Instincts

I want to clarify something from my last post.  As much as I need more discipline and structure in my life.  I thrive on instinct.  I love planning, theorizing, and seeing everything laid out in front of me.  It makes me feel more in control, especially before a competition when there is nothing to do but prepare and wait.  However when in really comes down to it, in the arena, I do everything based on instinct.

Instinct in training means knowing how you're supposed to feel, when to back off, when to push up against the edge, and when to push over it.  We can go into the nitty gritty details of how we make training adaptations by increasing VO2  or lactate threshold or fat metabolism or thermoregulation.  Even if we completely understand these systems (which most of us don't) we often over simplify the complexity of physical performance.  Our brains like to put things in neat categories like good vs. bad, liberal versus conservative, fast vs. slow, power vs. endurance.  When in reality everything is on a continuum.  Marathon runners aren't using purely aerobic metabolism.  In fact, if you remember from biology class, pyruvate, (or lactate, often misrefered to as 'lactic acid') the substrate used in the Kreb cycle during cellular respiration, is produced anaerobically.  Lactate buildup is likely not the cause acidic conditions but innocently mirrors the levels of hydrogen ions in the muscle.  We are always producing pyruvate/lactate and hydrogen ions, we are also always clearing lactate and buffering ions.  We are always breathing in oxygen AND carboxide, and breathing out carbon dioxide AND oxygen.  Our heart is always beating and our muscles are always burning energy.  Because of this, the importance is not in whether you are using a the system but to what extent.  To even futher complicate things, each of these systems are woven together in a way that a change in the extent to which one system in operating effects the extent to which all other systems are operating.  The body like everything else in this world is like a web, you tug on one string and the whole thing vibrates.  It's enough to blow my mind.  Which is why I tend to give up that security of control that I get from my plans and go on instinct.  My brain is a lot smarter that I give it credit for.  It knows how to function as a thermostat, taking in information from each of the systems and giving me a reading of how I'm feeling and how long a can sustain a work load and how long it will take to recover.
 
Racing, though, adds the element of other competitors.  Any great competition is as much about out-smarting the other runners as it is about outrunning them, it's about outperforming on every level.  You have to play around with pace, trick the other runners into miscalculating how hard they should run at a given point in the race, or trick them into losing focus.  Or, even more often, avoid tricking yourself by over thinking.  The best racers know their competition well.  They know their competitions physical and psychological strengths and weaknesses as well as their own, and know how to use this information to make decisions in the heat of the moment without letting the pain of fatigue cloud their judgement.

At Carleton, I had smart teammates and smart coaches but at times intelligence and calculated personalities get in the way of seeing things from a broader perspective.  To return to the web metaphor, when you are looking at the web at the level of individual strings it does not allow you to practice perceiving patterns in how the web functions as whole.

As scattered and inarticulate as I am, I survived and thrived at Carleton by leaning on the "N" of my INFP personality.  Despite wasting many hours scouring race results and checking honor rolls hoping to predict the outcome of races and seasons, I'm adaptable and intuitive when I get out on the course or track.  I can recognize how a training session or race is unfolding and make adjustments.  All the science background or number crunching in the world can't make up for the ability to continually "gut check" and react appropriately.

Even though training and racing instincts are not easily quantified, that doesn't  mean they don't improve with practice.  I am completely out of practice.  It's one thing as a coach to discuss race strategy with your athletes and to futility scream from the outside of the track, it's another thing completely to get out there yourself and put it all together.  Instinct isn't something you can get by analysis and learning from other people's mistakes, you have to be the one to experiment and screw up and make adjustments and learn from experience.  I think its time I sign up for some races!

Chasing down instinct,
Laura