eureka

I have come to the conclusion that my relative lack of motivation and my large feelings of restlessness stem from the fact that I am not receiving adequate physical activity to satisfy my body's needs. I interpret my body's physiological rebellion as a sign that I need to start running again every day. I've been letting my ankle heal this past week - it's probably at 95% right now - and trying to convince myself that playing intramural volleyball is the same thing as doing 20 minutes of straight running, but I find that's not the case. Volleyball is too much explosive movement and not enough stamina, so it's clear to see that I'm not getting nearly as much cardiovascular workout as I need to keep me going. I feel the way Henry felt when he lost his legs and couldn't run anymore...just way less depressing and on a much lesser magnitude.

I tried something new today that I discussed with Ellis a long time ago. If you don't know, one of my favourite players is Richard Hamilton off the Detroit Pistons:



Rip models his game after the great Reggie Miller, a controversial yet fantastic shooter. If you check out the video above, Rip's game is running all the time when he doesn't have the ball, curling off of screens, flaring around them, then cutting deep or backdoor for the ball and back outside if he can't create a shot opportunity. That being said, one of the great requirements to being able to play the running guard is that you have to be able to run for long periods of time without tiring.

I created a running pattern which is loosely based off of wind sprints as Ellis describes. I basically run for ~5 minutes till all my joints are loosened up and my muscles are warm, then I start. I run the length of two lampposts at regular speed, then once I hit the end of the second length I sprint as fast as I can toward the next lamppost. I then cut my pace back for another two lampposts, then repeat the sprinting. I do this ~10 times throughout my run. I'm looking to increase the length of the burst runs, but I mean I'll take it one step at a time (literally). In this manner I model my runs after Richard Hamilton's game in that I am always moving, but only bursting to get open at certain opportune moments. It's grueling when you know a sprint is coming up, but I have to say that overall this dull ache I have in my legs right now feels damn good.

thermal grill illusion

I had the most fantastic run today. Admittedly, it started off almost not being a run at all. I awoke this morning to find my sister hogging the bathroom, so instead of departing normally at 5:25 AM I had to wait till about 5:50 AM till I could brush my teeth and mouthwash before heading out.

I took an abnormal route today to just shave off a few minutes since it's cutting it a little close to when I leave for school. This took me on a little bit of a windy and hilly course, which was sorely needed to combat the boredom of a straight course (thanks for the tip Ellis!). Whether it was the change of scenery or just the desperation of finishing ahead of schedule, I managed to pick up both my leg rate and my stride length to pretty much racing strides. The best part was that I felt really comfortable with adjusting between my regular pace and the race pace, so that when I started to get a little tired I'd just drop it back a little bit. With the help of some Coheed & Cambria, my last 800m was a solid sprint to the finish, after which I took off my earphones and yelled, "AWESOME!"

All in all, a good morning.

***

Now onto the thermal grill illusion. I had the fallacy of believing that our cutaneous receptors have a single fiber for sensing temperatures. This is incorrect. We actually have two separate types of receptors embedded, one that interprets cold and the other that interprets hot.

In what is known as the thermal grill illusion, you wrap two sets of tubes around each other to form a spiral rod. One set of tubes has warm water coursing through, while the other has cold water. You touch each tube separates and feel their respective heats. Now when you grab them both in your hand at the same time, you receive the illusion of a scalding hot rod.

The sensation/perception (I know, it blurs the lines) of burning heat has been studied and activates both the cold and the hot fibers in your hands, oddly enough - a finding first explored by Thunberg. I had the fun time of coming into the house this morning with freezing hands (cold fibers well activated) and taking a warm shower (hot fibers activated) and having my hands believe the water was meltingly hot (while my body believed it was rather lukewarm).

It's incredible what our mind interprets, and how much error there actually can be. Our sensorium is extremely gifted at taking what is from the environment and creating an interpretation. At the same time, it's also pretty good at lying to us (ie. how we don't notice our eye saccades).

the runs

One of my goals for this term is to run every morning before school starts. While it's pretty early on, I do feel that there have been a lot of noticeable changes right off the bat - my stamina is definitely improving and my energy and focus is considerably increased. I'm getting these dull pains in the muscles on both sides of my thighs just above the medial and lateral condyles (hey we're just reviewing skeletal - give me a few week and I'll actually be able to tell you which muscles they are) that I'm beginning to associate with these runs. They're painful but kind of nice, a sort of dull pain you don't mind poking at like the pain from a loose tooth.

While I still have a long ways to go, I really do feel that I'm already beginning to make strides (pun!) much in the way when you first start working out you make drastic improvements until you plateau. I'm still on the uphill and enjoying it. I had began the week running at a laborious pace, a skill that sorely needed working on. I used to tire myself out way too quickly, so all summer work in vascular intervention taught me to pace myself. I applied this to my run and was able to achieve the 20 minute mark with minimal cramping.

I'm running this course that takes me along Rabbit Hill Rd. south towards Janet's condos, brings me along South Terwillegar Drive and then loops back around towards Terwillegar Blvd and Terwillegar Commons before returning home. As I mentioned, it's about a 20 minute run if you do it briskly. I'm going to wait for about a month of running to go by prior to timing these runs and seeing if I can improve the speed - I just want to ensure my body is ready for race mode before I start pushing it.

Regardless, I've begun to really work on key challenges I had as a x-country runner years ago in junior high. Back then I had the difficulty of keeping a solid frame while running, something I constantly have to think about. When the body moves too much, it throws off the stride, so I've been working on maintaining a dynamic yet slightly stiff upper body that complements my strides but isn't so fluid as to be totally out of control. The second thing I've always had difficulty with is balancing stride length vs. leg rate. Admittedly, this has always been plagued by the backbone of my running stamina, so by running every day I hope to increase the latter to strengthen the former. I've been slowly pushing my stride lengths to be longer while keeping the leg rate the same. I pushed myself the most today to increase my stride length to just the distance before it starts to be uncomfortably lunging in nature, and my body's resented it. Most difficult run thus far.

I've got to say that I really feel like I'm making solid progress with the goals I have set out to achieve this year. Unfortunately, this is almost entirely incongruent with how I feel about my academics right now - they have dropped us far behind academic enemy lines and expect us to wade in swamps of new terminology and forests of knowledge with only the clothes on our backs and our ye olde armament of introductory anatomy and physiology. Gah!