Project 245 Week #8
Stories about the brain, spring and some running.
I am on a week off, which means I am off my regular schedule. I have to say, it is more difficult to convince myself to go for a run at 9:30 AM than 7:00 AM, mostly because when I’m in the flow of the things I am able to turn my brain into auto-pilot mode and don’t have to involve the “other, lazier part” of my brain. As it turns out, I found a scientific explanation for this.
This week I started reading a book I have been wanting to read since a long time, the famous Daniel Kahneman book “Thinking Fast and Slow”.
Kahneman, along with his fellow researcher Amos Tversky won the Nobel prize for the research which is presented in this book.
The basic premise of the book is that our brain is comprised of 2 “characters”: System 1 and System 2. System 1 is the impulsive, automatic and intuitive part of the brain, whereas System 2 is the thoughtful, deliberate and calculating part of the brain. System 1 generates impressions which when embraced by System 2 become beliefs. However our System 2 is lazy and can default to System 1 for crucial decisions, which as it is impulsive, might not be the best thing for us. The book discusses this, cites research on how we make bad judgements, discusses concepts such as availability bias, “what you see is all there is”, explains how cognitive biases are formed and how we can improve our decision making skills. It is a fascinating read and as you may have guessed, made a huge impression on my System 1 and has been bothering my System 2.
For me, one of the main issues which has plagued me over the years has been impulse control. I will not go into detail into the source of these issues and after 33 years, I mostly have them under control, but more recently they had been manifesting in the form of some online-shopping sprees where I looked at stuff which my System 1 liked and without consulting my System 2, which had an array of more relevant information like: the size of my closet, the demand of the product, my bank balance etc., I found myself putting the item in the cart and purchasing it. I suffered from credit card debt in my early 20s and I worked on improving it. I already do things like moving money into a savings account in the beginning of the month so I don’t end up buying bullshit stuff. I also give myself lectures on delayed gratification and promising myself cool stuff to buy later than spend money on small stuff now. And in fact, I have now even decided the months where I will do purchases such as clothes and have logged out of the websites. I don’t believe denying myself will solve the problem because I feel unreasonable denial is the root cause of the problem, so I will not put website blockers on my frequented areas of the internet. For me, it is better to learn self control than it is to force-feed it. But it still is a work in progress.
I also have another motive with this self control. I believe that, as we have 1 brain, the way we do one thing is the way we do everything. If I am impulsive in 1 aspect of life, I will make impulsive decisions in another part of life. It might not be the case in situations where I get the time to think about stuff for example a job related activity or a long term training plan. But under high pressure situations, where there’s the pressure to take quick decisions, I need to be able to trust my instincts. Quitting a race because the impulse strikes me to is not a good idea. If it is an injury, it is another story but often, it can be some stupid thought train that can drive me out of a good decision. On one of our runs, Jake mentioned racing in Payerne and told me about the week leading into it, which was difficult. He started the race and the pace was hot, it felt difficult and he felt like he wanted to quit. But he found a way not to quit and stick with the group. That’s what separates the greats from the mere mortals. I have seen and read Goggins shout about this phenomenon on social media, but hearing Jake express in a calm tone made more sense, the message being the same: “It is supposed to hurt.” A 10k race is supposed to hurt, 10,000 meters is a long way to go and you go only slightly slower than the pace you are supposed to run for 5k. If you’re in a race, you go with the leaders and you follow the moves, which aren’t always easy. All of this is painful. And for many (including me), I feel the System 2 lazily shirks the responsibility to System 1, which tells us that it is ok to slow down or to quit. Jake’s brain know that it is supposed to hurt, the pain will end soon and the reward on the other side is greater. Jake is my David Goggins, only more sophisticated and is luckily not shouting “Stay Hard” when he is kicking my ass on a tempo run.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that if you’re in 40 minute 10k shape, you should go out with the 30 minute 10k group because that will not work out for you. Physical limitations can be lifted with training but even so, some will remain. An example of this is my trail racing season from last year. I was very ambitious inside even if outwardly, I projected calmness. Running uphill is a difficult task and though, being light gives me an advantage it doesn’t make me efficient at it. It takes years to work your heart rate zone 2 to not spill over to zone 5 when going uphill. Plus, going downhill is altogether a different sport for a person whose System 1 thinks downhills are a threat because I haven’t experienced many of them, especially ones with roots coming out from trees. Yes, I have run more than 50,000 kilometers in my life but most of them were on the roads. Unlike David Epstein’s assumption that the breadth of experience is more important than the depth (in his book, Range), this environment was a place where you really needed the depth of experience. Me telling my friends that I was going to run 3 hours in Sierre Zinal were perhaps stupid, in hindsight.
Despite me being a bummer you can do the best version of your race if you know it is going to hurt, stay in the moment and instead of absorbing System 1’s impressions and making them into System 2’s beliefs, you go the other way. Think of bank of stored wins in System 2 and contradict System 1. I would’ve had more fun in Sierre-Zinal if I had been more rational. (No, not really, it is a garbage race and I am never doing a trail race again.)
Like I said, this applies to all aspects of our life. In the beginning, I mentioned my routine and it usually includes waking up in the morning, having a coffee and going for a run. There’s no mental effort involved, there’s no excuses for the weather and there’s no second guessing. After lunch, I take 15 minutes to write and I have done it for so long that it is very easy for me to write 1000–1500 coherent words in 15 minutes. But because my days these days are so scattered, I could only write this section on Thursday, which is fine. The hard part was sitting down for 15 minutes, the words just followed because I knew what I wanted to write about. I feel we can all learn from this. I know I am trying to improve the impressions on my System 1 and trying to engage my System 2 in a better way. Life is all about continuous improvement and we are all capable of being better than we are.
Spring is here.
Another fascinating book I read recently was a book on writing, called “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott. Tips I took in the book might be the reason I have received some more positive feedback about my writing. I take what I write as a shitty first draft and then refine it. She also mentioned taking stories from your childhood and writing about them because they make for interesting writing challenges. As a person whose mood is affected a lot by the colors of the leaves and the luminosity of the day, I thought of writing about the spring season.
My earliest memory of the spring season comes from New Delhi. Spring almost always coincided with the exam season in school. Tumultuous pressure would give way to joy, which felt almost in-line with the changes in the temperature of the air. “In Europe, people don’t really experience the cold in the way we do” said a friend of mine once. I agree. People here do not experience that blinding smog which delayed many a family trips just because the roads had absolutely 0 visibility. And you don’t know how shitty it feels to take a shower, come out and get dressed with your clothes as cold as ice. There are ways to make these memories seem more pleasant perhaps, maybe by remembering the gajar halwa or methi aloo but no, I still fucking hate winter. The days were too small and preparing for exams was a b*tch and a half. Especially if you were like me and getting up at 4 AM. The memory of sneaking out of the blanket in that miserable cold weather is still unpleasant, no matter how much I think of my mother’s chai. But my love for the spring also comes from this time. I was fat when I was 15. Or it was my mother’s idea that I should run 30 minutes or so to get some exercise. Either way, I was running in sports complex. I remember that it was dark and I didn’t much like running. I was a swimmer and when you put a fat swimmer to the task of going around a circle for 30 minutes, he is bound to complain. But I didn’t. It actually felt amazing. Maybe secretly I knew I would become running obsessed. But my memory from that day is being outside in the dark, the air having this pleasing temperature and odour and me listening to Linkin Park’s “Numb” on my iPod. Of course, my teenage angst enjoyed the “You were someone like me with someone disappointed in you” lyrics from Numb but I think the effect was magnified by the magical period of rejuvenation, that is spring.
Moving to Switzerland 8 winters ago, was especially shocking for a person who hates winters. Ok, the houses are warm but the black ice! And if you haven’t lived in Switzerland, we have this thing by the lake called the “Bise”, which the cold northern wind and boy, it stings. Plus, I knew winters were dark but seeing the sunset at 16h30 and not rise until 8h30 was just depressing. Plus here, the winters are not a 15-day affair like New Delhi. In November, you get soaked consistently while not noticing that it is getting darker. December is covered in the sheen of the spirit of Christmas, masking the fact that it is constantly cold and dark. Then January rolls around and it hits you that the ground below you is frozen. Sometimes you don’t see sunlight for days. February is unpredictable but mostly very cold too and then March comes with it’s sense of hope. You begin to see the flowers, you no longer arrive at and leave work when it is dark and even though you only have cabbage as the locally sourced vegetable, your eyes begin to dream of asparagus and raspberries.
I’m not saying the spring in Lausanne is as perfect as New Delhi. In New Delhi, it gets nice and warm and you have few unpredictable days. In Lausanne, you can have (as we have this week) a day with a low of 3 degrees and another day where the maximum is 24. You should never pack your jackets until it is end of May. I once showed up to a dinner with Béné’s parents in April, wearing a shirt and it rained so hard, that I swear I saw Noah build an Ark. Béné’s mother kindly told me that I should always carry a jacket. And I decided to go on a bike ride the next day without one. 80 minutes into the ride, I found myself 40 kilometers from my house stuck under a tree to shield myself from the rain and then a thunderstorm rolled in. I really thought I would die and when the storm passed, I was cold, hungry and had non-functional brakes because I somehow think it is a great idea to ride with carbon wheels everywhere. Ended up waiting 1.5 hours at a bus stop for a bus, to then take another 1 hour before I finally arriving at home. Lesson learnt.
But spring is so f*cking incredible here. I posted pictures of flowers in the past and here’s some more.
Just for this and for the fact that the air smells incredible, the sunrises get more golden and that everything is just more beautiful, I vote that spring is officially the best season. If it takes going through the darkness of winter to get to the spring, sign me up for atleast a hundred more years. (But also, c’mon global warming.)
This week in running
So, I am a huge fan of Top Gear UK and in one of the episodes presenter James May tried the Bugatti Veyron for the first time. Infact, he maxed out the Veyron at 454 kilometers per hour. It was spectacular. But May made this observation, I found quite hilarious. He said as he slowed the car down he became impatient and wanted to get out. As he was reaching for the door handle, he realized that the car was still doing 80 kilometers per hour.
When you taper from 100 miles per week, your taper kind of feels the same way. I very proudly told Béné, I will be running less this week. Then I realized that I am still going to be doing about 80 miles per week. It’s definitely not 13+ hours of running but it is still 9 hours of work. It’s funny how our perspective shifts.
On Tuesday, I cranked out a medium long run where I descended from 8k at 4:00–4:10/km, to 5k at 3:50–3:55/km (20% of my marathon pace to 10% of my marathon pace). And then I felt good and annoyed by the wind, so I cracked 1k at 3:35 and then another one at 3:17. I don’t know why. I just felt good and maybe I felt if I ran so hard into the headwind, it will disappear. Plus, I felt like a badass. Then I thought a taco salad is a good dinner and had the worst possible 10 miler on Wednesday. My blog is not Instagram and I can happily tell you that life is no picnic. I felt so f*cking miserable on the run, I stopped paying attention to the podcast I was listening to and instead focussed on planning my bachelor’s party.
You want to know what I want to do for my bachelor’s party? I want to run around Lac Leman in a relay with my groomsmen. I think I will invite 9 of my male friends, all of whom are runners. The loop of Lac Leman is 180k, which means 20k per person. While 1 runs, 8 others can celebrate the accompanying vehicle. Sounds like fun to me.
Coming back to this week, on Thursday I did 3*3200 meters at threshold with 2' recovery. I had Thibault for company (who as I am writing this on Thursday evening, is doing double Threshold). The idea was to do 3*2 miles but my watch is in kilometers and I cannot auto-lap it at 3218 meters(1st world problems). The session was great but it felt a tad difficult which led me to joke that it is both uplifting to do a session by the lake, because it is almost never easy with the GPS and wind but equally depressing because 3:24/km feeling like that is never a good sign.
Between Friday late morning and Saturday night, I had what I like to call “Alistair mode”. I have always admired Alistair for his ability to do the things he wants to do and not get bogged down by overthinking. I basically decided to do the same and had 3 social events, 2 runs including a long run on less than 5.5 hours of sleep and an incredible time. I even wrote on my journal on Saturday morning, “Do what Alistair would do and enjoy yourself.”. It did help that Saturday morning was the most beautiful morning in the history of mornings.
Now, it’s Sunday evening. I need to cook and tomorrow I go to work. But it’s all good, I resigned, so I can not give a fuck about trivial people complaints on IT issues and worries about the feedback my boss will receive and do some actual work that matters!
