half marathon – Serenity Through Sweat

Misspent Youth

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This past week I ran the 10th edition of the annual Christmas half marathon and it had me thinking about an old rowing movie.

The Skulls is a movie from the year 2000 featuring Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker. It was popular amongst my friends and I in high school because it featured a very unrealistic depiction of rowing, and there weren’t a whole lot of those on the big screen at the time, or since then for that matter.

Joshua Jackson’s character Luke McNamara is your typical underdog. He comes from an underprivileged background, makes it on to the rowing team where he outworks everyone to earn his way into a good college.

From there he becomes obsessed with gaining social status through a secret society called the Skull and Bones. It is there he meets his Skulls “soulmate” (read frat brother) Caleb Mandrake played by Paul Walker. Drama and crime ensue and the movie is far from a blockbuster, but there are worse ways to spend two hours.

Caleb and Luke come from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. Caleb is the poster boy from the Creedence Clearwater Revival song, a senator’s son, silver spoon in hand.

There are a pair of matching scenes in which the two “soulmates” help each other in the areas they are each more suited to. Caleb ties Luke’s bowtie, and Luke helps Caleb pick a lock in the respective scenes to which they remark to each other, “the skills of a misspent youth”.

Both characters help their friend, and both skills are valuable in the context of the film and otherwise. There is a tangible sense of regret and envy from each of the characters to the other, feeling that the grass was greener for the way they each grew up.

I ditched the captain, who had invited me out to Buffalo wild wings, in order to embark on my traditional holiday trek. I’m glad I did, and I’m happy with my choice. But, it got me thinking about the skills learned over 10 years of this tradition, which by many might consider, a misspent youth.

What started out as a planned training day while I was on call, morphed into a coping mechanism from being away from home and then into something more. Over the years the Christmas half marathon has taken place at home, in the snow, on a treadmill, and through the woods.

Getting zwifty before heading in to work

It has been a run of celebration, a run of grieving, and a run to stave off boredom. It has been exciting and much anticipated, and it has been slogged through and checked off the to do list most unceremoniously.

More than anything though the tradition has endured. After ten years, all the changes in my life and the world around, all the stress and added activity of the holiday season, this run has been a constant. 13.1 miles of self reflection.

There is an opportunity cost to everything. Time marches on, and every thing that we choose to occupy ourselves with, necessitates a removal of another choice that might have been made.

Endurance athletics in particular carry a high opportunity cost because they are often time consuming solo endeavors. Still, I feel the same way about them as I do about the Skulls movie, and the notion of skills from a misspent youth. There are certainly worse ways to spend two hours.

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

Pleasure

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week I was listening to the Huberman lab podcast episode 32 on pain and pleasure, and it brought me back to something my highschool rowing coach used to tell me.

Dr. Huberman is a Neurobiologist and professor at the Stanford school of medicine and his podcast covers a number of topics with a scientific and specifically a neurobiology approach to various topics.

Dr Huberman, does an excellent job covering very complex scientific topics, breaking down on a mechanistic basis what goes in the body and brain while remaining surprisingly approachable to the novice, unscientific enthusiast.

El Duderino was very excited to go full cannibal on Halloween. A lollipop eating a lollipop

The episode on pain and pleasure was a two hour deep dive into the various ways we experience and modulate pain and pleasure and how the two are interconnected. Specifically of interest, to me anyhow, was the research around dopamine reward prediction error by Dr Schulz

The study explored the way that dopamine levels are modulated when behavior is rewarded on a variable schedule. The best example of this is slot machines in a casino. Not knowing when you are going to win and then getting a bigger reward than expected makes the behavior more rewarding (from a chemical perspective not necessarily a financial one)

Dopamine is not really a feel good hormone, it is actually a behavior reinforcement and learning hormone. The dopamine levels in patients did not change significantly and actually dropped after a reward was received. The dopamine is instead released based on anticipation of the reward so that the behavior used to obtain the reward is what is learned.

Pumpkins and protons, not spooky but groovy

This is one reason why athletes feel so connected to their training and preparation prior to a win. The dopamine is released in anticipation of the win to reinforce the training behaviors.

This same concept can be applied to our own behavior outside a clinical setting. We can regulate our self rewarding in order to continue to motivate behavior. The thought being, if you reward yourself every time you engage in a behavior you want to keep doing, your dopamine response will gradually decrease. Whereas if you reward yourself on a variable, intermittent, or otherwise randomized schedule for that same behavior, your dopamine levels (which help drive motivation for that behavior) will remain higher.

The practical application example that was given was rewarding yourself or your teammates after a win or a hard training session. There is certainly something to be said for celebrating your accomplishments, but celebrating every time can lead to reduced dopamine which in turn would lead to less desire to perform those actions that lead to the win in the first place.

In high school I joined the crew team my freshman year and was lucky enough to be part of a few very successful boats. Competing in both a lightweight eight man boat and a lightweight four man boat, my friends and I won numerous local regattas, placed at the NY state championships and even won a Canadian national championship.

Keeping myself honest with the speed work mixed in.

After every win, regardless of whether it was our local club race or a national championship ship our coach would say “enjoy it today, because tomorrow it doesn’t mean shit”.

While that’s not my particular coaching style, and that type of coaching and motivation isn’t for everyone, it seems that it is at least backed by the science of motivation and dopamine reward pathways.

Halloween half marathon by coincidence (not planning on making that one a thing)

By not celebrating our wins and overstimulating a dopamine response, our desire to obtain a reward and thus the behavior that was required to obtain that reward was reinforced.

As with most topics we cover here, and many more we don’t, a delicate balance must be struck to obtain optimum levels of pleasure, dopamine modulation, and serenity for that matter too. In a first world of instant gratification, a self regulated variable reward protocol can help us reinforce good behaviors on the path to serenity.

Adding up miles and time in the saddle as IM FL 70.3 approaches

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

Tradition

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. With Christmas behind us, I was thinking about all of the things I did growing up with my family, and the things I want to do with my family now. I started to wonder, what makes a tradition?

By definition, a tradition is “an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior”. Basically anything we pass on to the next generation is a tradition.

Upper thigh parade in the new shorts for the 2020 Christmas Half Marathon

The creation of, and passing on of tradition is a powerful responsibility. I think it is important to not only explore the actions and behaviors that we are passing down themselves, but also the why behind them.

This year marked the ninth annual Christmas half marathon. What started out as an excursion in masochism and mindfulness to combat being alone on Christmas, has turned into something more.

Speedy and El Duderino ready to get the festivities started.

In 2012, after signing up for Ironman Florida to take place the following November, I ran 14.5 miles on Christmas day. While keeping my training volume up after a recent half iron triathlon and a century ride, the run was really about being on call over Christmas and not being able to see family.

As a charter pilot and particularly one junior at the company, I spent the next several years running half marathons on or around Christmas, either in different cities or on hotel treadmills. Finding solace in street, and comfort on the concrete, I pounded the pavement to combat the rising tide of frustration, emotion, and solitude that went hand in hand with professions that work through holidays, especially away from home.

Milk, cookies, carrots, and our letter to Santa

This pattern continued from 2012-2016. Five years, five half marathons, mostly a steam pipe venting pent up holiday emotions while working away from home. Then in 2017, El Duderino was born at the beginning of December. In addition, my grandmother passed right around Christmas in 2017.

I was planning on being home for Christmas 2017 one way or the other. But that year I was home with my wife and newborn son. I was in-between jobs on a sick time paid paternity leave from my prior charter job, and getting ready to start at a new airline that would be my career dream job. With a three week old baby, a well accumulated sleep debt, and the emotional toll of a lost family member very fresh, the pavement was calling for a whole host of new reasons.

2 is 1, and 1 is none, has never been truer than when your toddler takes your roller after you’re done running 13 miles. Thank God for backups

What started as an escape from solitude and an outlet for frustration, had changed with my growing family. There is a clarity that endurance challenges offer in a way nothing else can quite match. Whatever stresses or anxieties you lay on the alter of repetitive cardiovascular motion can be alleviated with the proper offering.

Over the past few years, managing my holiday schedule has become as much about being home with my growing family, as it is about making time to log those miles. My physical, mental, and emotional state has been different each year, and what I needed to get out of the run has been a little different as well.

A bold strategy for the days preceding the half marathon.

One aspect of SerenityThroughSweat is the process of working through those demons out on the pavement, in search of being a better person. The tradition of a Christmas half marathon, has helped me in what can be, despite it’s many joys, a stressful season.

Long distance running during the holidays has become an established pattern of behavior for me. While I would love to see my boys pick up and ultimately pass on that tradition, the run is just the mechanism and the reasons behind it, serenity, clarity, solace, relief, are what is truly important. I hope that those are the thoughts, behaviors, and actions, that are passed down through generations. In the end, I hope that I can raise young men who are capable of finding their own path to serenity, and making their own traditions

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

Reality

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. As I was laying down some Sunday morning miles on my layover in Appleton Wisconsin, I saw the mural (above) and it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes. “If you see entrapment you will be stuck, If you see redemption you will be saved, reality is largely dependent on what you are willing to see it as”

Attending Catholic school from K-12 I had always found comfort and guidance in religion. (There were some unanswered questions but that is a topic for another time). A teacher, deacon, priest, or coach who could take a biblical idea and reach across generational boundaries to leave an impression on young men is no small task. My high school wrestling coach used to say God, Family, Country, and Wrestling. The majority of my world view was shaped in this manner.

Speedy and El Duderino hanging out on the back porch, and El Duderino in the no cavity club.

There are plenty of bible stories about positive thinking, and I had no shortage of opportunities to learn and grow from shortcomings in my athletic pursuits, but somehow the message never transcended into a global world view until I found that quote. I stumbled upon it very unceremoniously in the horoscope section of my AOL sign on page one day, (back when AOL Instant messenger was still a thing). I’m not a horoscope person, and I don’t know why I chose to read it that day, but I’m glad that I did, since it has stuck with all these years.

I think this is the message that we need as a nation right now. There is undeniably an abundance of suffering and misfortune with everything COVID-19 related and the myriad of social justice issues that we face together. The best path forward is to focus on redemption, not entrapment, and reality is a whole lot brighter through that lens.

Together we will need to find new ways to make the things we need, and to provide the services we have come to value, in a safe, healthy, and efficient manner. Looking at the redemption side of our post Covid reality, it is bursting with opportunity for growth, innovation, and a chance to reprioritize social values we deem important.

I’ve talked in prior posts about reprioritization, the quote is not so much about the details, (which are important) but rather about the overall outlook. Being willing to look forward and see a path to redemption is not an easy task. It requires constant focus and often times we will need to self correct our course.

Reality, much like serenity, is a living and changing entity. The way we view it, define it, and ultimately strive for it, is dependent on what we are willing to see it as.

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