Welcome To Natural Running!

The great running coach Percy Cerutty said, 'If you want to know how to run watch an eight year old girl'.  This is a great tip.  How might we reconnect to that intense simple pleasure of running, not for anything or to get somewhere but for the sheer joy of feeling the legs swinging and the heart pumping?

Modern lifestyles pull us a long way from this innocent and playful pleasure.  We live mostly in our heads, we often run to shake down the pressures of a modern lifestyle.   For me running mechanically is a drudge. Working out on a treadmill with an MP3 player blasting in my ear is not going to get my childlike happy hormones buzzing.

I reckon it's great to learn from the young child - steps are springy, the foot gets off the floor quickly and comes down lightly, So I like to get tuned into my feet and listen to them not the MP3 player. I try to cultivate a silent footfall by running barefoot. Watch somebody on the shingle beach barefoot - they are careful, thinking about their feet. My feet have more nerve-endings than anywhere else in my body so I like to wake up my weary brain up with a sparkle of new fresh stimulus and I love to feel that childlike sparkle return to a tired body.

Your brain has all sorts of ways that it 'talks' to your body in ways that are much older than words and language. One ancient system works like Red-light and Green-light  traffic lights. A 'Green-light, Yes Go For it' releases chemical hormone messengers. The name 'endorphins is a word made up from 'ENDOgenous' 'moRPHINES' (basically it means natural opiates). You see this system steer you a bit off course as you gorge on chocolate. Those Green-light,  go for it feelings are an ancient system saying gorge yourself while you can in order to survive the lean times. The lean times don't come but nevertheless you pack the emergency supplies onto your hips and bum!

The Green-light system works better for me when I run well. The Runners High is an endorphin affirmation, a great big Yes. The good feeling is the brains ancient reward system kicking-in: Go for it! It's not only the happy hormones that course around, but the blood to the brain also becomes a refreshing mountain stream as well. No wonder it becomes easier to be creative, to think more clearly!

What about the Red-light-Stop messengers? Yes they're there too. Called cortisol they're are interestingly tied into the hormone adrenalin. Now imagine: I'm pressured up, running on the stressy hormone adrenalin, but I'm sat glued to that damned computer. Now, I don't know if there is an Amber-Pause-and-Think hormone. But if I tune in to what my brain is flagging up and I get up and go for a jog I'd burn up the lean burn adrenalin (it's what it's for!). The Green light Go-for-it switches on. Great. A natural high. Can't be bad. That's just what I'm off to do.