The magic is in ‘the moment’
Nomatter how far you’ve run, no matter how long you’ve been doing it, there will be ‘‘the moment’’ – a slither of time that feels like it was straight from running heaven.
It’s the moment when everything just clicks. To experience it, you don’t have to be going fast. You don’t have to be in a race. It’s just . . . magic.
It’s not the runner’s high that comes after a run, when endorphins and the sense of satisfaction that you’ve ticked off your exercise for the day kicks in. It’s something else.
A few strides, even, when you realise, ‘‘this is it – this is running at its purest’’. It’s a rare feeling, but it’s worth chasing and, the other day, I got to experience it for one of the few times in my decades-long running journey.
For the last while, I’ve been a bit flat, and I blame lockdown. Let me clarify, I’m not talking about the lockdown blues. I’m talking about ‘‘vert’’, or lack of it (vert being the slang term for the elevation from running up and down hills).
During our confined state of recent months, when we ran around our own neighbourhoods, I was stuck on the flat. Look, I love where I get to run regularly, but there’s just no vert.
And I hadn’t really thought about it until the otherweekend, when I could go out with my friends in the forest again.
There’s a long hill we call, with no endearment whatsoever, Ba….d Hill – when you climb up it, you’re reduced to a hands-on-knees, lung-sapping exertion that goes on and on.
On this particular run, we were going the other way. Halfway down, I started to involuntarily whoop and holler – I was finally running downhill again and it felt amazing.
My legs started free-wheeling, the cold morning air rushed past my cheeks, and I experienced one of thosemoments: this is what running at its purest feels like. I feel joy. I feel alive.
I’m no exponent of running downhill fast. In fact, I’m pretty ordinary at it. I’m usually tentative and cautious, holding back. But on this run, at this moment, I let go. And it was bliss.
I was finally running downhill again and it felt amazing. My legs started free-wheeling, the cold morning air rushed past my cheeks, and I experienced one of those moments: this is what running at its purest feels like. I feel joy. I feel alive.
‘‘For a few minutes, I experienced ‘‘the moment’’.
On the Dirt Church Radio podcast this week, cohost Matt Rayment and I spoke with Australian mountain running champion Ben Duffus (Matt, by the way, is the opposite kind of downhill runner to me – he loves them, fearlessly bombing down as fast as he can with not a care in the world).
While he’s run all around the world, one of Duffus’ favourite races is in Kawerau, in the central North Island. It’s the town’s King of the Mountain race, an event he’s won twice.
The race is a 7km up and down return trip of Pu¯tauaki (Mt Edgecumbe). Locals say it’s the toughest mountain race in Australasia.
Duffus raved about it, even though he admitted, going up was tough. ‘‘But on the way down, oh, it’s just so much fun,’’ he said.
He compared it to skiing. ‘‘You can just kind of jump and skid and slide. You go around a sharp corner – woosh – big powder comes up.’’
Duffus estimates the top 10 runners usually stay upright the whole time ‘‘but a lot of the rest of the field are sliding down on their bums for a good portion of it because it’s nice soft dirt and it’s just so much fun’’.
As someone who has competed at the highest levels, including world championships, you’d think that running comes easily for him, that he experiences ‘‘themoment’’ all the time.
But, no, he says, he can only really think of twice when he’s been in that state, what he called his ‘‘flow state’’.
The first time was in a cross-country race when he was a teenager. After jostling at the start, he found himself in the lead, a position he’d never expected to be in.
‘‘Yet I felt so good, it felt easy.
‘‘That moment, that race, had such a strong influence because I thought, ‘I really want to replicate this sensation again’.’’
It made him almost evangelical about running: ‘‘That was really the day that I committed that I wanted running to be part of my life.’’
I’ve never experienced that feeling at the front of a race – few have, but all runners will know exactly what he meant. And it’s what keeps us chasing that moment again.
Eugene Bingham and Matt Rayment are hosts of a trail running podcast Dirt Church Radio. Learn more at dirtchurchradio.com or get in touch via email dirtchurchradio@gmail.com