{"id":618,"date":"2024-12-19T10:41:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T15:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=618"},"modified":"2024-12-19T10:41:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T15:41:55","slug":"the-tao-of-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=618","title":{"rendered":"The Tao of Running"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Been trying to make some sense of life lately.\u00a0 Been looking in some pretty heady places too. Some practical: Marc Bloom’s The Marathon \u2014 What It Takes To Go The Distance. <\/em>\u00a0Some psychological: The Rhythm \u2014 Being Your Best In Sport & Business<\/em> (Richard Lonetto’s brief and expensive treatise on “that harmonious balance of mind and body, enabling one to function at his best”).\u00a0 Some plain desperate: How To Do Almost Everything<\/em> (Burt Bacharach’s 1970 classic, for those of you who may have missed it).\u00a0 Not much luck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, I rediscovered Joe Henderson’s, Hal Higdon’s, and David Costill’s strategies for a successful race.\u00a0 I now know that straight lines are bad; waves, with calm troughs, preceded by a preparatory state of excitement and followed by an equally charged point of release (sounds a little orgasmic to me) keep one in “rhythm”.\u00a0 And last (and arguably, least), I have had it reaffirmed that leather hat bands should be wiped regularly with a soapy cloth to stave off build-up of oil and soil \u2014 thank you, Burt.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What’s the search all about?\u00a0 Seems a long-established and eminently sensible decision made some five years ago has been recently called into question \u2014 and I’m wondering why.\u00a0 To wit: No More Marathons!<\/em>\u00a0 I have come to terms with any number of realities in my forty odd years.\u00a0 That my high school gym teacher was right \u2014 I would lose a major portion of my hair by the late 1980’s.\u00a0 That my parents were right \u2014 I would someday look back and understand why they put up with me as an adolescent.\u00a0 And most significantly, that I<\/em> was right \u2014 I am a middle distance runner, ill-equipped to go 42.2 kilometres.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All this collected wisdom aside, the Forest City Marathon<\/em> dangled out there like a sure thing in the fifth at Western Fair.\u00a0 Hard to resist.\u00a0 A little shift in training emphasis, a modest extension of mileage, four months of prep time \u2014 should be a piece of cake.\u00a0 For better or worse, this is one cake that failed to rise.\u00a0 Training has soured over the past several weeks, fatigue is constant, essential mileage has dwindled, and “test races” have been disappointing.\u00a0 My search, then, at first was to find some answers to the immediate and disturbing question: how come hard work hasn’t produced the expected (and strongly yearned for) result?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As has often been the case for me with running, asking the obvious question has led to a deeper truth, a truth that sports physiologists and psychologists (and, God forbid, even Burt) rarely address.\u00a0 That life, no matter how much we may will it to be otherwise, is fraught with cycles<\/strong> \u2014 undeniable, unavoidable, sometimes inexplicable and, more often than not, frustrating and angering \u2014 highs and lows that come and go at will.\u00a0 The best we can do is to identify them and know our place within them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In this particular struggle, I found my answers in two surprisingly divergent sources: the Tao te Ching<\/em> (as reworked by John Heider in The Tao of Leadership<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Natural events are cyclical, always changing from one extreme toward an opposite…That is \u00a0the way of nature: to relax what is tense, to fill \u00a0what is empty, to reduce what is \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 overflowing…The wise man follows this natural \u00a0\u00a0 order of events (and in so doing) becomes potent and successful (p. 153).<\/em><\/p>\n

and elsewhere,<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All behaviour consists of opposites or polarities.\u00a0 If I do anything more and more, over and over, \u00a0\u00a0 its polarity will appear.\u00a0 (Striving to be beautiful makes a person ugly.)\u00a0 The wise man does not \u00a0 push<\/strong> to make<\/strong>things happen, but allows<\/strong>\u00a0process to unfold on its own<\/em> (p. 3).<\/p>\n

and in a wonderfully simple lyric from a tune by Mark Knopfler:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sometimes you’re the windshield<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sometimes you’re the bug<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sometimes you’re the ball<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sometimes it all comes together<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Sometimes you’re gonna lose it all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Bug, <\/em>Dire Straits<\/p>\n

Guess it was just my turn to be the bug.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Been trying to make some sense of life lately.\u00a0 Been looking in some pretty heady places too. Some practical: Marc Bloom’s The Marathon \u2014 What It Takes To Go The Distance. \u00a0Some psychological: The Rhythm \u2014 Being Your Best In Sport & Business (Richard Lonetto’s brief and expensive treatise on “that harmonious balance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}