Between the Music and the Mind

Running towards a new perspective on running

Photo by Marcel R on Unsplash

By the time I leave the house, the sun has already left the valley. I settle the woollen headband more firmly over my ears, headphone cords dangling against my cheeks, and pull the sleeves of my fleece down around my hands like mittens. It is not the inconsistent cold of the day, the staccato splashes of sunlight between clouds, temperature fluctuating with the gusts of wind, nor the stinging edge of the setting frost, it is still too early for that. This cold has no edges; it is as still and absolute as the evening air. But it is cold nonetheless. Six months ago, I wouldn’t have done this. I begin walking briskly towards the river, and press play.

When we are children, we run for sheer joy, for play. Into the ocean, towards the ice cream van, after or away from each other in the twisting dance of a game of tag. We do not run because our cholesterol is too high, or because our favourite pair of jeans has stopped fitting. We do not run because we have been told to; in fact, we run in spite of the grown-ups in our lives telling us to slow down, walk don’t run, you’ll hurt yourself.

Beyond the bridge, the trail curves south along the wide riverbank of yellowed grasses, damp. I pad down the track onto the flats. As I hit the fork in the trail, I lean forward and begin to run, building the cadence of my footfall towards the drop of the beat. Towards the rhythm, towards the river, then south along its course. There it is, the sync of music, mind, movement: three energies pulsing together.

As we grow towards adulthood (whatever that is), for most of us running becomes at best a healthy routine, at worst a means of escape from terrors, physical or emotional. “I don’t ‘run’,” I would reply if the subject ever came up. Or if I did run, it was only as a kind of last-ditch attempt to make myself feel better if I had been unhappy for too long. It was the thing you did when you were angry at life. It wasn’t fun, it was an unpleasant necessity, a way of breaking the pressure seal on your discontent. The association of it was: if I am doing this thing, something else has gone very wrong. The fact that I felt better afterwards only compounded its role in my life as a solution to something else.

My body starts to warm, muscles remembering their reason for being, breathing through my mouth to heat the air. I dance round tree roots and hedge potholes in the flood-gutted track. When the river is really high, it will make a pond of this trail all the way to the embankment. I push myself up the slope now, toe tips gripping, arms pumping like fulcrums against the empty air, and turn the bend into the forest.

In late 2025, I finished a cycle tour around Scotland and prepared to head back to New Zealand. I was on an athletic high after a month on the road. My bicycle trip was over, but I wanted to keep that momentum going. So I started running: around London in the days before my flight, back in Auckland staying with family before heading south. I loved it.

By now, I am in my zone, hypnotised by thoughts so that I will catch myself on a corner, or a piece of tricky footing, and realise I had forgotten I was running at all. My body hasn’t. It knows the twists and turns of the path, hedges the mudhole in the centre of the track, and the tentacle of bush lawyer reaching towards me from the understorey with its thorny hackles raised. I slow as I reach the side creek, rock-hopping its rough channels that change with every storm. I scramble up the far bank and onto the four-wheel drive track. Ahead of me the expanse of river stretches away into the imminent dusk, towards another river, and from there towards the sea.

Cycling had long since taught me the joy of that endorphin-adrenaline cocktail that it sends coursing through your body. Now I found running could do the same, if not quite to the same degree. But it was a portable high: all I needed was a pair of cushioned shoes, and if I could find a sandy beach, even less than that. I stopped running only when I felt bad, and started running when I felt good as well. That shift altered my whole perception of it. It became an expression of joy, not only a means of getting to something like it.

I could keep running the riverbed as long as the light, and my ankles, held out; but instead I turn into the culvert under the road. It is big, taller than me, dark, and echoing, and bottomed with water after recent rain. I hesitate for only a moment, then plunge into the more-than-ankle-deep runoff, lifting my feet high with each stride to minimise the drag, charging through the sloshes of spray with a stupid grin on my face, playing. I turn out of the culvert and run back alongside the road, cutting across the field and up through the sharp bush-track to the quiet eddy of the back street, feet slipping in the layer of leaf-mulch.

A friend of mine, an ultra-trail runner, once said to me that she had been running for years before she began to actually like it. I understood what she meant now, even if I still couldn’t quite explain it. What is it that makes a person persist for so long through that? Is it that we cannot always see what we need, but we may sense the impulse of it, buried deep within us? Now I want to leave the house to go running; I grizzle if I can’t go, rather than because I have to. There is no tracking, no personal best. I have no precise metrics for how fast, or even exactly how far, I run. I run simply for that playful joy, that stupidly happy grin.

The river flats spread in front of me again, the bridge visible at their far end. I drop off the embankment. There is a moment approaching in the music, I know it’s there. I ready myself for takeoff. Then I begin to sprint. I belt down the trail as fast as I can, stretching my legs further than I thought them capable of going, every particle of my body opening outwards, towards another dimension, another self, another form of ecstasy.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Disclaimer: This is my personal experience. It does not constitute advice regarding either physical or mental health.