Passion Intervals

"Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion."
— Thomas Browne

Imagine you are out running on a wet, windy, cold Sunday morning, said Dr. Timothy Noakes, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town. “The conscious brain says, ‘You know that coffee shop on the corner. That’s where you really should be.’” And suddenly, you feel tired, it’s time to stop. There is some fatigue in muscle, I’m not suggesting muscles don’t get fatigued,” Dr. Noakes said. “I’m suggesting that the brain can make the muscles work harder if it wanted to.”

The above quote by Thomas Browne got me to thinking. I guess I'm easy that way. Don't take much. The sovereignty of humor and passion. Laugh and love with maximum intensity, recover, consider the fallout, repeat. Or, work hard, think, relax, laugh, love. However you want to structure your intervals, recognize their value and focus on the easy efforts as much as the hard ones. Give as much, or more, to what is easy, so that intensity is not a problem when the hammer gets dropped.

Here is the clincher: The next quote from Dr. Noakes, author of Lore of Running, suggests that all the limiters and all the sabotage and all the disappointment comes from our uncanny ability to talk ourselves into or out of, optimum performance. What we have been guessing all these years, finally has some medical validity and scientific support.

It's all upstairs. The NY Times article (while rambling a bit before the home stretch) says, again from Dr. Noakes, that you can think yourself into a better race, just as easily as you can think yourself out of one. Or a better spin session, or hard interval, or time trial, or whatever.

We knew this all along didn't we? Kinda, sorta, maybe?

Yes, we did. Now let's put it into play. We'll start tomorrow at 0530, usual place. Get some rest. And don't try to think of an excuse.

Pic: A staggeringly beautiful madrona cliff side on Crystal Springs, site of the start and finish of our 12 miler today. Trained with a very talented junior this morning, and watched Tony M. kill his TT yesterday in 44:44. Life means challenge, no?