I might have clearer thoughts while running because I can’t spare the oxygen for stupid ones. Now that I think about it, I actually have a lot of delusional thoughts while running. Less unhappy ones though, because if I wanted to suffer more I’d just run faster.
The stop light is red, but the walk sign turns on as soon as I’m about to stop.
In life, usually you try to maximize the area under the happiness vs time curve, but running is the opposite. It’s like starting a MMA fight with the ground—you can’t win. Someone told me that starting your day with a run is the best way to make sure that your day can’t get any worse than it started.
The sun is bright and the pain is sharp. I wonder why I run. It’s not like I care that much about my health. If I did I wouldn’t eat so much ice cream (the only thing which never fails to make me happy). I would do a lot things differently if I truly cared about my health. And running isn’t going to make me jacked. I’d be better off using a rowing machine in the gym for that. Maybe it’s about ego—wanting to think of myself as someone who runs. But I’m not training for a marathon, or any kind of athletic achievement. I don’t even run that regularly. If the goal was fresh air and scenery, I could go on a bike ride. Do I run mainly for the pain?
Masochism isn’t all bad. The pain is a reminder that I’m capable of doing difficult things. It’s a challenge taunting me to give up.
Sweat bites the corners of my eyes. You don’t have to deal with sweat when you swim. I miss that.
Treadmills suck. Sure, they help with pacing, but is it really worth giving up the beauty of the outdoors for the stuffy air-conditioned gym? Is this kind of convenience good? Does training matter more than the experience itself? I don’t like apps like Strava that try to turn running into a social media ego contest. I don’t want to plug in earbuds and maintain a Strava streak. I want to pursue the experience of running and all its pain for its own sake.
Running is easy once you’ve started. By the time you’re really feeling it, even if you stop, you’re still far from home. You could walk back but it would take forever. After you catch your breath you feel silly walking in running clothes. And running away from home hurts just as much as running towards it, so you get twice as much pain per unit motivation. I think I’m thinking about pain to distract myself from pain.
I’m not sure that it’s normal for my shoulder to be aching. My 10th grade US history teacher used to say that the smallest dogs are the most puntable. She might have had a point—the howling little fluff dog I just ran past could’ve made a good football. I kind of feel like a barking pomeranian myself. Kind of like the opposite of an underdog, all bark and no bite.
Sometimes it starts hurting less a few miles in. Is that psychological? I guess my body gets tired of begging for forgiveness after a while. My body is like, whatever man, it’s your life. Does running improve my pain tolerance? I don’t know. I think it’s more like trading psychological suffering for physical pain. Being as lucky and privileged as I am, most of my suffering is self-inflicted anyway. I think Murakami said that “I can endure any pain as long as it has meaning.” Is the meaning of this self-inflicted physical pain to clear my meaningless mental suffering?
The Charles is always so beautiful. I stop to take a picture. Someone wrote Jesus in the snow.
Now that I’m breathing normally, I’m struck with the question—who invented the Tiramisu? I saw the tomb of Queen Margherita in the Pantheon once. I wonder if she came up with the recipe. Legacy and fame is kind of unfair. I bet the guy who invented Dim Sum wouldn’t mind that he’s not that famous though. In the end, the feeling of having contributed probably matters a lot more than the recognition that may or may not come with it.
Now would be a great time for my shoelaces to get untied. I wonder if marathon runners have thoughts like this. Probably not. Would they would run faster if they had pain killers?
How close do I need to get to the door before I can start walking? Nobody’s watching.
Okay, I’m done.
That wasn’t so bad.
I’m hardly out of breath even. Barely broke a sweat.
Why do I even do this?
A bunch of rogue neurons hijacked a biological mech to rebel against its own endorphins that developed an aversion to pain over 4 billion years of evolution.
A tiny organism running in circles every morning, accomplishing net zero work, on a tiny blue marble smaller than a speck of dust in one of the trillions of galaxies.
Does the question of why even matter?
