The struggle with psyche.

I had just finished a morning run in the apartment gym. The goal was to run four songs at 7.5 speed w/ 3.5 incline, take a break, and then one song at 7.5 speed with 5.0 incline (I measure distance in songs on Pandora, 30 second advertisements do not count as a song). I made it to four songs before the break, and a pathetic half song after. So obviously I was disappointed. I hadn’t made any reasonable progress towards 8 songs + break + 2 songs since I set the goal three bleeding years ago. I need a new strategy. I need to approach this….’laterally’. Yeah, that’s what my ENG 333 Creativity in Engineering professor would say.

I listened to a rock song. Something in the song made me think. “When things are hard, you should keep doing them until the difficulty becomes normal. Practice makes perfect, right.” I can get behind that. Run till I’m tired, then run again, then again, but all in the same session. I would discard my measuring stick of songs and simply run until I tire, take a short break and then run again. Eventually I will get used to the feeling of my lungs feeling like lead weights and I will be able to tolerate it. But there is one problem.

I lied to you. I have made some progress since three years ago. When I started I could only run for 1 mile, now I can run for 4 songs (2 miles). Notice the difference? By measuring distance in songs, I was able to double the amount my mind could run! It must have something to do with mental perception of time and environmental affect on mood, and definitely not that my stamina improved. And herein lies the problem: I push myself to finish 4 songs before I stop running no matter how heavy those lead weights get. If I start my new strategy, my brain will get used to stopping before 4 songs are over and I’ll lose all the progress I made over these 3 years ☹. I couldn’t have that, I hate moving in rewind.

There is a happy ending to this post. I figured that if I try my new strategy without listening to music, I won’t interfere with the part of my brain’s anatomy that has been trained to run for 4 songs. Perfecto!

*SIGH*

That was quite the wrestle. I wish there was a book. You know, like a book with a very intuitive appendix. One where I could find the page for “Brain-region Training Interference” and get the answer I reached in 1 hour in just 1 minute. “Don’t listen to music while you run”, it would say. Someone should write that book. I’d buy it.