meizitangzisu

"I think you take just like a machine."

A bicyclist shouted this my way across the Mount Vernon Trail on a glorious Sunday morning. I smiled, said thank you and kept moving.

It was after another bicyclist said I was running well, a few thumbs-ups using their company runners and many st nirvana tourists looking at me quizzically as I ran by.

The compliments and appears weren't uninvited. My bright yellow shirt asking "How am I running?" called out for critique.

I'll admit it: I had been proud. My gait was getting a full range of movement and my stride was crisp. My arms and glutes were employed in tandem to achieve sufficient speed, and that i was correctly landing around the balls of my feet.

Most of all, I felt good. It felt good to run.

This is a far cry from more than 2 yrs ago, when in the midst of struggles with depression and a spiritual malaise, a concept found me.

You're going to run marathons, which means you should get going.

I hadn't run since i have was a teenager, but soon thereafter, I ran one block from the corner of 14th and Euclid streets Northwest to Meridian Hill Park and back. I was out of breath as well as in pain.

The run was awful. Yet it had been enough to keep me going.

Since that time, I've took part in a three-mile race, a half-marathon, a 200-mile running relay and marathons in Buenos Aires and the District. By this time next week, I'll be in Toronto for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon. Based on my running app, I have logged more than 1,600 miles.

On the way, I sought to determine whether there's this because the perfect running exercise. That mystical stretch or the yogalike position that increases speed and endurance, the exercise to end all running exercises.

The issue has practical implications. It's my goal to run a sub-four-hour marathon in Toronto. Time in Buenos Aires was 4:55:01, and much of that was experiencing (as in, stopping to consider pictures) my first marathon internationally. Training during the torturous 2013-14 winter got me to 4:11:46 at the D.C. Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. I acquired a much better time, but something still felt off.

After much discussion, reading and a lot of japan hokkaido pills running, I have, indeed, discovered the perfect running exercise. Turns out it has nothing to use your legs -- or with running. Rather, it's about developing your mind.

Finding the exercise, however, was a workout all its own.