For Turkey and Brussel Sprouts

During the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) did an hilarious bit when he became  part of the London Symphony Orchestra playing the Chariots of Fire theme song. During the performance, while  he unhappily poked out a single note repeatedly on the synthesizer, he faded into a daydream of running on the beach with the runners from Chariots of Fire. Of course, Mr. Bean could not keep up with the athletes, and flagged down a car to give him a lift to the finish line.

And here for your viewing enjoyment is the clip: :Mr. Bean Chariots of Fire

How many times have I been on a run and thought, "You know what I need right now? A car."  Well, it has happened at least once. Okay, more than once. I love running, but every run isn't all high fives and feelings of accomplishment. Sometimes it is just hard.    The hardest run this week was on Wednesday night, after we ran to the top of Westwood Plateau (7 km of uphill)and then had to run down again (all in the POURING RAIN). ( I am not going to go into detail about how running in the pouring rain can be a test of character,as I have covered that already in an earlier post, "Wall of Water," but lets just say it was highly influential in how I felt about the run).  Now, for some, running 7 km up hill would be the hardest part. Not so for me. The hard part was running DOWN.  And the reason for this is part psychological and part physical.

 For me, the run DOWN  the hill was like the brussel sprouts at Easter Dinner. It was not the main part of the meal, but it was part of the whole spread. Brussel sprouts are good for you, but in a totally different way than turkey, but without turkey, there would be no meal. Nobody ever shows up to Easter dinner for the brussel sprouts. I don't even really like brussel sprouts, but I eat them because they go with turkey.Going up the hill is the main meal: the turkey,  while going down the hill is the bitter tasting, hard, brussel sprouts. And for the sake of this analogy, the brussel sprouts are cold. So, psychologically, I didn't care about the  run down the hill because all I really wanted to eat was the turkey. I showed up for the turkey.  Physically, the run down the 7km hill was cold- it was like the brussel sprouts were just taken out of the freezer. So not only were they just a supplement to the main course, but they were cold and hard much like the ends of my fingers on the way down. It is hard to enjoy something when you are beginning to wonder if you will ever enjoy the sense of touch again. This was a time when I could have really used Mr. Bean's car.

Remember all that mental strength stuff I talked about a few weeks ago? Well all that inner strength isn't going to help me one iota if I am  not motivated to get the job done. So why didn't I call a cab for the ride down the hill (apart from the fact that I didn't have my phone on me)? Well I get my motivation from many places. Perhaps one of the strongest motivating factor is fear of failure. If I am going to complete this marathon, I need to be both physically and mentally strong. The only way I am going to be able to do this is by completing the training. If I don't do the training and I don't complete the marathon, then I will be letting a whole bunch of people down (my family, the BC Lung Association, all the people that donated to the BC Lung Association  and myself, just to name a few).  Also, my running companions,Joan and Jack might have been worried if I suddenly disappeared (This is why running in a group is so much better, people!) And, it certainly would be a terrible end to this highly entertaining and informative blog, if I didn't finish. (Yes, you are supposed to laugh at this last statement).

So what is the moral of this story?

Sometimes you have to eat some cold, possibly frozen, brussel sprouts with your turkey.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Oh, and I ran 61 km this week, and never once did I flag down a car to get a ride to the end.

The Joy of Running

One of the best things Bill Watterson did when he created Calvin and Hobbes was that he gave us a beautiful reminder of what it is like to be a child ( at least in days before kids spent hours and hours in front of a screen). Calvin spends his days discovering and imagining ( even when he is forced to sit in the cold refines of the classroom). His attention span is seemingly short and he spends most of his time running about exploring absolutely everything he can. He doesn't even realize that he is, in some ways,  like the ants and continues on his way looking for the new best thing.  The difference between Calvin and the ants, of course, is that Calvin runs for joy and the ants run for work.  

As runners we are like both Calvin and the ants. Metaphorically, we are like the constantly busy ants. Our lives are busy. We run from thing to thing just to get things done. We need to get groceries, clean the house, do the laundry, get the kids to their activities, make our meals, and of course, get in a run. Life is busy, and training sometimes makes you feel like an ant, but in the end we are like Calvin: running for the joy of it. 

The joy that Calvin feels of course, has very little to do with the actual act of running but the joy of finding something new and interesting with his imaginary friend, Hobbes.Calvin goes everywhere with Hobbes, and some of his best learning experiences are when he is interacting with him. In this instance, he is able  to run without even thinking about it. If his teacher had asked Calvin to run around the track at school, he likely would have protested, and would have probably not succeeded- but to run with a friend to discover new things-this is magic. 

In the 1930's Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, wrote extensively about learning and the importance of social interaction.  Basically he said that learning results from a developing sense of belonging and identity in various contexts of participation.  In other words, he said that talking, socializing or just being around other people influences how we see ourselves, which in turn influences how we learn. He also wrote about how it is social interaction that allows learners to go beyond what they can do independently. and coined the term, Zone of Proximal Development. The Zone of Proximal Development is the distance between a person's actual independent ability and the level of potential development, which can be achieved with guidance from, or collaboration with others. In spite of the fact that his writings were criticized and censored by the old Soviet Union, he became, posthumously, one of the most influential persons in education theory.

Vygotsky was mostly speaking about cognitive development when he postulated his theories, however, I would extend them to include all aspects of learning.  When a child first learns to ride a bike, they do not just hop on and start riding. They are guided with the help of parents/siblings or friends to balance.  Someone may hold the bike until the child feels comfortable and gradually, lets go. On his own, a child would be unable to reach this goal ( at least not as quickly) but with others he is able to achieve what he couldn't on his own. When you run with a group, you not only get guidance from more experienced runners, but time spent chatting about running (and pretty much any other topic) helps refine your philosophy, your posture, your technique and your attitude.

Others are important to help a person achieve their goals, but they serve more than just an instructional purpose. Social interaction is enjoyable. Being around other people influences not just how we see ourselves, but also how much we enjoy or do not enjoy a particular activity. If we enjoy a particular activity, we are likely to continue. Without our 'Hobbes" in our lives, we would just be running around aimlessly like ants.

I ran like both an ant and Calvin this week for 60 kilometers, but could not have done it without my running friends. A particular shout out goes to my Marathon partner, Joan, who challenges me every week to go faster. And thanks to Steven Lowe for including me in his "Lowe Iron Runners" group, which is helping me get in my "zone." Thanks to all my running friends for being my Hobbes.

"As a runner much of your success comes from the people you surround yourself with"

John Stanton

 

Creating Inner Strength

"Strength does not come from physical capacity.  It comes from indomitable will."

     Mahatma Gandhi

This week I actually had time between runs, work and my sons hockey tournament to watch a movie. The movie was Amy, the documentary about Amy Winehouse, the 27 year old jazz singer who had a voice of angel but whose life ended as a result of years of drug and alcohol abuse and bulimia. Tony Bennett, who had the opportunity to record a duet with her compared her to Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Holiday and said she was "an extraordinary musician with a rare intuition as a vocalist."For several years, she fought the little voice inside her head that told her to use alcohol and drugs, but in the end she lost that battle. She was very young when she became famous and like many other famous child stars (River Phoenix, Macaulay Culkin, Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears, Justin Bieber, Dana Plato, just to name a few) she was unable to cope.  She seemed to have temporary signs of strength in which she abstained from alcohol and drugs, but in the end she gave up. One of her body guards noted that after her final time on the stage ( in which she refused to sing, and stumbled around completely wasted ) that it seemed like she had just given up. After her death, Tony Bennett expressed regret at not trying to give her the benefit of his experience and said, "Life teaches you really how to live it, if you could live long enough." In other words, life experience increases your ability to cope with the difficulties of life, but at the same time, you have to have the difficulties in life in order to learn to tap into your inner strength so that you are able to cope. Unlike Amy Winehouse, most of us have the luxury of making mistakes without being the punchline in somebody's comedy routine, but her age and her inexperience did her no favours and as a result the world lost a true talent.

Inner strength is something that all of us need as use in many facets of our life. Inner strength is the the thing that enables us to keep going in difficult times. Inner strength is always with you, and sometimes you have to dig deep in order to find it, but I think you also have to practice using it. Using the similar words to Tony Bennett, life teaches you how to find your inner strength.

When I first started running, the leader of the Sun Run Clinic I was in proudly stated that running is 90% mental and 10% crazy. At first, this statement made me laugh, but as I ran more and went through various struggles, I began to see how this was not far off from the truth .After reading a very good article in "Runner's World" this week, I found that this wasn't just anecdotally true, but also scientifically true, As it turns out, there is a doctor, Tim Noakes, who in his book, Lore of Running, basically says that it is the brain that allows or limits endurance performance rather than the body.  He says that "the brain is there to look after you and to make sure whatever you do, you do it safely." Other researchers have found that perception of physical effort influences how soon a person gives up.They tested this hypothesis with 2 groups of exercisers: one who were given a mental task before the workout, and one who just did the workout.  They found that group that did the mental task before hand gave up sooner, even though their physiological responses were not different than the other group, thus concluding that their effort was not due to  'cardiorespiratory and musculoenergetic factors." Other researchers have recently postulated that the brain can be trained to allow the body to physically handle more.  They say that you need to train your brain the same way you train your body. Training your brain to cope with discomfort is key to running success. Using Tony Bennett's statement again, you have to feel this discomfort, so that you can cope with the discomfort. If you don't have these experiences, you have difficulty accessing your inner strength on race day.

This week's training,  I am happy to report, had plenty of discomfort. From the hill training in the driving rain and gale force winds to the grueling 29 km long run, my brain was getting a lot of practice dealing with discomfort. At about 27 kilometers of my long run, my little negative voices started popping up in my head. My legs were screaming at me to stop, but I didn't. I am hoping that all this discomfort training is working, because if my muscles are sore at 27 km, I can't imagine how they are going to feel at 42!!!

Total kilometers this week: 58.
Total times I felt uncomfortable: infinite (apparently this is GOOD)

Life as a whole teaches you how to dig deep to use your inner strength when times get tough, and to modify Tony Bennett's phrase one last time, running teaches you how to run, if you last long enough.