race. 

            This is dangerous territory. The Navy SEALs point out that once someone has made the decision to quit their basic training, there's no turning back. The mind has faltered long before the physical act of ringing the bell has taken place. What saved me in Ecuador was sharing this impulsive decision with a teammate. She reminded me that I was in no way fatigued or injured, merely bored by the scenery. In this way, I carried on. 

            OK. So we have associative and dissociative. But I would posit that there is another mental state comprising a little of both. It's the hyper-focus before the run, which carries over into the workout, so that it passes in such a blur that it's as if it never happened. Case in point: any day that my writing is going well. It's my habit to get the kids off to school, write for a couple hours to get the synapses firing, then go for a run to let all those new ideas percolate. Afterward, I'll head back into the office and write for three or four more hours. weaving all those endorphin-laced, highly oxygenated thoughts into the story or the book. My best writing -- or, let me say, my most fulfilling writing -- follows this process. I've got the basic idea, I add a little run, then I plunge back into the written word. No phone calls, no emails, no distractions. It's an introvert's dream. 

            Sometimes, however, I plunge too far into the psyche. These are my bunker days. I am so consumed by writing that I am transported to another time and place. I do not exist, other than as a vessel for whatever thought needs to flow onto the page. Only reluctantly, and perhaps out of obligation, will I break out for a run. 

            These are scary times. I am physically running, but my brain is still writing. These are the runs where I stand at a stoplight and run a hand across the drape of my running shorts, just to make sure I remembered to get properly dressed. These are the runs where I look back and forth two or three times before crossing the street, because in my mental condition I might actually forget why I'm looking both ways, and sprint out in front of a car. A run like this can last an hour. All the while I am associating in a monster way with writing, while apparently dissociating on my run. 

            Here's the weird part: the spell is broken if I run to the top of a hill. No lie. The whole way up will be a grind that will not register in the slightest, but once I stand atop Chiquita Ridge or the hill I like to call Falcon, or that spot on the Live Oak Trail where I have a 360 view of my world, I snap from my reverie. Very often I will pause to appreciate what I'm seeing. Sometimes I offer a short prayer of thanks for the tremendous beauty, or for my sudden lightness of being. Summits purify me. They let me see. It's no wonder that on the morning of my wedding I went for a run, and somehow found myself standing atop a hill. It just happens. 

            I don't know the clinical term for this hyper-focus, and then the loosening of one's cares and focus that occurs when all the world is laid before me in some glaring display of perspective and beauty. I don't want to know. 

            The mind-body continuum is one of the most overlooked aspects of running and life. To run is to think, whether we think we're thinking or not.