{"id":537,"date":"2013-09-28T15:26:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T19:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.curtisbright.com\/bln\/?p=537"},"modified":"2013-09-28T15:26:13","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T19:26:13","slug":"fun-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/09\/28\/fun-running\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun running"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the fourth annual <a href=\"https:\/\/uwaterloo.ca\/applied-health-sciences\/alumni-friends\/events\/ahs-fun-run-2013\">AHS fun run<\/a> I&#8217;ve participated in. I&#8217;ve been running routinely for just over 3 years, and in that time have completed about 160 laps of the University of Waterloo&#8217;s Ring Road (which is about 2.6 km).<\/p>\n<p>I keep track of all my run times, and it is fascinating watching myself improve. So far, every year during the fun run I beat my previous best time by a comfortable margin, and I don&#8217;t match my fun run time until the following summer. These are my best times for each fun run I&#8217;ve done:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>Beforehand<\/td>\n<td>During<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2010<\/td>\n<td>13:53<\/td>\n<td>13:06<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2011<\/td>\n<td>12:54<\/td>\n<td>12:29<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2012<\/td>\n<td>12:10<\/td>\n<td>11:40<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2013<\/td>\n<td>11:24<\/td>\n<td>10:23<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>I&#8217;m a bit amazed I was able to beat my best time by a full minute today; this of course raises the question of why I am able to improve so much during the fun run. Now, there are some physical differences from a typical ring run of mine which might make a difference:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The start location is different<\/li>\n<li>The lap direction is opposite (for the last 3 years)<\/li>\n<li>Instead of the sidewalk, the route is on the road (which is slightly longer, but also flatter)<\/li>\n<li>There is a ~10 minute warmup beforehand<\/li>\n<li>The run takes place in the morning, rather than the afternoon or evening<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wish I knew how much each of these factors contributed to the difference, but I suspect the main difference is actually psychological: namely, when I&#8217;m running with other people I have more motivation to push myself to run harder. Indeed, currently my legs feel noticeably more tired than usual, and I had a similar story last year.<\/p>\n<p>Since running superficially seems like a purely physical activity, the thought that my psychological state has such a large impact on my performance comes as a surprise to me. It also raises the question: what is the optimal psychological state for running, and what can one do to help promote it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the fourth annual AHS fun run I&#8217;ve participated in. I&#8217;ve been running routinely for just over 3 years, and in that time have completed about 160 laps of the University of Waterloo&#8217;s Ring Road (which is about 2.6 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/09\/28\/fun-running\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}