Date: 3/23/14
Distance: 6.68 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Sawbones (Weight Loss)
For the first bit, I mostly thought about how much I had to pee. I stuck to my route, which was on suburban sidewalks for the first 3.5 miles, despite a nagging need to duck into the woods for a minute. But there were no woods for a while. And such is the dedication to my craft. For the rest of it, I was free to think about loftier things. Thanks, Maslow!
There is a world of difference between my mind when I'm running while looking down and when I'm running and looking up. The latter keeps me focused on going the distance and the former keeps me focused on dumb things like didn't that small pile of sticks look like a human figure, like literally a "stick figure" and whether pencil lines on a page are considered "sticks" in other contexts because I can't think of any they are always just called lines although technically "line segments" because "lines" technically extend infinitely in two directions...
Also I thought a lot about weight loss because of the podcast. I've been half-thinking for a bit about how almost all the desire for weight loss I see in my culture is actually just a desire for size loss. Literally no one I know would be upset if they were slimmer but weighed more. And this is probably a perfectly reasonable outcome for someone who replaces fat, which is big and light, with muscle, which is smaller and dense. This post I just found makes this point pretty well: weight loss per se is a pretty dumb goal since no one can see your weight and literally no one cares about your weight. Your bigness, on the other hand, is there for everyone to see.
Also, I've been weighing myself on the digital scale my wife bought. I like to do it: it's so easy and the number is so clear. I weigh myself several times a day and I've been keeping track using some phone app I found. Since I re-started running recently, I've lost a couple of pounds overall, but it's really only about one standard deviation of my weight fluctuations from hour to hour. I'm not sure how normal this is: this post I also just found cites some "nutritionist" as saying 3 to 5 pounds range in a day is perfectly normal. 3 to 5 pounds is a dieter's success story! And it can be attained just by weighing yourself a couple of times in the same day! I could make a fortune with the "wait four hours" diet. Or should that be the "Weight For Hours" diet? I am a genius. Do not steal my idea.
I counted calories for a while too, but it's really annoying because food is largely an undifferentiated mass, but calorie counting requires some sorting and clarity. That egg and cheese biscuit at Johnny's may have 250 calories or 350 calories depending on the weight of the thing and the size of the biscuit and the type of cheese and who the hell cares because I'm hungry and I'm going to eat it. In any case, I think I've figured out that "hungry" is really just my body keeping a balance of calories in to calories out. It's really kind of amazing to see the numbers verify this obvious conclusion. If I exercise I bunch, I get hungry and I eat more. It all kind of works out: I end up eating (in counted calories) about as much as I burn (in counted exercise) except for two things:
First, I don't know a lot about my non-exercise burning. I know I'm burning calories just typing this out: energy isn't free. I know if I were out of calories I would be hungry and tired, so I'm obviously still running on whatever calorie savings I've accrued. But typing isn't exercise so I don't know how to count it all up. Heck, just being a warm mammal burns calories. There are estimates for a man of my size and activity level and I can just lean on those, but how can one verify that I'm not burning more (or less) than I think I am?
Second, I almost always eat when I'm hungry but I don't always stop when I'm full. Because of this, my calorie overages are many and my calorie underages (that didn't type out right: "my calorie deficits" is maybe better?) are few. So even if I'm not over-eating at any given point, it all adds up. It's weirdly hard to burn more than you eat...
Unless you burn a frickin' lot. I'm starting to think that getting to that point where your hunger feels insatiable is the best place to be. So I'm going to keep running farther and harder until I get to that point. But I'm not going to hold my breath until my scale shows me lower numbers.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Kids don't know anything about fire safety or drug use
Date: 3/14/14
Distance: 1.64 miles, then 1.34 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the middle bit)
The first time I ever encountered drug use was a late spring day after school. I was in 7th grade, I think. I was walking home from the bus stop and I saw a kid lighting a fire in the yard next to his house. That week there had been lots of news reports about the dry, windy weather and all the adults were concerned about fires, fire safety, and fires getting out of control. So I did what I thought any reasonable citizen would do: I approached this guy (he was probably a couple years older than I was) and asked what he was doing.
I asked in part rhetorically because that's why I'd gone over to him in the first place: I wanted to call attention to his possibly irresponsible behavior. But I also asked because I literally didn't know what exactly he was doing. I still don't think I know exactly what he was doing.
He was pouring lighter fluid on some dark green plant matter that he'd scooped into a small pile on a bare spot on the lawn. Then he was lighting it with a match, putting his face directly over the fire, and covering his head with with his jacket.
Now that I'm a wise old man, I think it was pot and he either had no idea what he was doing or he was really bad at huffing. Probably both. In any case, he looked at me like I was nuts and I mumbled something about being careful with fire because of the wind and stuff and then walked away.
That poor kid. I hope he was jaded and thought I was dumb. Otherwise he probably spent the rest of the afternoon worried that dorky little me was going to call the cops about some kid setting fire to his lawn...
Distance: 1.64 miles, then 1.34 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the middle bit)
The first time I ever encountered drug use was a late spring day after school. I was in 7th grade, I think. I was walking home from the bus stop and I saw a kid lighting a fire in the yard next to his house. That week there had been lots of news reports about the dry, windy weather and all the adults were concerned about fires, fire safety, and fires getting out of control. So I did what I thought any reasonable citizen would do: I approached this guy (he was probably a couple years older than I was) and asked what he was doing.
I asked in part rhetorically because that's why I'd gone over to him in the first place: I wanted to call attention to his possibly irresponsible behavior. But I also asked because I literally didn't know what exactly he was doing. I still don't think I know exactly what he was doing.
He was pouring lighter fluid on some dark green plant matter that he'd scooped into a small pile on a bare spot on the lawn. Then he was lighting it with a match, putting his face directly over the fire, and covering his head with with his jacket.
Now that I'm a wise old man, I think it was pot and he either had no idea what he was doing or he was really bad at huffing. Probably both. In any case, he looked at me like I was nuts and I mumbled something about being careful with fire because of the wind and stuff and then walked away.
That poor kid. I hope he was jaded and thought I was dumb. Otherwise he probably spent the rest of the afternoon worried that dorky little me was going to call the cops about some kid setting fire to his lawn...
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Some dogs care about runners a lot more than other dogs
Date: 3/13/14
Distance: 2.5 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the first bit)
Some dogs obviously want to join the running game. If they are off leash, they often will. If they are on leash they will often seem to forget and try to join anyway. Yank! My dog is somewhere in the middle. He'll sort of feign running the way you might say "yeah, yeah, yeah" to an idea you like but don't really like. He'll get up to speed for one or two paces and then peter out quickly (obviously not tired) and kind of circle back to where he was before. Sometimes he won't even look at you while he does it. It's like an annoying job that he feels everyone expects him to do.
Also, Dave and Graham say "yeah, yeah, yeah" a lot. Dave mostly, but now Graham does too. I've been listening to these guys for too long. This particular episode is odd because it's the first time I've noticed how much they need a guest to keep the discussion grounded. They are like identical twins who speak to each other in a secret language made up by them and for them only. Not that I can't follow along, but I imagine my years of dedicated listening help me understand things.
There is a funny feeling from changing one's stride from long and loping to quick and staccato and then back again. Speed is independent of this: both strides can be fast or slow. It's just something to do. Running can be boring.
Distance: 2.5 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the first bit)
Some dogs obviously want to join the running game. If they are off leash, they often will. If they are on leash they will often seem to forget and try to join anyway. Yank! My dog is somewhere in the middle. He'll sort of feign running the way you might say "yeah, yeah, yeah" to an idea you like but don't really like. He'll get up to speed for one or two paces and then peter out quickly (obviously not tired) and kind of circle back to where he was before. Sometimes he won't even look at you while he does it. It's like an annoying job that he feels everyone expects him to do.
Also, Dave and Graham say "yeah, yeah, yeah" a lot. Dave mostly, but now Graham does too. I've been listening to these guys for too long. This particular episode is odd because it's the first time I've noticed how much they need a guest to keep the discussion grounded. They are like identical twins who speak to each other in a secret language made up by them and for them only. Not that I can't follow along, but I imagine my years of dedicated listening help me understand things.
There is a funny feeling from changing one's stride from long and loping to quick and staccato and then back again. Speed is independent of this: both strides can be fast or slow. It's just something to do. Running can be boring.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Cultural neoteny
Date: 3/11/14
Distance: 5.5 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: A Cracked Podcast about alien life
You know neoteny, right? It's the evolutionary pressure to retain juvenile traits longer. As I understand it, human head size is big but women's pelvises are about the same so there's pressure for babies to be born sooner (or less developed) than they used to. That means babies come out "younger", developmentally-speaking, than they used to (in evolutionary terms). And that means that we modern humans are kind of like less mature phylogenetic versions of our pre-modern-human ancestors. I'm no evolutionary biologist, I'm just aware of this notion.
Anyhow, so what if the same thing is true for culture? I know I get impatient with my 9 and 10 year-olds when they make certain kinds of jokes or ask certain kinds of questions. Those jokes and questions seem really immature to me and I don't like them. But they probably aren't really immature from a 9 and 10 year-old's perspective. Those kids are objectively immature. I'm too impatient. But seriously, those jokes are so dumb. It hurts to have to tolerate them. Please forgive me.
Here's the thing: my girls want to please me, or at least not annoy me too much. So they feel some pressure to figure out what those jokes and questions are before they open their mouths because they don't like to see my impatient annoyed face. That pressure is formative for them. They are internalizing my voice into their little psyches (God help them) and I will forever follow them around in super-ego form.
Now this happened to me, too. And my super-ego is really just my own parents' sense of decorum as modeled by my mind when it was a young kid's mind. So in a sense, my impatience is a function of my parents' impatience, and (I assume) their parents' and theirs' and so on and so on. When I hear a funny fart sound, I have generations of ancestors rolling their eyes at while I suppress my giggles. World without end, amen, amen.
But I'm an adult now and I know that and I know I can laugh at a funny fart sound if I damned well please thankyouverymuch, so I have the freedom to ignore that super-ego and be a bit more fancy-free. My kids see this, too, of course. And it must be insanely confusing for them: sometimes dad is silly and sometimes he is serious. They want to know if there is a pattern to it. They ask me about it a lot.
Is there neoteny here? Am I sillier than my parents? Will my kids inherit less of a severe super-ego than I did? Is my own sense of adultness contributing to my children's immaturity? Is this an inevitable consequence of our psychology?
I had to stop on an uphill at the 5.6 mile mark or so. I was simply too tired. I know I can hit the 6 mile mark next time.
Distance: 5.5 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: A Cracked Podcast about alien life
You know neoteny, right? It's the evolutionary pressure to retain juvenile traits longer. As I understand it, human head size is big but women's pelvises are about the same so there's pressure for babies to be born sooner (or less developed) than they used to. That means babies come out "younger", developmentally-speaking, than they used to (in evolutionary terms). And that means that we modern humans are kind of like less mature phylogenetic versions of our pre-modern-human ancestors. I'm no evolutionary biologist, I'm just aware of this notion.
Anyhow, so what if the same thing is true for culture? I know I get impatient with my 9 and 10 year-olds when they make certain kinds of jokes or ask certain kinds of questions. Those jokes and questions seem really immature to me and I don't like them. But they probably aren't really immature from a 9 and 10 year-old's perspective. Those kids are objectively immature. I'm too impatient. But seriously, those jokes are so dumb. It hurts to have to tolerate them. Please forgive me.
Here's the thing: my girls want to please me, or at least not annoy me too much. So they feel some pressure to figure out what those jokes and questions are before they open their mouths because they don't like to see my impatient annoyed face. That pressure is formative for them. They are internalizing my voice into their little psyches (God help them) and I will forever follow them around in super-ego form.
Now this happened to me, too. And my super-ego is really just my own parents' sense of decorum as modeled by my mind when it was a young kid's mind. So in a sense, my impatience is a function of my parents' impatience, and (I assume) their parents' and theirs' and so on and so on. When I hear a funny fart sound, I have generations of ancestors rolling their eyes at while I suppress my giggles. World without end, amen, amen.
But I'm an adult now and I know that and I know I can laugh at a funny fart sound if I damned well please thankyouverymuch, so I have the freedom to ignore that super-ego and be a bit more fancy-free. My kids see this, too, of course. And it must be insanely confusing for them: sometimes dad is silly and sometimes he is serious. They want to know if there is a pattern to it. They ask me about it a lot.
Is there neoteny here? Am I sillier than my parents? Will my kids inherit less of a severe super-ego than I did? Is my own sense of adultness contributing to my children's immaturity? Is this an inevitable consequence of our psychology?
I had to stop on an uphill at the 5.6 mile mark or so. I was simply too tired. I know I can hit the 6 mile mark next time.
Why did I start a new blog?
Because I have this problem: I have interesting ideas while I'm running, but I have no good way to record them while I'm running and I forget them quickly when I stop.
Running takes a lot of time. I can run 5 or 6 miles now on a good run, but it takes me an hour or more. That's a lot of time to think. I like to listen to podcasts or audio books while I run, but my mind often wanders. Sometimes it wanders into odd places. I think the running is a metaphor for thought and the more I run simply to log the miles, the more I my mind wanders simply to have new thoughts.
Sometimes those thoughts seem interesting at the time, but I forget about them when I get home and need to shower and change and do something more productive. It's like dreaming, but a lot more grounded.
So here is where I will write out my thoughts. This is my running-dream journal, if you will. It's self-indulgent, but hey what blog isn't?
Running takes a lot of time. I can run 5 or 6 miles now on a good run, but it takes me an hour or more. That's a lot of time to think. I like to listen to podcasts or audio books while I run, but my mind often wanders. Sometimes it wanders into odd places. I think the running is a metaphor for thought and the more I run simply to log the miles, the more I my mind wanders simply to have new thoughts.
Sometimes those thoughts seem interesting at the time, but I forget about them when I get home and need to shower and change and do something more productive. It's like dreaming, but a lot more grounded.
So here is where I will write out my thoughts. This is my running-dream journal, if you will. It's self-indulgent, but hey what blog isn't?
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