On Sunday, I was pushing up one of the only two big hills, 12 miles into my weekly 14 mile long run. I was feeling pretty good and light, but a hill always reminds you how long you have been running.
I started my run as the sun was setting, and by now darkness was virtually hugging the buildings.
I glance upwards in a grimace. It's a bad habit, like I am looking at the sky with annoyance for God giving me the ability to feel pain. The moment I look up, a bright green star streaks across the sky, stretching from Georgetown to Hyattsville
Now I'm not really a superstitious person, but damn that has to mean SOMEthing, right?
Well, even if it doesn't, I'll pretend it will. Placebos are almost as important as real medicine, anyway.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Objectivism
I am, for all intents and purposes, a Poli Sci major. My degree will have all sorts of bells and whistles and qualifiers to my area of study, but in the Spring of 2013 I will have spent the last 4 years of my life immersed in Politics, whether it be domestically or abroad.
Politics is, at its core, a real-time game that plays out clashes in political philosophy. While successes can often be weighed and measured, many solutions and decisions are hard to quantify because we don't have a parallel universe where we know what would have happened if we had not implemented some policy and instead went with another.
Since my Junior year of high school I have known that I will work in the public sector, and with that decision has come studying and mastering the subjective. Internalizing arguments firsthand and creating those of my own.
I have, by choice, gone down a path that will be full of clashes of idealism, often with answers that are inherently circumspect.
And that, I suppose, is one of the main reasons I love running.
In a life of subjectivity and philosophy underlying every decision being made around me, running is one of the only saving graces that I can look at purely objectively.
It is, at ITS base, a measurement of distance and how fast you can traverse it. If you do it one second faster, one half of one percent quicker, you are better. Period.
A workout we do often is a 10 mile hard run.
The first time I broke 1 hour was the week after conference last year, when I ran 58:10ish. Since then, I had only broken an hour once more, running 59:20 during track season.
I ran 57:48 a couple weeks back, totally alone.
Running here, training 70 mile weeks with no real race in sight, totally alone, plays tricks on your training mentality. I FEEL stronger, but I don't have the luxury of constantly testing myself to see if that's true.
But, at its core, running is simply a measurement of distance and how fast you can traverse it.
And this time, I ran 5:48/mile for 10 miles, dipping under 5:50 pace for the first time.
Objectively speaking, I am faster today than I was yesterday.
And that's really calming in the face of a subjective life.
Politics is, at its core, a real-time game that plays out clashes in political philosophy. While successes can often be weighed and measured, many solutions and decisions are hard to quantify because we don't have a parallel universe where we know what would have happened if we had not implemented some policy and instead went with another.
Since my Junior year of high school I have known that I will work in the public sector, and with that decision has come studying and mastering the subjective. Internalizing arguments firsthand and creating those of my own.
I have, by choice, gone down a path that will be full of clashes of idealism, often with answers that are inherently circumspect.
And that, I suppose, is one of the main reasons I love running.
In a life of subjectivity and philosophy underlying every decision being made around me, running is one of the only saving graces that I can look at purely objectively.
It is, at ITS base, a measurement of distance and how fast you can traverse it. If you do it one second faster, one half of one percent quicker, you are better. Period.
A workout we do often is a 10 mile hard run.
The first time I broke 1 hour was the week after conference last year, when I ran 58:10ish. Since then, I had only broken an hour once more, running 59:20 during track season.
I ran 57:48 a couple weeks back, totally alone.
Running here, training 70 mile weeks with no real race in sight, totally alone, plays tricks on your training mentality. I FEEL stronger, but I don't have the luxury of constantly testing myself to see if that's true.
But, at its core, running is simply a measurement of distance and how fast you can traverse it.
And this time, I ran 5:48/mile for 10 miles, dipping under 5:50 pace for the first time.
Objectively speaking, I am faster today than I was yesterday.
And that's really calming in the face of a subjective life.
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