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Run Away from Ruts

When you feel like you’re in a rut, make a deliberate effort to shake things up. It doesn’t take much to make a run feel fundamentally different. Something as simple as doing one of your normal loops in the opposite direction will have you seeing familiar sights anew. Even better, head out the door without the slightest plan of where to run, and see where your instincts lead you. Run down a street you’ve always avoided, just so you can say to yourself, “Hey, today I ran somewhere I’ve never run before.”

: Joel Wolpert

Sometimes you need to take more drastic (but still simple) steps to jump-start things. Run at an unusual time of day. Run with someone a lot slower than yourself to experience what running is like for them. Run with someone a lot faster to see how long you can hang on.

One of the best ways to get out of a running funk is to drive to run somewhere different. Even driving a couple miles from home, so that you’re running on familiar ground but from a novel starting place, makes a run feel different. You can also run somewhere, like to a coffee shop where someone will meet you with fresh clothes and an espresso. Or if you’re out running errands with someone, give them your civilian clothing and run home.

Here’s my last-resort technique for when I need a run to feel different: Wear crazy clothes. I’ve gone topless in ridiculously baggy basketball shorts and find it impossible not to occasionally look down at what I’m running in and laugh. You usually need just one out-of-the-ordinary run to mentally reboot and realize how much you like running.