Energize Your Training With A Personal Adventure Run

Have you been running the same route week after week? Are you feeling bored with running or uninspired by training? 

Try an Adventure Run.

An Adventure Run isn’t a race. It’s nothing you have to sign up for, pay for, or train for. It is purely designed, invented and created by you. You can do it with a group, or you can go it alone. All you have to do is set out to try, do, discover, and see on your next run. A personal Adventure Run is something I use when I need to infuse my runs with more fun to liven up my workouts.

Routes

The easiest step in creating an Adventure Run is to change your route. This can be as simple as running your usual course backward. I often run a loop, and by starting in the opposite direction, I can see my route in a new light as the sun rises and reflects a different set of paces in a different pattern. I often notice things I missed or looked passed before, or were hidden from view from the opposing direction, like a stunning cottonwood tree along the riverbank or gorgeous flowers blooming in the park.

You can also keep your current route, but approach it in a new way: Can you cross a bridge you usually stay on one side of, taking in the flocks of geese and ducks now unlike before? How many bridges can you count on your route? You can start running to these bridges, including as many as you can on your run, climb up them, skip across them, wade through or hike under them? One week I counted nine naturally occurring bridges on my run, but if I had a goal, there were several more I could include by extending my route. Adding or noticing one simple destination item like this inspired my whole run that week, with options for creating more iterations like these in the future. 

A few other ideas include adding a loop or two around a pond, lake, or parkland that lets you inhale the blues, greens, and vegetation of the season. In the winter, this might be frozen and in then in the spring it might be beaming with new life that ignites your soul. 

Is there a solid straightaway you could add that allows you to stretch out and sprint, tuning out the distractions around you and maximizing power and focus? Or can you slow your pace to explore a back alleyway you always run past, instead opting to zigzag around each turn taking in the new sights. By changing directions, we can notice more of the natural beauty around us.

I also like to keep my eyes out for built in obstacles along my route that I can add to my run to make it more of an adventure. For example, if I see stairs, I can run up and down them for a cardio burst. I can do it once or multiple times. Try running through an outdoor amphitheater and hopping on and off the boulders or hopscotching the steppingstones. It can almost count as cross training and will certainly energize a straightforward run. Is there exercise equipment where you usually run? On an Adventure Run, you are allowed to stop and play on it! Hang on the monkey bars, try the sit up bench, opt for a pullup or hang on the high bars, and try fast feet step ups on the low bars. When we are pressed for time, in a hurry to complete our run for the day, or too focused on getting it finished as fast as possible, it is hard to give ourselves permission to stop and try these little things that are already right in front of us. But, when you are on an Adventure Run, your goal is trying, doing, discovering, and seeing new things! Take that trail you haven’t been down before. Run the beach section. Hike the uphill to the scenic outlook. Bushwack a portion to find a new creek crossing. An Adventure Run allows you to go off the beaten path and forge your own.

Neighborhoods

Another way to do this is to run in a new-to-you neighborhood. It doesn’t even have to be a faraway one either. It can be a neighborhood that is right next to the one you usually run in, you just have to give yourself the leeway to hop off your usual route and explore a new one. I like to start with the neighborhoods adjacent to where I am already running, I might drive past them all the time, but I haven’t been through them or seen them by foot.

On a recent run through an adjacent neighborhood to mine, I ran down brick boulevards and old houses. I noticed the styles of homes and architecture unique to their time periods, from old carriage houses to rain barrels to canoes stored in old trash burn piles. I ran this neighborhood route to a college campus on a Saturday morning, enjoying the manicured grounds and masterful stone masonry and brick buildings. As I ran through campus, I visited a stately columned church, where I ran up and down the front steps, and discovered an old school bell from where my grandparents attended, and a 200-plus-year-old tree from a historic trading route. These are places I had driven by for years. By adding them to my Adventure Run route, I was able to unearth interesting places to run through while seeing new, but still close by, sights. I have run to and through two more college campuses, seeking out Adventure Run treasures along the way, like clocktowers and different types of trees, flowers, bushes and plants through each season.

Scavenger Hunt

Once you have modified your route and added new neighborhoods to it, you can create your own Adventure Run Scavenger Hunt. Your scavenger hunt can be unique to each run, week, season, route and neighborhood. It can also be ongoing. Come up with a list, it can be mental to keep you stimulated while running, and make it your goal to seek out each item on your list during your run. If you don’t find all the items, keep going until you do for a motivating way to add mileage, or expand your route street by street, trail by trail until you find each thing.

A personal Adventure Run creates a relationship with your environment while you are running and can be just what you need some days to get out the door!