Reboot

There is something very purifying about ice baths.  I woke up with too many different things my mind and when I sat down in the cold water I noticed how everything seemed to come into focus.  I think there are two reasons: one, the sensation is so intense that it makes it hard to think about anything else.  When you first slide in there is that jolt from the sudden cold, then after a few minutes you feel your body slowing down as the temperature really starts to settle in.  Finally there is that burning sensation from the blood rushing back into your legs when you finish.

 

The second reason ice baths can help focus you is because the genuine discomfort forces you to ask yourself why you are doing it.  Kant called this acting against inclination, which he thought was the only situation in which you can be sure that you are doing something because you believe it is the right thing to do.  The only reason you would voluntarily dip your legs in freezing water is because you wanted to speed recovery, heal and become a better runner.  That thought process naturally leads your mind forward, to the goal, the purpose, the reward.

I've said before that ice baths were the only cure-all.  I was speaking about helping with muscle soreness, but in my experience it even has a restorative effect on the psyche.  It'is like restarting a computer, clearing the memory and beginning from scratch.

Desires: inborn or learned?

A while back I realized that unless I ate some kind of sugar during a meal, I didn't feel full afterward.  Most often it was fruit, which seemed ok because the old food pyramid suggested 2-3 servings per day.  But I felt wary about the need to do it, the compulsion.  At the same time my brother Wade was on a diet that required cutting out all sugar, so I wondered if it was healthy for me to be eating it as often as I was.

I decided to start leaving sugar out of every other meal just to see how it felt.  Under-eating is a risky business for me because I get migraines if I'm hungry for too long, so at first I was little nervous.  What I immediately found was how hard it was to abstain.  Even though I was eating a large, full meal with plenty of complex carbohydrates, that desire for something sweet was strong and I had to fight it off.  But I didn't get any headaches so I felt it was worth pursuing.

After a couple of weeks I found myself wanting sugar less.  It still tasted good and I still ate plenty of fruit and the occasional dessert, but the expectation of having it be part of every eating experience had subsided.  What surprised me about this was that I had always thought that this specific desire was inherent, somehow coded into my DNA and a normal part of being a human.  Clearly it wasn't: it was buttressed up, inflated by my behavior.

Every desire fits into one of those two categories: inborn or learned.  And I think that more of them are learned.  But it can be so easy to think something has always been a part of you if your behavior has always enforced it.  Take the need for sugar; I'm sure that many of us have eaten sugar constantly almost since birth.  If the first thing in your toddler-age sippy-cup was juice, then you wouldn't be able to remember a time without that sweet substance coursing through your bloodstream.  With no sugar-free period as a comparison, how can you tell that the desire was inborn instead of learned?  Using the scientist parlance, there was no control group in that experiment.

We all have things about ourselves that we wish were different.  A negative thought process, a bad habit, an addiction.  But many people give up on trying to change with the defense, "it's just who I am."  Sometimes I'm sure that's true.  Genes are a powerful force in determining who we are.  But I think most of our desires come from the constant stream of small, simple choices that we make usually without thought.  The only way to tell the difference is to change your behavior long enough until it forms a habit and see how you feel.  I think we will all be surprised by how much is within our control.

Winter Break

I finally found the source of the lingering hip pain: it was my piriformis muscle.  This is a small muscle in your butt that is responsible for the lateral movement of the leg.  While I was cruising videos on Runnersworld.com I found a way to self-massage the piriformis by sitting on the ground and pulling the foot up toward your face while rocking back, and as soon as I did it I felt the most awesome muscle pain ever.  But it was a good kind of pain, because I could feel the knotted muscle slowly unwind.

But after cutting my running back to a couple days a week and doing lots of stretching, I still couldn't quite shake the soreness.  I decided I just needed to do a full stop and halt any running or stretching to aggravate the piriformis.  Thinking back on the year I realized that I had been training hard for about eight months without taking any serious time off, so a long winter break was due.

I've been keeping up my fitness by swimming, yoga, and weight lifting, basically anything that doesn't use my afflicted backside.  And after two weeks I'm starting to feel great.  With each day the pain in my hip recedes, and my energy is starting to peak.  After all of the success I had in the fall I thought I would be really missing my runs, but I don't.  I think it's because all of the other little things I do to stay in shape that are part of the running lifestyle: cross training, weight-lifting, stretching, diet, rest.  What I mean to say is that even though I haven't laced up in almost two weeks, I still feel like a runner.

This is a big change.  When I was forced to take time off before I would feel this terrible sense of loss, this emptiness.  Maybe my perspective has changed a little and I see the big picture more clearly now.  Anyway, I'm going to keep resting for another week, maybe two.  Based on how my body has reacted to rest in the past this can only be good for me.

P.S.  The weather in Provo has been wild lately, so perhaps this is why I don't mind taking a break (notice Monday, -13 degrees!  What?!)

The Tao of Rupp

Recently I've been watching a lot of interviews with Galen Rupp on Flotrack (btw, any idea why this site doesn't work on Firefox?) and I've noticed that he has a peculiar disposition for an elite athlete: he is perfectly mild-mannered.  For someone competing at the highest level, I would expect something a little more fiery.  But whenever he is asked about one training method or another he never takes an extreme position, rather his response is always somewhere in between.

Rupp is in good company because Plato taught the same thing.  It's called the Golden Mean, and it is the idea that every virtue is flanked on either side by two vices.  For example if being greedy is one end of the spectrum and being careless with your money on the other end, then prudence is somewhere in the middle.

I'm sure that Galen Rupp doesn't style himself as any kind of guru (quite the contrary, he is famously private.)  But I can't help but wonder if his overall demeanor is one of the contributing factors to his success.  When any runner has a bad day there is a temptation to fly off the handle and make some wild change to your training.  But running is a sport about temperance, control, and consistency.  So maybe being quietly confident is the key to long-term success.

You stupid monkey!

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.  I took two days off from running over the weekend instead of my usual one, so when I hit the roads last night I felt like a billion dollars.  My legs were fresh and light, and after two days away from my favorite sport I was longing for that scintillating sensation of speed.  That was the best of times.  The worst of times came today when I paid the price for running harder and faster than I was really ready for.

Nothing in particular was injured, but every element in my lower leg was sore.  Every step of a very slow two miles was painful.  I guess I learned my lesson.  Some weird pains have been cropping up in my knees and hip, so that coupled with my obviously over-used calf muscles means I'm going to take a cross-training break for the next few days to let this die down.  Biking and swimming would be good for me right now, and after about two months of nearly uninterrupted running at rapidly increasing speeds a rest is probably past due.

P.S.  I had to throw this in here:

The Prodigal Daughter Returns

My favorite blogger is back!  Lauren Fleshman, American 5k pro, had a ruinous performance at the U.S. Olympic Trials and subsequently disappeared from her usually consistent site AskLaurenFleshman.com.  Her posts had been getting fewer and farther between as she struggled with injuries and forced breaks, and I figured with how things went in Eugene that she might stop running and writing completely.

But as she described in her latest post she just needed to get away from the running world for a while and re-calibrate.  It's good to have her back, it sort of feels like a friend has reappeared.  She gives great advice on running, along with a quirky, self-deprecating wit that provides a rare view into the life of a professional runner.

How to keep your shoelaces from coming untied when you run

Maybe this is obvious, but I've never seen it written anywhere so I will just put it out there.  The reason shoelaces become untied is because the knot bounces up and down when you run.  So after you tie them take the hanging loops and slide them under the laces on the top of your foot, like this:

This immobilizes them as you run and they don't come loose.  Enjoy!