As I listen to the wind gusts (between 45 and 75 kilometres per hour, I'm told) roar their occasional way past my building, I can't help but feel just the tiniest bit smug. You see, after a week of not running (due to illness in the first half of the week and some minor in-office surgery at the end of it), I got myself outside and ran my scheduled 10-miler today, before the winds got truly nasty.
I do realize that, compared to the heroic things that so many people do every day of their lives, this particular accomplishment is pretty piddly. For heaven's sake, I didn't even run the distance that fast, averaging 11MPH at what felt at times like a laborious plod.
But I got it done anyway. And sometimes, it's the glow of having H'dTFU that counts.
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Sunday, December 12, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
OK, so we get the 'triathlete' part...
But where, you might well ask, does the "writing" part come in, besides occasionally babbling about my training and/or whatever else comes into my head here?
Good question. Oddly enough, I find that training and writing are linked in crucial ways for me-- ways that I don't necessarily understand, but am grateful for nonetheless. Here's an example from a couple of months ago:
One of the many reasons why this week has been OMFGcrazy is the plethora of deadlines that seem to have encrusted it, barnacle-like. I knew I had a deadline for a Smallish Thing at the end of the week, so planned my work around getting that done on time. But at the outset of the week, the organizers of the conference panel I'm presenting at in two weeks' time emailed all of the presenters, asking for papers to be submitted by next Monday, kthx.
Deep breath. A bit of a stretch, that, but workable.
Then I get an email from the respondent-to-be for our papers: "I've got a hellishly busy schedule before the conference, so do please send me your papers by Friday, mmkay?"
Deeper breath. This, on the other hand, is quite impossible.
So I email r-t-b politely, saying I'll get it to her ASAP but that I have student papers and another deadline this week, so Friday's not going to happen. She, bless her, writes back to say OK and that she'll read the other two first before getting to mine.
By yesterday, I had parts of the paper pre-done (excerpted from work done a long, long time ago) and tons of notes from primary sources for the stuff that needed to be added. And, quite frankly, little to no idea of how I was going to put them together. Dread and/or Doom loomed.
So I did what any sane triathlete (*note contradiction in terms*) would do: I went for a 36-mile bike ride with a group from the tri club first thing this morning. (First half into a 25-MPH headwind with cross-gusts, ye gods; return trip partly fueled by a considerable tail wind, but including more cross-gusts. Nothing quite as eerie as hearing one's bike turned into an aeolian harp when the wind struck it at just the right angle. Seriously, folks: my bike whistled and/or groaned in the wind as I was riding it. If that's not freaky, I do not know what is.)
Our efforts were rewarded with a much-deserved coffee and muffin at the midway point, followed by breakfast-food-for-lunch at the end, both scarfed with notable speed and accompanied with a lot of laughter, storytelling, and smatterings of Animaniacs songs. (The sheer geekery was a joy.)
Then I packed up the car and endured an INSANELY slow drive home. (Note to self: do NOT take that route again on a Saturday afternoon. EVER.) The only thing to do after that was to soak in a hot Epsom Salts bath to try and get some warmth into my by-now-thoroughly-chilled body. I somehow managed (just) not to fall asleep in the bath; by the time I clambered out of there, though, I had absolutely no expectations that my brain would be good for anything.
The universe, it seems, had other ideas. For lo, just as I was getting dressed, the organizational principle of my paper simply popped into my head, and everything clicked into place. I've just finished a draft of the paper (clad, I might add, in sweats, my Boat Race cap because it's wool, and my lovely new fingerless gloves, because it's COLD in here), and I think it might be OK enough to revise and send out to r-t-b tomorrow rather than Monday.
Elizabeth Gilbert (she of Eat, Pray, Love fame) gave a very interesting TED talk not that long ago about the idea of "genius" where she argued, among other things, that the world would be a damn side better off if we thought of genius not as something inherent (as in, "So-and-so is a genius") but as something external, an occasional visitor to each of us with whom we can share responsibility for both failures and successes. It's intriguing stuff; you'll find it here if you've not seen it before:
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilb
All I can think of is that my genius simply enjoyed the fresh air, exercise, and company this morning, then rewarded me with the paper idea when it had a chance. 'Cos I sure as heck didn't come up with it all by myself in my tired and dehydrated state.
Now, I'm certainly not going to claim that I get brilliant ideas every time I come back from a long swim, run, or bike ride, but my experience thus far has been that I get at least some ideas when I've just finished a session. Perhaps spending a certain amount of time concentrating on whatever the body is doing (getting from one end of the pool to another, trying not to get run over while riding on a busy street, avoiding patches of ice on snowy sidewalks) frees the writing part of the brain to do its thing in peace so that, on occasion, it can present me with a Thought that I can then do something with.
Either that, or my genius prefers tribute in the form of endorphins.
Good question. Oddly enough, I find that training and writing are linked in crucial ways for me-- ways that I don't necessarily understand, but am grateful for nonetheless. Here's an example from a couple of months ago:
One of the many reasons why this week has been OMFGcrazy is the plethora of deadlines that seem to have encrusted it, barnacle-like. I knew I had a deadline for a Smallish Thing at the end of the week, so planned my work around getting that done on time. But at the outset of the week, the organizers of the conference panel I'm presenting at in two weeks' time emailed all of the presenters, asking for papers to be submitted by next Monday, kthx.
Deep breath. A bit of a stretch, that, but workable.
Then I get an email from the respondent-to-be for our papers: "I've got a hellishly busy schedule before the conference, so do please send me your papers by Friday, mmkay?"
Deeper breath. This, on the other hand, is quite impossible.
So I email r-t-b politely, saying I'll get it to her ASAP but that I have student papers and another deadline this week, so Friday's not going to happen. She, bless her, writes back to say OK and that she'll read the other two first before getting to mine.
By yesterday, I had parts of the paper pre-done (excerpted from work done a long, long time ago) and tons of notes from primary sources for the stuff that needed to be added. And, quite frankly, little to no idea of how I was going to put them together. Dread and/or Doom loomed.
So I did what any sane triathlete (*note contradiction in terms*) would do: I went for a 36-mile bike ride with a group from the tri club first thing this morning. (First half into a 25-MPH headwind with cross-gusts, ye gods; return trip partly fueled by a considerable tail wind, but including more cross-gusts. Nothing quite as eerie as hearing one's bike turned into an aeolian harp when the wind struck it at just the right angle. Seriously, folks: my bike whistled and/or groaned in the wind as I was riding it. If that's not freaky, I do not know what is.)
Our efforts were rewarded with a much-deserved coffee and muffin at the midway point, followed by breakfast-food-for-lunch at the end, both scarfed with notable speed and accompanied with a lot of laughter, storytelling, and smatterings of Animaniacs songs. (The sheer geekery was a joy.)
Then I packed up the car and endured an INSANELY slow drive home. (Note to self: do NOT take that route again on a Saturday afternoon. EVER.) The only thing to do after that was to soak in a hot Epsom Salts bath to try and get some warmth into my by-now-thoroughly-chilled body. I somehow managed (just) not to fall asleep in the bath; by the time I clambered out of there, though, I had absolutely no expectations that my brain would be good for anything.
The universe, it seems, had other ideas. For lo, just as I was getting dressed, the organizational principle of my paper simply popped into my head, and everything clicked into place. I've just finished a draft of the paper (clad, I might add, in sweats, my Boat Race cap because it's wool, and my lovely new fingerless gloves, because it's COLD in here), and I think it might be OK enough to revise and send out to r-t-b tomorrow rather than Monday.
Elizabeth Gilbert (she of Eat, Pray, Love fame) gave a very interesting TED talk not that long ago about the idea of "genius" where she argued, among other things, that the world would be a damn side better off if we thought of genius not as something inherent (as in, "So-and-so is a genius") but as something external, an occasional visitor to each of us with whom we can share responsibility for both failures and successes. It's intriguing stuff; you'll find it here if you've not seen it before:
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilb
All I can think of is that my genius simply enjoyed the fresh air, exercise, and company this morning, then rewarded me with the paper idea when it had a chance. 'Cos I sure as heck didn't come up with it all by myself in my tired and dehydrated state.
Now, I'm certainly not going to claim that I get brilliant ideas every time I come back from a long swim, run, or bike ride, but my experience thus far has been that I get at least some ideas when I've just finished a session. Perhaps spending a certain amount of time concentrating on whatever the body is doing (getting from one end of the pool to another, trying not to get run over while riding on a busy street, avoiding patches of ice on snowy sidewalks) frees the writing part of the brain to do its thing in peace so that, on occasion, it can present me with a Thought that I can then do something with.
Either that, or my genius prefers tribute in the form of endorphins.
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