Before I begin, I should define my terms. By ‘run naked’ I don’t actually mean running with no clothes. However, I am sure if that is what you are interested in there are plenty of websites to look at on the subject. By naked running I mean putting that heart rate monitor to one side and listening to your own body for a change. Heart rate monitors were invented as a tool to help training but, as I have realised, all too often they take over. I often feel that it becomes a case of the tail wagging the dog. Always remember who the boss is.
Sometimes it is important to go out and run naked (without the HRM). That way you learn to listen to your body, which will soon tell you to slow down when you are going too fast. Just as you know through the intensity of feeling if you are running too fast.
Two young naked women running on the beach
The idea of a grown-up running naked in the full sun was stunning, but the implication that witnessing such a thing might damage me in some way made it simultaneously repellent and tantalizing. Since stunning erotic danger was the stock of most every childhood obsession, I probably thought about naked runners more than most children. Playing in the front yard, I worried about them the way other kids might worry about meteor strikes, or rabid animals, or kidnappers. What were the chances at any moment that naked adults, so very, very much in love, might suddenly run past? How would I best minimize my exposure? And what about my younger sisters, who were playing next to me—would I rush to shield their eyes or sacrifice theirs in order to save my own?
Because life plays out in giant circles, it was probably inevitable that I would one day return to California to sort this out once and for all. So it was that I found myself registered for the 104th running of the Bay to Breakers 12K in San Francisco last May—a race established as a way to unify the city after the devastating earthquake of 1906, but that unifies its people today in more varied ways. Of the many things setting Bay to Breakers apart from every other race in the country, the most tantalizing and repellent (depending on your point of view) was that the course, I was told by several friends who had been there, would be liberally populated with naked runners.
