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An anechoic chamber is a special environment immersed in total silence.
In there, the perception of time and self is distorted. -
During running, time can be experienced in a similar way, amplifying body and breath awareness.
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It is not just the stopwatch that counts, but the internal feeling of well-being and connection with oneself.
I’m notasking you to tell me how far you go per minute. I know you know it very well, just as you know your personal best and at least ten of your best times in competition. What I’m asking is a little different, and now I’ll try to explain it to you. First of all: I got the idea from seeing a video that has nothing to do with running. It’s from Veritasium, that is, Derek Muller, the author of one of the finest science channels you can find on YouTube. In this video Derek gets himself locked in an anechoic chamber for a time I won’t spoil, and you’ll see why in a moment. What is an anechoic chamber? It is a room entirely lined (walls, ceiling, floor) with pyramids or wedges (like the ones in the picture) with a shape that dampens any sound wave. In other words, any sound produced inside such a room causes no reverberation. It is quickly dampened. When you speak, for example, you hear your voice not only coming out of your mouth but you also hear it reverberated (bounced, so to speak) off the walls of the room you are in. In addition, every day you live in environments that have background noises, even if you do not notice them because your brain registers them as unimportant and does not pay attention to them. When you eliminate the sound of your voice (or at least the reverberated component from the room you are in-“anechoic” in fact means “echo-free”) and background noise you are left alone with yourself. What you begin to hear is the sound or noise that is normally cancelled out by other louder noises or sounds: your breathing, your heartbeat, the blood flowing into your brain.
Go crazy
Derek got himself locked in that room to see how long he could last and whether the effects described by others who had tried were true. The record for that anechoic chamber was 45 minutes. When for more than that time you feel nothing but your heart and blood and your breath cross a threshold that many find unbearable, so much so that such experiments are constantly supervised by staff who intervene when the subject shows irritation, discomfort or even some sign of insanity. Because yes: hearing what you don’t normally hear can trigger very strong reactions, combined also with the claustrophobic effect and darkness. I won’t reveal how long Derek lasted but I will focus on another aspect.
It is all relative
As Derek carries out the experiment, in the dark and alone, he occasionally tries to guess how long he has been in that condition. If you don’t have references there are no ways to tell, and in fact he never guesses: he usually seems to have been there for much less than the actual time. In short, one effect is that the perception of time is distorted. If you think about it, even the normal perception we have of time is subject to many variables: if you are waiting for the results of a medical exam and you are apprehensive, time runs very slow. If you are having a good time, time flows smoothly and fast. So time is a variable of emotional state. And not only there. Think about how long a year was when you were 5 years old: it was a fifth of your life because that was your yardstick. Now how long is a year? A thirtieth? A fortieth? To get the same feeling you had when you were 5 years old, you have to think about a time frame of 5, 6 or more years. The older you get, the faster time goes by (this one is a little creepy, you’re right).
Imagine that
But I didn’t want to talk about how time runs faster as you get older. Derek’s experiment reminded me of an “anechoic run”: one in which you hear no sound except those of your breath and the blood coursing through your veins. A race in which one is totally absorbed in oneself. Without stopwatches, without measuring length. What Derek says he experienced-the total detachment from reality, since he could not perceive it-made me think of what running sometimes feels like: the state of grace, when you have no particular thoughts and you run flowing in the flow of life. I wondered if one could further amplify that feeling, canceling out all noise and feeling oneself to the nth degree. I do not have an answer, having neither an anechoic chamber (which then costs absurd amounts of money) nor even having a portable one. So this piece gives neither advice nor answers. It does not tell you that if you cancel everything around you you run faster. It does not tell you that feeling the flow of your blood increases performance. None of the above. He says there is a time that you measure with a stopwatch, which is a convention and is a number. And then there is an internal time that even you cannot estimate because it cannot be translated into numbers or fractions. It is a feeling: that you have done well, that you have been well with yourself and in yourself, that you have had time to do something. How long it was doesn’t matter, because it was your time: the absolute time. (Main image credits: dusanpetkovic on DepositPhotos.com – via Stylist)