Tuesday, September 3, 2024 – Our drive for movement

Hi Everyone!

Happy Back-to-School for those who celebrate! Funny how what used to seem like such a great relief when our kids were younger now feels more nostalgic as they get older. But regardless of whether you have kids or not or how old you are, Back-to-School does represent an energy shift. Let’s be gentle with ourselves and those around us as these  transitions can rev up our emotions. Give yourselves and those around you some time to adjust. We all will.

The other day my dad had yet another attempted “intervention” telling me that I run too much and it can’t be good for me. This was in response to me telling him how I’d run all across the city on the route we were currently driving. I really should introduce him to some other people on this list because I pale in comparison to many and am not a serial marathoner. However, we discussed how much more people run in general now than they used to. He remarked about how foreign this concept was in his father’s day. Absolutely no one ran. Then when my dad was a young adult, some people did, but it was still fairly fringe. Now it seems that everyone owns a pair of running shoes and even if they don’t call themselves “runners”, they do have familiarity with it and head out for the occasional jog. Or they go to the gym. I was struck the other day walking through my neighbourhood by how many gyms there are in the area. It is an odd concept when you think about it. If you were an alien trying to understand our species, it would be hard to come up with a theory as to why so many people expend so much energy, creating nothing at all.

There are psychological experiments where subjects are influenced to make certain decisions by forces they’re unaware of. When asked why they made the decision, they come up with clear answers which they believe, but which weren’t actually responsible for their actions at all. We tend to act, and then rationalize why we acted a certain way with a story that fits. I think it’s this way with exercise. We will come up with a reason as to why we do it, but most of us don’t really have a satisfactory answer because the reason is hidden deep within our cells. We evolved as a species which survives by moving. I explained to my dad that his father’s generation, and even his own, moved on average way more in every day life than most of us do today. They didn’t run because their deeply wired genetic instincts for movement for survival were satisfied. They were using their hearts, lungs and muscles enough that the alarm bells didn’t go off. But most of us in current times don’t. We don’t move for very long distances under our own power, or carry much weight from place to place, or use our bodies for survival in any way. This is good as it allows us to do so many more interesting and socially and intellectually important things. However, we haven’t changed our genetics and we are still animals. So as our lives have become more sedentary, more people have heard the deep call from within their cells and have started running and more gyms have popped up. This is not because people are more self-disciplined or better educated about the benefits than they used to be. Human behaviour doesn’t work that way. It is because we are following our instincts to move. We may tell ourselves and others it’s for a million different reasons. But in the end, I think we’re just living out what our programming is telling us to do. We think we’re a lot smarter than hamsters on a wheel, but that’s just storytelling – we all just playing out codes from millions of years of evolution.

On to tomorrow’s workout! We’re back to Lakeshore and Leslie – 6:05 drills, 6:15 GO!

About 8 weeks ago we did a benchmark workout of 800’s. For those who were just starting training blocks it was a little data point to see where we were starting off. Let’s repeat that workout to see where we are. For those doing later marathons (CIM), this will be our starter benchmark workout and we’ll do another check in in a few weeks.

1. 6-8 x 800 m w 1:30 rest. Take note of the times you ran last time (not paces – times). See if you can match or go a little faster this time. “Lasso 800’s” tend to be an indicator of what time you might potentially run a marathon (if you’re in marathon shape). So for example, if you average 3 minutes and 20 seconds for your 800’s, it indicates that you are in 3 hours and 20 minute marathon shape. No science behind it – just a weird correlation pattern discovered by Bart Yasso. However, we take less rest than the indicator workout suggests, so you could probably run a little faster. Although they tend to fit in the range for me.
2. If you are just working your way up in speed or not running a marathon, feel free to do 600’s instead of 800’s. OR do the lower range of 5-6 of them.

That is all – see you in the am!

xo

Seanna