It never fails. You’re stuck on a problem. Bogged down. Don’t know which way to turn. You go for a run, and the answers start coming.
It never fails. If, that is, you set up the run right. You need to be thinking about a problem before you go.
I’d forgotten the creative power of running of late because I’d been running in the morning.
I love to run in the morning, but when you do it straight after you get up, you’ve usually got no problems to sort out in your mind.
Recently I started to run again at midday and in the afternoon. So I’ve really noticed the effect.
Strategies for getting the creative juices flowing when running
How do you get the most out of a run, creatively speaking?
- Think about a problem before you go on the run. Really smash yourself against a wall with it. Maybe it’s something you’re trying to write, but it could be any old headache that you just can’t work out.
- I said running in the morning is not good as you don’t get a chance to think about a problem beforehand. But one way around this is to work on the problem you want to solve (for as little as 20 minutes) before you go for a run.
- Trail running, and being in nature, appears to be more conducive to letting your mind run free.
- It doesn’t work so well if you’re doing a specific training session. Intervals, tempo runs and hard long runs need too much concentration. There’s nothing left over for creative thinking. Easy runs and trail runs are the best.
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