The Art of Running - Repetition & Progress Part I

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (1)   Not Really!

"It is not possible to step twice into the same river according to Heraclitus, or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in the same state. (Plutarch) (2)

In this post I am going to look into the concepts of repetition and progress, and explore how they might be related. Next I look at how both concepts are fundamental to an endurance running practice and how that might shed some light on the relationship between repetition and the sense of progress I am aiming for. The sense that is true to my experience.

In a separate post (  Repetition & Progress Part II ) which with the help of Crispin Sartwell's writing I will explore the aesthetic aspects of repetition and progress. I will also attempt to connect the ideas to endurance running as an aesthetic process full of aesthetic experiences.

 Repetition 

The definition of repetition I am going to employ is simply:

Repetition - When the same thing ( or same group of things ) occurs or is done over and over again . 

Repeating patterns are ubiquitous in the natural world. Without our ability to recognize repeating patterns in the world everything would just seem chaotic - there would be no concept of order. It almost goes without saying that when human beings repeat the same behaviors often enough eventually the behaviors become habitual.

What we do repetitively changes us.

This is why I think the top posted quote which is famously ( and perhaps falsely ) attributed to Einstein is ill formed.  I take it as a good example of how all kinds of confusion can ensue when language is taken literally, and is interpreted in the abstract, separate from its use .  If one were conducting an experiment in physics in which the initial conditions and experimental methods were tightly controlled, and if prior experiments had repeatedly demonstrated a direct causal effect then yes it would be pretty silly to expect a different result. If our actions in the world mimicked tightly controlled lab experiments then repetition and progress would be incompatible concepts as an unchanging result has no place in any sense of progress.

Life, however, is not a tightly controlled experiment - it is messy.

I see the Heraclitus quote as the more insightful of the two. Everything and every situation is in flux. When it comes to human beings and human behavior there is no such thing as a perfect replication. Habitual behavior changes us. There are untold mostly unconscious physiological adaptations that result from habitual behavior and these adaptations influence both the way the world moves through us and the way we move through it. One result of habitual behavior and the accompanying adaptations is the formation of intrinsic desires to continue the behavior. Sometimes the effects of those behaviors are positive; that is to say they changes us in a way we desire to be changed. Just as often they can lead to change in an undesirable direction or even to addictive behavior. Addictive behavior is an example in which intrinsic desires come into in conflict with rational desires and our expressed behavior becomes separated from our preferred behavior.  How do we establish habits which are likely to promote expressions that emanate from us - into the world - in response to the world - as we would prefer. This is a question about how we would like to change, or in a simple rephrasing, what does it mean to progress.

Progress 

Progress could be defined very simply as movement in a specified direction, without placing any evaluative judgement on the destination. This simple definition however doesn't get at the sense of progress I am interested in. Under the simple definition we can speak as coherently about the progression of a disease as we can about the progress of a vehicle towards its intended destination. Instead I am thinking of something more like this:

Elusive Progress

Progress -  Movement that takes one in the direction of being more regularly disposed to act in resonance with, and at the intersection of, what is true,  good, and beautiful.

In my first post in this series I mentioned how philosophy has been concerned with questions of the true, the good, and the beautiful. The type of progress I am interested depends upon setting an intentional course towards the difficult to define space where the true, the good, and the beautiful come together. The true is a reference to epistemology ( what we can know about the world ), the good is a reference to ethical values, and the beautiful concerns the field of aesthetics. Progress conceived of in this manner will be elusive to the grasp and will not lend itself to objective measurement through clearly defined goals. Progress in this sense may involve moving forward or retreating, gaining something or letting it go. Nevertheless, I think the elusive conception is the one worth aiming for.

How does one aim when the target is elusive?

One problem with setting and attempting to adhere to precisely defined goals is that the world we encounter is not predictable and is unconcerned with making itself amenable to our precise plans. Here I am partial to the Taoist concept of wu wei which recommends non-coercive spontaneous action in concert with the rolling worldly situations we find ourselves embedded in. Responding to these situations freely often involves releasing predetermined goals. This tends to present a continual challenge for me as I tend to have a competitive streak. What I have found however, is that the more skilled, the more experienced, or more expertised I become in a given area the less I need to cling to specific goals to make the type of progress I am concerned with. I think over time, as we refine our sense of what we value in the three domains I have been discussing, that sense begins to orient our actions and our dispositions toward their convergence. This is the Taoist sense of virtue (te).

General Ethical Framework

If I am going to relay a sense of how I see my endurance running practice fitting aesthetically into my lifestyle I am going to have to present a broad outline of my current ethical framework ( non dogmatically offered and always open to revision ).

A very simple bottom line is two pronged:

1. I hope to limit the amount of unnecessary suffering my actions inflict upon myself and others now and going forward 
2. I hope to enhance my capacity and encourage the capacities of others to live meaningfully in connection with what we each authentically see as true, good, and beautiful now and going forward

I think these intentions are straightforward enough in the abstract, but in the real world there will always be conflicts that render these intentions less than straight forward in their application. The long term consequences of our actions are often difficult to gauge. If we have more monetary resources than is needed for our own well being how should we think about donating to others (if those we don't know personally are in more need than those close to us ). How do we weigh our own prudential concerns and our own well-being against service towards others. Questions like these and many others suggest to me that any fixed rule bound approach to ethics is going to have trouble responding freely and accurately in an unforced fashion to the massively complex moral dilemmas we face.

So I tend to favor what is known as a virtue ethical approach. This concept involves cultivating capacities, trying to be fit ( cognitively, emotionally and physically ), trying to be reasonably informed, and reasonably skilled at evaluating the arguments of those more informed in a given subject. The hope is that by building a capacity for wisdom, compassion and ultimately virtuous action one can respond to their worldly situations in a degree of alignment with the two bottom lines.

Repetition and Endurance Running

 

Lets start with the basic bio-mechanical act of running. Before you have run twenty feet you have already completed a few repetitions of left-foot/right-foot (take-off and landings ), and left/right arm swings. Likely your heart-beat and breath are accelerating their typical repetitive cycles as well. Running is repetitive by nature. Each cadence cycle is a whole body-mind process much more complex than just arm and foot movements. The process requires a large degree of neuromuscular coordination and involves internal metabolic adaptions in search of holistic or systemic balance and alignment to the demands of the activity.

Zooming out a bit there are various types of endurance training runs that contain repetitive cycles. For example, a cruise interval run consists of repeated cycles of varying length (sometimes 1 mile, sometimes more) with rest periods in between. There are runs with a portion run at marathon racing pace, runs designed to have a fast finish. Shorter interval runs with interspersed rest periods are run at faster paces aimed to train speed and improve running form. Zooming out again there are the repetitive cycles of individual runs followed by the recovery between runs. It is after all, not during  a run, but instead in the recovery period after each run that the enduring physiological adaptations that lead to improved fitness take hold. Farther out still there are phases of training in the lead up to a race, a taper period where training is reduced before the race, with a longer recovery period after the race and then it all repeats again.

Vicious and Virtuous Cycles

Of course all of these running cycles have to be structured into our broader daily, weekly, and seasonal life cycles. I think the concept of a maintaining sustainable cycles is a useful way to think about repetition and its link to the concept of progress. Everyone I think is familiar with the term vicious cycle as a characterization for a process or dynamic in which contributing components feed off each other accelerating the process in an undesirable direction. Sustainable cycles on the other hand tend to maintain stability whereby the components of the system serve as checks and balances for each other when one aspect starts to take an upper hand. In contemporary physiology lingo these are known as negative feedback loops. I'm going to call them virtuous cycles when in addition to the property of sustainability they move us in the direction of my previously defined sense of progress. The more time one spends in a given practice the better one becomes at maintaining that practice as a virtuous and sustainable cycle. I used to apply a pretty rigorous scientific approach. I closely tracked many metrics on every run, measuring my heart-rate at rest each morning, and even whats known as heart-rate variability (here and here is an example of the detail I went into). I'm getting better at balancing my rest and activity, my competitive and aesthetic impulses by feel from experience, staying injury free and just generally being in tune with how running can assist my well-being.

Endurance Running Within a Lifestyle Aesthetically Aimed at Elusive Progress

Here are some of the ways I think my running practice fits in with this approach:

Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Well-being - Research suggests strongly that regular cardiovascular is perhaps the best way to maintain. The added ethical component of being physically fit is that I hope to be less likely to be a financial burden on the health care system.

Running as part of my work commute - There are multiple benefits to structuring my run into my commute. One this that research shows the work commute to be a negative factor in well-being.
This can especially true commuting to work in the LA area where I work.  Instead the commute becomes pleasurable for me, and the routine ensures I get multiple periods of cardio vascular exercise each weekday. This also reduces my carbon imprint on the environment by reducing the miles I put on electric vehicle. A final benefit is no parking costs at UCLA where I work.

I think I have done enough writing for one post. I will just leave it with the acknowledgement that my life cycle is part of a much larger life cycle and that the sense of progress I am after includes my own decline within it.

On that note I think this chapter (41) from the Tao Te Ching is a nice corrective for our cultural emphasis on progress and growth.

When the wise study about the Tao,
they slog through its lessons with appropriate diligence.  
When the sort-of-wise hear about it, they grasp it and lose it. 
If they didn’t lose it, they couldn’t try to find it.
When the fool hears about the Tao, he laughs and laughs.
That is the Tao.
The Tao sees darkness as though it were light, sees retreat as progress,
knows that that the rough conceals the smooth, that the truth appears in fragments, purity within defilement, goodness as incoherence,  integrity in letting go,
simplicity in ramification.
A perfect square is a circle.  A perfect circle is boundless. 
A perfect note is enwrapped in the silence. The world has no form
Is the Tao hidden?  It forms and fills us.  It empties and releases us..(3)

Next week will be part two of Repetition and Progress with an emphasis on Beauty😎



1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-therapy/200907/the-definition-insanity-is
2. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/
3. Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 443-453). Chapter 41 crispy press. Kindle Edition.