Serenity Through Sweat

Instincts

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week I want to revisit a topic that is near and dear to my heart. A topic that remains nebulous. One that I hope to have sorted out at some point before my boys stop listening to me.

I came across this article on the instincts of masculinity on Psychology Today. These types of articles always pique my interest. Maybe that is because the concept is so hard to pin down. Hard to define. Words are important. I am a sucker for definition after all.

The articles begins with a story about a family hike along a glacier. The father figure (the author and psychiatrist) describes his experience with his young son and dog in the frigid temperature and high elevation. He has a natural protective instinct, that spurs him to action. It isn’t something he is told to do. He just does it.

His own instinctual behavior up on the glacier, triggers a curiosity about male instincts and archetypal male behaviors which he then turns to AI chat GPT-3 to inquire about.

I thought Dr. Dubransky did a great job of making his case. He argues for the existence of three universal male behaviors. These behaviors emerge in almost every culture around the world, when examining archeological evidence, literature, folklore, and myths.

“A myth is neither completely true nor completely false. A good myth is one that artfully represents human experience…”

“Mythology may factor into recent studies that appear to posit the existence of “masculine instincts.” Universal behaviors (instincts) give rise to myths, not the other way around.”

Dr. Dubransky lists the three universal male instincts as: Fighting and Winning (Ares instinct), Providing and Protecting (Zeus instinct), and Mastery and Control of one’s emotion (Hades instinct).

One of the reasons that I find this article, and this line of thinking, so compelling, is that it provides a positive definition of masculinity. I don’t mean positive in the sense of a “good” connotation, but rather the existence of qualities that are defined as masculine. As opposed to the merely the absence of qualities that are unmasculine.

By identifying and describing these behaviors in myths and folklore across numerous cultures, it lends credibility to the idea that these behaviors are in fact universal.

Importantly, the quantity or absence of these behaviors does not determine masculinity. Nor is there a scale of masculinity that is discussed. But having behaviors that show up throughout our shared history is evidence of common attributes shared by men.

As much as I hate the term toxic masculinity, by this framework it would be an overabundance of Ares instinct, with a lack of Hades instinct. I think this is a much more effective way of assessing and defining problems with masculinity in a way that avoids disparaging the the entire gender.

I can see these behaviors in Speedy and El Duderino. These aren’t things that I have taught them. They come naturally.

They want to compete and win. Whether it is a race to the mailbox or finishing their dinner first. On occasion they will even compete to see who can clean up more toys (my favorite one)

They care for each other and are fiercely protective of what they value. Even at a young age that instinct is there.

We are working on mastering control of emotion. That is one I particularly struggle with, and I’m sure they are genetically predisposed down the same hard road. Still even El Duderino (who struggles as I did at his age) will bring his calm down kit to his brother’s aid.

Being a man is tricky. Being a person is tricky. Trying to fit an entire gender into a box is tricky. An understanding of universal instincts and behaviors can go a long way in paving the path to serenity.

thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Bumps

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I have not been writing nearly as much as I want to.

There are dozens of excuses. Some are very understandable and relatable. Other are a niche of my particular hobbies and career lifestyle. Still others are very much first world problems.

None of that changes the fact that words are not making their way to paper. Or the digital equivalent o suppose. Thoughts are not being worked over and properly curated. Ideas wilt on the vine.

While I hope that you get something out of these musings, it is ultimately a selfish endeavor. One that helps me think. Reflect. Ultimately better understand my own worldview. To realize any changes that I need to make for myself or my family.

Dedicating the time to this pursuit is one of those changes. Alas, life has a way, of getting in the way. I noticed this same problem manifest itself on El Duderino’s daily scooter ride.

Nothing makes him happier than being picked up from school with his scooter. I’m not sure if it the the excitement of escape. The satisfaction of scooting. Or the perception Infront of his peers. El Duderino loves scooting home from school.

He takes off on a tear down the sidewalk, often times before I am done talking with his teacher and ready to start my pursuit.

He can be heard halfway around the block engaging his dragon power, or eagle power, or whatever the day’s inner monologue calls for.

He will scoot right into the open garage and then come back to look for me. Being sure to let me know how much he beat me by.

Occasionally he will stop for no apparent reason. He will abandon his scooter and walk back to give me a hug and tell me he loves me. Such unabashed emotion is powerful amongst men. I hope he never loses it.

Sometimes he makes the cardinal sin of racers. He removes his focus from the road ahead to look back and see how close I am behind him.

This is normally not necessary. I’m hard to miss since I’m prancing with his dinosaur backpack slung over my right shoulder. The leftover contents of his lunchtime trail mix shaking like a maraca in it’s tiny Tupperware. It is not by any means a stealthy pursuit.

This has lead, on occasion, to El Duderino wiping out pretty hard on some of the bumps in the sidewalk. Sometimes he can maintain composure and keep it upright. Other times it is a full yard sale crash.

Knowing that this happens. Knowing where and why it happens, I try to adjust my pursuit, lagging further behind El Duderino on the sidewalk sections with bumps.

When you are moving forward with some momentum small bumps in the road are little more than a nuisance. When you are moving too slow, they can derail you entirely. Especially if your focus is elsewhere.

I didn’t really need to see El Duderino eat it on the sidewalk to understand the concept. But it does have a way of illustrating it in living color. Bringing that idea right to the forefront. Screaming bloody knees and all.

Momentum is a powerful thing. Without enough of it, the smallest of bumps can totally derail us. But, we are also capable of squishing those obstacles like pennies on a train track.

I hope to be able to report fewer derailments, and more squished pennies going forward.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

What doesn’t kill you

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I found this really interesting article through a link on Sunday’s with Sisson and wanted to share it with you.

The article discusses recent research into the longevity of ants. While this may seem inconsequential, or unrelated to humans, the findings are somewhat surprising and unexpected.

The first part of the article focuses on the relative lifespan of queen ants compared to worker ants. While there is significant variety amongst different ant species, queen ants tend to live significantly longer despite their increased metabolic functioning.

The queen consumes exponentially more calories due to the increased metabolic demands of laying thousands of eggs. The increased calorie consumption and metabolic functioning means significantly more insulin production. Increased insulin is linked to aging as well as a host of other diseases in humans and other animals.

These ants have evolved into social creatures where only the queen is reproductive. This has lead to some other evolutionary adaptations. When a queen is removed from the colony worker ants will change into “gamergates” or pseudo queens. They start eating more, producing more insulin, and becoming reproductive.

The researchers expected the increased insulin levels to lead to decreased lifespan. However, the insulin signaling in the gamergates deviated from the standard expression and led to increased lifespan.

“Further work showed that the ovaries of the gamergates strongly expressed a protein, Imp-L2, that ignored the MAP kinase pathway but interfered with the second pathway in the fat body. “This protein appears to have the function of protecting one pathway that allows metabolism, but inhibiting the pathway that leads to aging,” Desplan said.”

The second part of the articles describes a parasitic tapeworm that infects acorn ants as an intermediate host. The cestode lays eggs that are eaten by acorn ants. The tapeworm must live inside these acorn ants, that make their nest in a single acorn, until the ants are hopefully eaten by a woodpecker.

If a woodpecker eats an acorn that has infected acorn ants in it, the tapeworm then moves from it’s intermediate host, to it’s final host.

The infected ants are very easy to tell apart from the uninfected ants because their color changes from brown to yellow.

You would expect that the parasite infected ants would have a shorter lifespan, since the parasite is sustaining itself off of the host. However the opposite was observed.

Infected ants lived five times as long as uninfected ants, in part due to a cocktail of different proteins pumped into the ants by the parasite.

Researchers are working to distinguish, analyze and retest these various proteins and antioxidants to see if the results are reproducible outside of parasitic infection.

From an evolutionary and adaptive standpoint this makes a ton of sense. The parasite’s ultimate goal is to get to the woodpecker. The longer the ants live, the greater the chances that they will be eaten by a woodpecker. Increasing the host lifespan is in the best interests of the parasite.

Whether it is increased metabolic functioning to step into the queen role, or parasitic infection, for the ants in these studies, what doesn’t kill them makes them live longer. (Not coincidentally, the title of one of the studies that the article was based on)

On some sort of intuitive level didn’t we already know this. The individual protein pathways and antioxidants are compelling. I hope the research leads to new understanding and potentially even clinical, pharmaceutical, and lifestyle interventions. But there is so much more to a healthy lifespan than a protein cocktail secreted from a tapeworm.

I like to bounce around on this platform, ping-ponging back and forth between topics that pique my interest. But every post, regardless of topic, has some sweat in it. Challenges that push the body both physically and mentally.

There is a mental clarity and a physical calm that follows these efforts. (SerenityThroughSweat) but there is also the undeniable benefit, that what doesn’t kill us, helps us live longer.

Thanks for joining me stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Intimidation

The lights seem to pulse around me. I know this is only an illusion. The effect created by the spacing of dim lights and alternating darkness as I float down the hall.

The sweat has gone past the point of beading and running, and has progressed to a steady trickle. I can feel the gentle squish of wet socks in each step as I make my way down the seemingly psychedelic hallway.

I know my body is depleted from the training and the fasting that is now approaching twenty hours. I don’t feel depleted though. I feel light. Liberated. Unburdened.

The squishing intensifies as I start bouncing gently to the music. It is a short way around the courtyard from the fitness center to my room. The twang of the guitar and the blaring horns during the bridge of Gregg Allman’s Midnight Rider, the dim alternating lights, and the runners high work on union to transport me back in time.

The pulsing of lights, footsteps echoing off the tile floor and the walls of lockers, breaths heavy with exertion. I’m running sprints down the freshman hallway of my highschool after wrestling practice.

Sometimes with my teammates. Sometimes in solitude. Occasionally the chemistry teacher, a great runner in his own right, pokes his head out to investigate this intrusion to his own late night solitude.

The same trickle of sweat fills my shoes and bounces off the tile as it cascades off my younger self. That same liberated, unburdened feeling seeps in. The work is done, and it was done in earnest.

The moment fades as I reach my hotel room. I haven’t had a runners high like this in a while. One that alleviates and transports in such a powerful way. I spend a lot of time chasing that dragon, but it is elusive.

I’m in Atlanta and spent the morning in the simulator. Cortisol levels run high in this place. There is no way around it. Knowing it is a simulation, doesn’t take away the feeling that the emergency is real. Being a simulation, it can be reset to the next emergency with daunting speed and efficiency. We aren’t designed for catastrophe on repeat, and it takes it’s toll.

I figured after the sim was as good a time as any to try this new workout. 6 rounds of 6 minutes at threshold running pace, with 2 minutes moving rest between sets. Add in a warm up and cool down and that makes a solid hour block on the treadmill in the training hotel’s lack luster fitness center.

One of my best friends and training partners had done this workout a few times before and shared it with me. I was intimidated.

I’m not even sure what my threshold pace is but my best guess was around a 6:30min/mile pace. That is, as the term threshold might imply, right where things start getting uncomfortable. Each interval is long enough to really make you think about it. The total time in zone accumulates quickly. The rest is enough to recover, only by the smallest of margins.

As much time as I spend intentionally putting myself into discomfort, there are still levels of it that intimidate me. Places I will shy away from. Workouts that I will procrastinate or put off entirely. Or tap out from early.

This was one such workout. I had toyed with the idea of trying it for weeks. An excuse always seemed to pop up. I didn’t have enough time. I would be too depleted afterwards. The alternative I gave myself was better suited to my goals.

It is easy to convince yourself of something you already believe. It is even easier when you are intimidated.

4000′ of climbing, I finished the event but the didn’t make it to the top of the mountain. Another intimidating challenge and an excuse made.

I’m not sure what about it was so intimidating. Extended time at threshold as we have discussed can be uncomfortable. But I like uncomfortable. I know growth comes from being uncomfortable. I actively seek out those situations. This workout though was an outlier in that paradigm.

It went so much better than I thought it would. The intimidation, transformed into satisfaction and serenity. I don’t know if my initial trepidation added to the post workout sensations I described at the start. That light, liberated, unburdened state of post run serenity.

The only time a man can be brave, is when he is first afraid. But the benefits of standing tall in the face of intimidation only adds to the elation when the task is ultimately completed.

Putting in miles in my old stomping grounds

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Curiosity

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. My extended winter holiday has come to a close. That has meant a lot of quality time with my boys and my wife. As well as a much needed break from work. With that comes less time spent on this platform, and on my other projects, which mostly take place during my downtime on the road.

As I start to transition out of vacation mode and back towards a more normal routine the inevitable new years conundrum comes up.

I’m not a big believer in arbitrary calendar flips dictating significant life changes, but it is a tidy, human way, to compartmentalize the passage of time and overcome stagnation and inertia to make a change.

If there is something you want to do, or explore, or learn, don’t wait for January 1, just do it. That said, my mother gifted me a subscription to Masterclass for Christmas and I am trying to make that a more regular part of my routine.

Time that would otherwise be spent scrolling news articles without direction and somewhat mindlessly, can now be dedicated to a more tangible and appreciable watching or listening, and learning experience.

The lessons are broken down into very digestible 8-15 min sections so it isn’t a huge commitment. It is one that I feel I can make a routine of, and feel better about my time and attention allocation.

I started off with Malcolm Gladwell’s Masterclass on writing. It seemed the most directly related to my current projects and it was highly recommend by my brother who is an English teacher and something of a writer himself.

In section five while discussing research, Gladwell shares the story of visiting a town in eastern Pennsylvania, where the the residents seem to live unexpectedly long lives, despite a number of what would otherwise be considered unhealthy lifestyle choices.

He had read an article about the town, and decided to visit. He walked through the towns shops, and took notes. He met and dined with the mayor and recorded their conversation. He shelved the information for the better part of fifteen years until it found a place in the opening of his book Outliers.

Malcolm followed his curiosity and then sat on the resulting product for fifteen years. That is a long time, and a not insignificant investment, waiting for something to bear fruit. And yet, it did.

After sharing the anecdote, Malcolm goes on to tell the students of this class.

“You have to feel free to go down roads that don’t lead anywhere immediately. I was going for a wander and collecting something and sticking it on a back shelf in the hopes that I would someday use it. If you do enough of those little wanderings then you have a shelf that is packed with really really cool things.”

“But doing something only because you can perceive in the moment that it might be useful is a really good way of not gathering anything at all because you can’t know in the moment. There is too much pressure.”

Obviously this strategy has worked out well for Gladwell, who has been prolific over his long career. Following curiosity in search of things that are truly interesting. Trusting that what you uncover will be worth the time and energy to uncover it, even if only for its own discovery sake.

There is a certain bravery and faith required for this approach. An inherent trust that your instincts, if followed, will reward you appropriately. Even if it isn’t in the way you hope, or think it might.

I followed my own interests recently diverting from my language and communication research to read the book Lifespan. It has nothing to do with my current projects but I thought it was interesting.

Within the book was a singular mention of a mathematician Claude Shannon, referenced in a passage on cellular aging. This again seemed interesting, and let me to purchase two more books, Shannon’s doctoral thesis, as well as his biography.

I didn’t imagine when reading a book on longevity, that I would be introduced to a mathematician, that would lead to another 500 or so pages of reading and a number of other interesting findings.

These weren’t just really cool things to put on a shelf, they ended up being immediately useful in my current projects. Following my curiosity on a seeming wandering bore fruit.

Furthermore, I was reading because I was curious, rather than reading like a stoic researcher. The wandering was not just productive, it was enjoyable.

I’ve found this same approach extremely productive in my grappling as well. It isn’t when drilling a position over and over that you come up with a breakthrough. It is when you are playing. Unencumbered by the moment. Moving through positions with a curiosity and lack of intentional direction. Wandering, physically, and even mentally, that the eureka moments happen.

Curiosity can lead you down unexpected roads. Ones that might not seem to be in the direction you intended, or initially set out on. Following these roads with an open, wandering mindset can lead to incredible places. Not the least of which is serenity.

4 miles with my stroller buddy Speedy, and a 5 mile tempo run

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Kindness

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Against all odds, I found myself in a central Iowa bar, in the middle of a snow storm talking about surfing this Christmas Eve, and I wanted to share the experience with you.

This trip was the first line choice on my bid for December. I should have known better, but as has been revealed here before, I am a masochist and a glutton for pain. This trip was set to have a 30 hour layover in cedar rapids Iowa, followed by a 15 hour layover in Boise, and then finishing on Christmas day in Orlando around 2:00 pm.

It looked good on paper when I was bidding it in early November. The bomb cyclone that appeared days beforehand had other ideas. We landed in Cedar rapids around ten o’clock at night in blowing snow and 40+mph winds.

The crew who was bringing in the airplane we were to fly out didn’t fair as well, and never made it in. So that is what set me up to be in a local bar on Christmas Eve, watching the Bills game with some locals, and engaging in the conversation I want to share with you.

The first couple that sat down next to me came from an army household and had lived all over. One of their stops was Patrick air force base in Florida. We talked about the changes in central Florida over the past few decades. We talked about surfing the warm water of the Atlantic in contrast to the below freezing wind chill outside.

We shared our fondness for the space coast. The welcoming and small town feeling it had, despite it’s continuing technological progress. We shared our appreciation for the sunshine state.

They left around half time of the bills game, to be replaced by another local mother and son duo. The son appeared to be around my age or so, heavily bearded and heavily jeweled. I think he was wearing more rings, with more gemstones than my wife owns in entirety. Granted that is a low bar, but every finger was covered in a unique ring with a different color stone.

His mother was a self proclaimed long muscled and lithe woman who would outlast me on the bar’s non existent dance floor. She was an ardent disciple of stretching and long muscles, and as I found out, a proponent of being “kind” to your body.

Despite my agreeing with most of what she had to say about stretching and long, lithe muscles, when I twisted my chair to show her the IronMan logo on the back of my jacket, and I told her this was the eleventh year of my annual Christmas half marathon tradition, she rolled her eyes in disapproval.

Running for any length, but certainly a marathon (which she thought was 25 miles, but that may have been the 2-4-1 happy hour talking) was being ‘unkind’ to your body. Why would you ever want to be unkind to your body? What good could that bring?

We had a very nice conversation, agreeing on many fronts and agreeing to disagree on many others. It was a refreshing human interaction. But, it also got me thinking about the primary point of contention. Certain activities I was participating in were deemed as ‘unkind’ to the body, but then what is kindness?

Her argument was that running, biking swimming, triathlon, and certainly weight training, were unkind to the body. That their short term benefits did more long term damage. That the practice of them was unkind to the body, in pushing it beyond it’s limits.

It was difficult to pin down exactly where limits where pushed. Where was too far, or what was too heavy, or when a limit was exceeded. But in her mind stretching, lengthening exercises that promoted mobility and flexibility, and the ability to dance in her 70’s were all that mattered.

By this point the Bills game was wrapping up with the Bills coasting towards a division clinching win over the Bears. The 2-4-1’s had been flowing steadily throughout the duration of the game and my normal excitement to engage in debate was wanning.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder, what is it to be kind to your body. What is it to be kind to your children? My five year old loves to tell me that making him do difficult things by himself is not being kind. And in a sense he is right. I could do it for him with greater efficiency and effectiveness. The immediacy of that kindness, would in my opinion, be dwarfed by the disservice it would do him for future development.

I feel the same way about my body. Treating it ‘kindly’ at the expense of future development doesn’t seem like a good option to me. Sure the masochistic tendencies might seem ‘unkind’ to the outside observer, but they come from a place of love. I love my body and all of the incredible things it can do. All of the grand adventures I am able to have and share in because of the ‘unkind’ stresses my body has endured and grown from.

No one watching a parent talk a toddler through a ten minute shoe tying session would deem the exchange ‘unkind’. Providing the parent was coming from a place of love and respect and engaging the toddler on an appropriately challenging level.

Be kind to yourself. Sometimes that might mean a little bit of a break, but sometimes it might mean a kick in the ass. And, it will always include a little serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Binary

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. While continuing my linguistics research I seem to have taken a fork in the road to information theory.

Sometimes you follow these paths to dead ends. But sometimes, the path leads to somewhere interesting even if it isn’t exactly where you thought you were heading, or needed to go in the first place.

Information theory was pioneered in the 1940’s and 50’s by Claude Shannon. We talked about him a little bit in the post on noise.

One of the ideas that helped kickstart Shannon’s theory, was that of the mathematician and logician George Boole.

George Boole in the laws of thought, explains the way that any question of logic can be turned into math. This is done with conditional statements AND, OR, NOT, and IF, along with an evaluation of if the statement is true 1, or false 0.

Imagine you want to find out how many people in your city are blonde women. The characteristic blonde can be represented by x and female by y. The statements will either be true 1, or false 0. AND would be represented by multiplication •, OR by addition +.

Each data point (person) can then be evaluated by the equations which can be translated easily back and forth between math and plain English.

1•1 = 1 blonde and female. 1•0=0 blonde and male. If you decide you are only concerned with how many women there are, 1+1=1 for the group of blonde women and 0+1=1 for the group of non blonde women.

This foundation laid by Boole in the 19th century set the stage for Shannon and other inventors to build our modern computing era. Boolian algebra would work with electrical circuits laid out either in parallel or in a series to evaluate the data.

Binary implies and either/or, true/false, 1 or 0. When setting code to evaluate these statements or questions, computation can be accomplished at lightning speeds.

This is why definitions are so important. As more and more of our world is driven by this binary code, true or false, statements can only be properly evaluated if we have agreed on the definitions.

This is a blessing for our modern information age. Tasks that would require huge amounts of human time and energy, and would be very error prone, can now be automated.

2+2=4. Is the picture of a stop sign. Are the letters in This scramble grstl. These can all be assigned yes or no values. True or false. And they are very simple examples. But as we move away from simple examples and in to more complex questions, the binary coding becomes more challenging.

Writing code to evaluate human defined terms is where I want to focus. The past few years has seen a rise in social media platforms restricting posts in one way or another.

Sometimes this is done by removing the posts entirely. Sometimes it is done by flagging the post, putting some sort of warning, or label, or explanation on it. Sometimes it is done by adjusting the post’s visibility.

Most of these restrictions are performed at least initially by a computer. A computer operating in binary. The post is true or false. It contains misinformation or it doesn’t. It contains banned content or it doesn’t.

This is not a blog post about censorship, those platforms policies, or one specific position over another. It is about the process. The mechanisms behind evaluating posted content.

If these posts are being flagged initially by an algorithm. That algorithm has to be programmed to observe certain characteristics or definitions.

As we saw from the onset, computers are faster and less error prone than humans at binary logic. When it comes to subjective rationalization, not so much.

If misinformation, or objectionable content, or hate speech is clearly defined, and we all agree on the definitions, then a binary logic calculation is magically fast and efficient.

However, if we go all the way back to 1964, to the court case Jacobellis V. Ohio which ultimately ended up in the supreme court, we see the root of the problem.

A movie theater was being sued for showing a movie with a sex scene. As the court case moved it’s way up the legal system to higher and higher courts, each court was unable to successfully define obscenity and pornography.

The problem is summed up well by justice Stewart in the popular legal quote “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

If humans “perhaps can never succeed in intelligibly defining” such terms, how can we expect a computer code, written by humans to do so?

Yet this is to a large extent the situation we find ourself in. Whoever controls the definition, and writes the code, establishes the binary. What is tru and what is false.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, words are important. The way we collectively define them is important. Participating in conversations about those definitions is important and everyone has the right to a voice in that conversation.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Belonging

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Last week I stumbled into a little hipster coffee shop on a long layover in Oklahoma City. They had a bourbon maple pecan latte that caught my attention.

I typically load up my coffee at home with a lot. Creatine, resveratrol, NMN, collagen, cinnamon, and turmeric all make a regular appearance. Even still, there was a lot going on in that latte. To include chopped pecans for an oddly satisfying chewy sensation I was surprised to enjoy in my mid morning cup.

Between the heavy history of linguistics research and the multitude of flavors in the latte I was surprised when my attention was drawn to the window outside.

It was a windy day in Oklahoma. I had spent the morning running along the brick town canal and then the Oklahoma River. It was mostly quiet and just a few other walkers or cyclists were out. There was however, a small army of landscapers weilding leaf blowers.

It seemed like an exercise in futility, but there they were, it seemed a new team around every corner, battling the wind with their air cannons trying to corral the rogue leaves.

This was especially apparent outside the coffee shop window, where the small army and their mini jet engines could be heard through my ear plugs and over the hipster coffee shop music as I tried to work.

I finally looked up and saw this silly tree across the street. A lone act of defiance in an otherwise concrete jungle landscape. From my seat at the window it was hard to tell where the roots even had access to any dirt.

This was the source of all those rogue leaves. Which drew the army of jet blasting landscapers. Which in turn was providing a myriad of distractions from my project at hand. This tree obviously didn’t belong here.

Or did it.

I am very grateful for these long layovers. Away from the inevitable busyness of a flying day or life as a father and husband, I am able to have such trivial contemplations.

The tree certainly didn’t fit with the rest of the scene, and my initial reaction was that it didn’t belong. The landscaping team certainly shared my belief, fighting their uphill and upwind battle illy equiped against the leaves.

What if I got it wrong? What is the tree did belong there. What if it belonged there more than the sidewalk, or the condo, or the hipster coffee shop? Who gets to decide what belongs and what does not.

I smiled to myself as I chewed on my latte, suddenly much more appreciative of the distraction from my project. My initial reaction was unnecessarily hostile and misguided. As quickly as it came though, a competing idea bubbled up.

I thought about my boys, growing up in a world that seems to be increasingly divided and polarized. A world with spaces were belonging can be artificially defined.

I’m not sure they are old enough, and even when they are they might not fully appreciate this story. It is after all one trivial contemplation among many that I hope to bequeath them.

Maybe you had to be there. Trying to block out the hipster music and the leaf blowers, oddly chewing on pecans in a latte, reading esoteric linguistic research to really appreciate that renegade growing tall out of the concrete and peppering passers-by with it’s foliage.

But, I think it’s lesson is a valuable one. Our first reaction to who or what belongs, is not always the right one. There is beauty to be found especially in outliers, that might not seem to belong.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Durability

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. While this blog tends to wander with my mind and interests, it had at its heart the foundation of rigorous physical movement as a part of the path towards enlightenment and some sort of inner peace.

With that in mind, i wanted to talk about the concept that was presented on one of my last zwift workouts. Durability.

Zwift is the virtual cycling platform I use to train. They have curated a very extensive library of training plans and workouts, developed by professional coaches and athletes across multiple cycling and and endurance disciplines.

Each of these curated workouts has some text pop ups periodically throughout the workout. They range from small coaching tips and motivational messages, to full scientific explanations of the training methodology. The latter normally coming in the warmup phase when you aren’t focused on sucking air and trying not to embarrassingly fall off a fixed bike trainer.

As I was spinning my legs, warming up, and getting into the right headspace for a more focused training session, I wasn’t really ready for the very scientific and research based information that was being displayed in fading text bubbles.

The words passed along the screen, and I had enough otherwise unoccupied attention to realize they were important and interesting. I immediately pulled out my phone to search for the fragments of the explanation I could remember.

I found the following research paper, which was obviously the one the coach and designer of the workout was referring to, since he quoted the definition of durability verbatim.

“Therefore, applied exercise physiologists working with endurance athletes would benefit from development of physiological-profiling models that account for shifts in physiological-profiling variables during prolonged exercise and quantify the ‘durability’ of individual athletes, defined as, “the time of onset, and magnitude of deterioration, in physiological-profiling characteristics over time, during prolonged exercise.”

The team from Auckland University argues that much of the information that goes into training plan design and race pacing strategy is based on variables that are measured in a static, and usually rested, environment. Those variables of course change and degrade with time and effort. The time of onset and magnitude of deterioration is important to understand for each athlete in maximizing performance.

The workouts seek to measure or at least help you understand these characteristics in yourself by putting you into a state of fatigue, and then having some sort of repeatable assessment .

A cycling example would be a five minute time trial at the end of designed one hour workout. A running example could use an all out one mile time after a similarly structured one hour workout.

5 min time trial after a deliberately fatiguing effort

How long into a prolonged effort does your performance start to deteriorating? What is the magnitude of that deterioration? Is it linear? Does it change drastically with different perceived levels of exertion? Just how durable are you?

These are important questions. Regardless of your status as an endurance athlete, or an athlete at all. How durable are you mentally? Emotionally?

I can certainly think of more than a few instances with my boys where the ‘time of onset and magnitude of deterioration’ in my emotional profiling characteristics would not be considered durable.

As a triathlete this research fascinates me. I also directly benefit from it since coaches are reading it and using it to design workouts I have access to. I also think the ability to say ‘here defined as’ is magical.

The research team is able to specify the niche in which they wish to work. The set the definitions. They remove the potential for misconception as well as focus the readers attention in the desired direction.

Of course my mind takes the concept and wanders with it. Applying it to fatherhood, to my marriage, to research and writing projects after a long run. All of that is still within the confines of their definition. Here defined as.

The coaches and exercise physiologists can develop workouts and training plans that improve durability. Increase the time to onset. Reduce the magnitude of deterioration. Maybe even a little of each.

Who wouldn’t like to be a little more physically durable? Who wouldn’t like to be a little more mentally or emotionally durable? I think there is plenty of room for crossover between the two.

I’m by no means suggesting you deliberately exhaust yourself prior to handling a temper tantrum. But the next time it happens, as a parent and an athlete it is a matter of when not if, see it as an opportunity to become more durable.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Noise

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week I want to talk about noise.

Maybe not in the typical sense that we think of it. There are different types of noise, and they all play a part in disrupting not only effective communication, but our general happiness and even our health.

I found the idea of noise disrupting our health in the book Lifespan by Dr David Sinclair. Dr Sinclair’s message condensed down to an elevator pitch, is that ageing is a disease that can be treated, halted, and even potentially reversed.

A significant part of ageing is noise in the communication between our genes and our cells. Minimizing that noise, and ensuring genes and cells effectively communicate, keeps cells healthy, operating properly, and young.

Dr. Sinclair goes on to quote Claude Shannon, one of the founding fathers of information theory back from 1948.

Shannon’s noisy channel coding theorem, says that “however contaminated with noise interference a communication channel may be, it is possible to communicate digital data error free up to a given maximum rate through the channel. (a mathematical theory of communication, 1948)

Dr Sinclair uses this theory of information transfer as an example for how our genes and cells communicate, as well as what we can do to minimize the noise, thus maximizing the error free data transfer (effective communication)

This got me thinking about the types of noise we experience in interpersonal communications, some of which I recognized without knowing they had their own specific domains. Physiological, physical, psychological, and semantic noise all play their own part in disruption.

Physiological noise refers to anything going on within our personal body that might hinder communication. This could be a headache, hunger, fatigue or other physiological conditions. Think those Snickers commercials. Why don’t you have a Snickers, you don’t listen so well when you’re hungry.

Physical noise refers to disruptions that are physical in nature but external to the receiver. Think headset/radio/phone malfunction, a crowded room, or even a bright and distracting light.

Psychological noise refers to disruptions that are internal to the receivers thought process. If you are preoccupied with another problem, or day dreaming instead of listening that would be psychological noise.

Finally semantic noise is a misunderstanding of words between the sender and receiver. This could be due to lack of shared knowledge, language barrier, or cultural differences.

There is no shortage of barriers to effective communication. There is always some noise present, and often there is a lot of it. The constant noise we live with, makes determining Shannon’s maximum error free data transfer rate a crucial piece of information to know and apply.

Staying at or below the applicable Shannon rate for a given exchange will ensure the message is transmitted effectively. If you have ever had a conversation at a loud concert, with a foreign speaker, a toddler, or someone with a bad hangover, you already understand self limiting your rate of data transfer through the given channel. (If you’ve ever been the hungover one this is greatly appreciated)

Taking account of the noise around us, and the overall capacity of our channels of communication is a demanding and everpresent task. One that helps pave the path to serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.