“Running in circles” is a phrase that is a judgment. It evokes futility, boredom, a pointless loop.
When people say that running as a form of training is boring, this is often what they mean.
Technological Distraction
You see the evidence everywhere: runners with headphones firmly in place, sealing themselves off from their surroundings, using podcasts or driving beats to distract themselves from the very activity they’ve chosen to do.
Their goal is to endure the run, not to experience it.
I admit, there are times when technology has its place. Sometimes I use headphones to monitor biometrics, or use a podcast to make a simple recovery run feel like an efficient use of my time. A hard tempo session can certainly be fueled by music.
But an immersive trail run in the mountains with anything but the sound of my own breathing and the world around me? Unthinkable.
Circles, of Necessity
Much of my training happens here around Parndorf, on the same handful of routes.
Day after day, week after week.
By definition, I am running in circles. There is no other way to start and end home, and I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
Running, to me, is also about going out and coming back, after all.
And yet, it is anything but boring. Approached with a certain mindset, this repetition becomes one of the most rewarding forms of exploration available.
You Can Never Run the Same Trail Twice
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously stated that you can never step into the same river twice.
For the runner, the same principle holds true. The path under your feet may be the same, but the world it cuts through is in a constant state of flux. The route is not the experience; it is merely the canvas.
To see this, you only have to pay attention. The familiar loop becomes a perfect laboratory for observation, a baseline against which all change is measured.
The Ever-Changing Canvas
The changes are constant, playing out on every scale.
The most dramatic, of course, are the seasons. The exact same five-kilometer loop is a world of vibrant, almost violent green in May; a tapestry of gold and rust-red in October; and a stark, quiet study of skeletal branches against a grey sky in January.
The air itself changes, from the thick, humid scent of summer growth to the crisp, clean cold of a winter morning.
Other variations are more subtle than that.
A run after a heavy rain is a completely different sensory experience from one on a dry, dusty day. The world is saturated with color, the smell of damp earth is everywhere, and the sound of your footfalls is muted.
A run in the fog, let alone at night, shrinks the world to your immediate surroundings, amplifying sounds and creating a sense of deep solitude.
The low, golden light of early morning paints the landscape in entirely different hues than the harsh sun of midday.
And then there is the living world. On these repetitive runs, you become a chronicler of miniature events.
You notice the first spring blooms pushing through the tired winter ground. You see the spiderwebs, invisible yesterday, now illuminated by dew. You learn where to look for deer at dusk and which fields the hares favor.
These are not grand discoveries, but they are discoveries nonetheless.
Familiarity Breeds Discovery
Here is the paradox: far from breeding boredom, familiarity is what makes this deep seeing possible.
When you are on a new and unknown trail, your attention is necessarily focused on the macro: navigation, terrain, what’s around the next corner.
When the route is as familiar as the back of your hand, your mind is liberated.
Freed from the burden of navigation, you can focus on the micro.
Your senses open up. Because you know the baseline so intimately, the smallest change – a new wildflower, a fallen branch, a different quality of light – stands out in sharp relief. The familiar route doesn’t become boring; it becomes a text you learn to read with ever-increasing fluency.
So, yes, I run in circles. But it is not a pointless activity. It is a practice. It is a form of moving meditation that proves exploration is not always about seeking new territory. Often, the richest journeys are found by learning to see the infinite, ever-changing novelty of the ground you cover every single day.
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