For the longest time, I have wanted to be a morning person. More specifically, I have wanted to be a morning runner. I absolutely see the benefits of running in the morning:
1. You get your run done, and so as you fatigue from working all day, the workout isn't hanging over your head, glaring at you from its perch at 5pm.
2. It sets you up for the day. Running in the morning feels good. You accomplish something before 8am and it can put a pep in your step for the rest of the day.
3. Depending on where you run, it is beautiful - particularly if you see the sunrise.
4. It is cooler. This is very relevant right now as we edge into the summer months in Colorado.
And yet, despite these wonderfully compelling benefits, I have yet to maintain any kind of morning rhythm with running. I can get up early to swim and I have managed it with cycling, if I head downstairs to ride on my trainer indoors or if I am cycling to work. In both cases, I feel good, sometimes even great, after achieving an athletic goal that early. I know I will feel the same way with running as on the rare occasions I have run before work, I have felt awesome and accomplished.
I am not a "just get up and run" kind of runner. I need to eat something, and running 8 miles on coffee alone does not cut it. If I need to eat something, then I need to give myself time to digest said food before heading out for my run. That's at least 45 mins that I need before heading out the door, by which time I can usually convince myself to stay in bed. Then there is the stiffness I feel in the morning, and shaking that out into some kind of rhythm takes a fair number of miles. This adds more time to the run, which inevitably I never have because I snoozed too many times. And so I persuade myself that I won't have time anyway, and I might as well just stay in bed. You can see the cycle of excuses and justifications I can give for why morning runs don't work for me (unless it's a race, and then miraculously I can manage it).
In an effort to curb my morning snooze routine and the "I'll just do it later" voice in my head, I have read numerous articles from running gurus to personal blogs about tips to get up and out the door early. I have tried:
- laying my running clothes out at night
- getting my breakfast out and ready to reduce prep time
- determining a route the night before
- setting the alarm 15 minutes earlier so that I have time to snooze
- going to bed earlier
- gradually setting my alarm clock 5 minutes earlier over a period of several days so that I gently and incrementally get to the time I need
Yeah, even with these efforts, I have had minimal success. So what am I missing? I don't agree that some folks just aren't morning people, because I think it is all about shifting your lifestyle and making different choices over time (caveat: sleep disorders and other physical issues will factor in to one's capacity to rise early). I have clearly demonstrated I can get my butt out of bed for other forms of exercise and to race, and when I go to bed early, I am getting a good 7-8 hours of sleep. I am thinking it really is about my attitude and mental fortitude and perhaps, a socially constructed dislike of mornings. What did mornings ever do to me?
Since tenacity is something I have been told I possess, I am going to try this whole morning running again, this time with feeling. And to reference my previous blog post, I am going to try and act "as if" I am a morning runner. I don't run every day but I do something most days, and I am going to endeavor to get all workouts done before 8am in the next month and report back in July as to how it went and what I learned. I will call it the "5am Project" and David, my partner in running and life is going to do it with me (actually it was his idea). Misery loves company, right? Although, this is going to be great, not miserable. Absolutely great! Positive attitude. Check. Got it. #icandothis...?
Wish us luck!
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Sunday, May 8, 2016
As If...
I just read an article in The Guardian about the need for us to stop looking for ourselves. Specifically, that we should spend less time trying to find ourselves and more time aiming to behave and engage with the "as if." The article argued that our incessant need to find ourselves is ultimately self-centered and simply keeps us stuck in one place. If we try to find ourselves, what we may find is ultimately fleeting, intermittent, and "real" only inasmuch as the self we find exists in that moment. There are so many products marketed around this need for us to find ourselves - retreats, books, meditation sessions - that it is easy to fall into step with the rhetoric. I need to know who I am, and there is always someone ready to charge me to assist me on my journey.
Capitalism and financial exploitation of our lost selves aside, I found The Guardian article thought provoking. The "as if" trajectory the authors discussed is intriguing. Basically, as I understood it, we should work to look forward, versus within, and engage with the world through an "as if I were ______" mentality or ritual. This perspective helps us transform into perhaps what we would like to be, or perhaps uncovers who we really are without looking internally for it. The example in the article was that of hide and seek with a child. In that game, the adult often pretends to be inept at hiding as a means to make it easy for the child to find them. The adult in this example is behaving as if they are fallible so the child can be triumphant, an experience children rarely have. Both adult and child know it's a game, but "by taking on these roles, you have both broken from your usual patterns." (Puett & Gross-Loh, Stop Trying to Find Yourself, pub'd 5/8/16).
It is in the pretend, in the untruth, that you are able to break any negative patterns you have developed. We can work to change those patterns "as if" things were different in that moment. I don't interpret their argument to mean that we should lie to ourselves daily, or ignore struggles we are having in the moment, but rather, we should not focus on finding ourselves internally as a means to break our negative patterns. We should look beyond ourselves and perform, pretend, behave as if we were something else. In so doing, we open up opportunities for discovery and transformation, for change, that cannot be achieved by looking inward. I really like what they said, drawing on Chinese philosophers some 2000 years ago:
"Consider the self the way that they did: there is no true self and no self you can discover in the abstract by looking within. Such a self would be little more than a snapshot of you at that particular moment in time. We are messy, multifaceted selves who go through life bumping up against other messy, multifaceted selves. Who we are at any given moment develops through our constantly shifting interactions with other people" (Puett & Gross-Loh, Stop Trying to Find Yourself, pub'd 5/8/16).
Judith Butler, a philosopher, feminist, and queer theorist to name just a few, has written extensively on the concept of performativity as it relates to gender. She argues that gender is constantly reinforced through our daily iterations and performances of it. Performativity is not the same as performance. Gender is not something we "put on" or "act" out in the sense of the theater. It is iterative and we all engage daily in rituals and behaviors that create, re-create, and propel the construction of gender forward making it seem or feel natural and "real." It is complicated to say the least. I bring it up because thinking about behaving as if something else were real as a means to break unhealthy or negative patterns reminds me of it. While gender performativity isn't about breaking a pattern, but rather creating and reinforcing one, in the context of engaging in as if rituals (we are happy instead of sad, or calm instead of angry), we can transform ourselves and move into that state of being. The connection I make here is messy and definitely imperfect, but I think it speaks to the fluidity of our identities and reinforces how looking within does not hold all the answers marketers and our social mileu would have us believe. We must overcome the self to be able to move away from any negative conceptions of manifestations of the self. The self then, is performative, and we can re-create it (or the negative patterns that haunt us), through the repetition of as if rituals. By entering "an alternate reality in which we draw on different sides of ourselves...each time we do so we come back slightly changed" (Puett & Gross-Loh, Stop Trying to Find Yourself, pub'd 5/8/16).
To read the full article, visit: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/08/stop-trying-to-find-yourself
Capitalism and financial exploitation of our lost selves aside, I found The Guardian article thought provoking. The "as if" trajectory the authors discussed is intriguing. Basically, as I understood it, we should work to look forward, versus within, and engage with the world through an "as if I were ______" mentality or ritual. This perspective helps us transform into perhaps what we would like to be, or perhaps uncovers who we really are without looking internally for it. The example in the article was that of hide and seek with a child. In that game, the adult often pretends to be inept at hiding as a means to make it easy for the child to find them. The adult in this example is behaving as if they are fallible so the child can be triumphant, an experience children rarely have. Both adult and child know it's a game, but "by taking on these roles, you have both broken from your usual patterns." (Puett & Gross-Loh, Stop Trying to Find Yourself, pub'd 5/8/16).
It is in the pretend, in the untruth, that you are able to break any negative patterns you have developed. We can work to change those patterns "as if" things were different in that moment. I don't interpret their argument to mean that we should lie to ourselves daily, or ignore struggles we are having in the moment, but rather, we should not focus on finding ourselves internally as a means to break our negative patterns. We should look beyond ourselves and perform, pretend, behave as if we were something else. In so doing, we open up opportunities for discovery and transformation, for change, that cannot be achieved by looking inward. I really like what they said, drawing on Chinese philosophers some 2000 years ago:
"Consider the self the way that they did: there is no true self and no self you can discover in the abstract by looking within. Such a self would be little more than a snapshot of you at that particular moment in time. We are messy, multifaceted selves who go through life bumping up against other messy, multifaceted selves. Who we are at any given moment develops through our constantly shifting interactions with other people" (Puett & Gross-Loh, Stop Trying to Find Yourself, pub'd 5/8/16).
Judith Butler, a philosopher, feminist, and queer theorist to name just a few, has written extensively on the concept of performativity as it relates to gender. She argues that gender is constantly reinforced through our daily iterations and performances of it. Performativity is not the same as performance. Gender is not something we "put on" or "act" out in the sense of the theater. It is iterative and we all engage daily in rituals and behaviors that create, re-create, and propel the construction of gender forward making it seem or feel natural and "real." It is complicated to say the least. I bring it up because thinking about behaving as if something else were real as a means to break unhealthy or negative patterns reminds me of it. While gender performativity isn't about breaking a pattern, but rather creating and reinforcing one, in the context of engaging in as if rituals (we are happy instead of sad, or calm instead of angry), we can transform ourselves and move into that state of being. The connection I make here is messy and definitely imperfect, but I think it speaks to the fluidity of our identities and reinforces how looking within does not hold all the answers marketers and our social mileu would have us believe. We must overcome the self to be able to move away from any negative conceptions of manifestations of the self. The self then, is performative, and we can re-create it (or the negative patterns that haunt us), through the repetition of as if rituals. By entering "an alternate reality in which we draw on different sides of ourselves...each time we do so we come back slightly changed" (Puett & Gross-Loh, Stop Trying to Find Yourself, pub'd 5/8/16).
To read the full article, visit: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/08/stop-trying-to-find-yourself
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