Feel Good Running

When you feel good, running is easy. It’s a reward. The story we tell ourselves is that running is a pleasure. It’s just one foot in front of the other with an effortless floating in between. We get faster, stronger, healthier.

On bad days, we feel the weight of every step and can’t wait for it to be over. The stories we tell ourselves change. Now we run out of obligation, or fear. We fear the loss of health, habit, fitness. We promise ourselves rewards or threaten ourselves with punishments.

Of course, the two extremely different feelings take you on the very same run. It’s not the run as much as the way we feel about the run and resulting story we tell ourselves that changes.

Either our morning run felt like it was hardly happening or each step felt like it was happening with a vengeance.

The challenge for runners is how to change the way we feel so the story we tell ourselves about running will keep getting us out there. Fast run, slow run, effortless run, painful run . . .  it all adds up to how we feel. If you change the way you feel the story you tell yourself about your running changes. 

Self-massage is one way to change the way we feel about running and the story we tell ourselves.