Three Things to Take Your Mind off Running (While Running)

When I was training for my first 30-mile ultra-marathon, I lived in a place with sidewalks. I could step outside my front door and run a marathon and only have to battle traffic and breakdown lanes for part of the way.

But then I moved to the country—or close to it—and I was lucky to get in two good blocks before the sidewalks turned to four-inch-wide strips of pavement on the side of the road with speeding cars on one side and drainage ditches on the other.

Unsafe was a good word for it.

So, I started marathon training along a 20-mile bike path. It was great for going the distance without worrying about being hit by a car, but it was also dreadfully boring. The trail was long, flat, and straight with little to see on either side. Runners were rare and people buzzing by on bicycles and yelling, “On your left!” were tiresome.

Add in the fact that running long distances is difficult and hurts, I was willing to do just about anything to take my mind off the monotony.

So what did I think about?

Three Main Distractions

1. Math. When I was a kid I had a doctor who would give me math problems to solve while I was laid out on the exam table. I hated math. I still hate math. And I could never solve the problems, but I tried.

And while I was trying to figure out 12 times 3, the doctor did his thing. When he was finished, he’d ask for the answer. I don’t think I got a single one right, but that wasn’t the point.

The goal was to take my mind off what he was doing.

Turns out, trying to do math while running long distances is even harder than doing math under normal desk-and-chair or doctor-patient circumstances.

Somehow, the longer I run, the more embarrassing my mental math abilities become. When I’m at mile 16 of a 22-mile run, it can literally take me half a mile to figure out that I have 6 miles left.

That’s a half-mile where I’m not thinking about blisters, knee pain, or chub rub and that, my friends, is a win.  

2. Meals. Running long distances makes me hungry. So, what better time to fantasize about the food I’m going to eat when I finish?

It may sound like a trivial thing, but the idea of a frothy smoothie or protein packed salad is enough to get my salivary glands working and my body pumping harder for the carrot at the end of the stick.  

3. Music. Some runners listen to music, other runners make music. The latter is so much more fun.

I hate wearing head phones for long distances. They hurt my ear lobes (which are child-sized) and because I’m already hard of hearing, I have to listen to headphones at unsafe volumes to hear music over road noise. It’s not a good combination.

But singing and running is. Sound crazy? It may be, but lots of people do it. It’s good for your lungs and your vocal chords.

Watch Three Celebrities Sing on Treadmills

For added fun: try to sing songs that you haven’t heard in years that you don’t really know the lyrics to. You’ll not only sound ridiculous, but you’ll struggle to remember the words—both of which will have your mind so far from running you’ll forget how hard it is.

Math, meals, and music. Three M’s to make it even easier to remember what to do when you’re trying to forget.

Have suggestions for what to think about when you’re not thinking about running? Leave them in the comments below.