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I’ve never really liked running. I like cycling, and I imagine I’d like swimming, but I’ve never really liked running. I think the main reason is because I’ve never really learnt how to run properly. I’m tall, skinny and have really long legs, like Dali’s elephants’. As a kid I used to take huge strides when I ran- overstriding, wasting lots of energy. My legs were always underdeveloped- muscles, tendons, nerves, all of them- and I’ve always, always been really self-conscious about my chicken legs. I’d hit the gym, play basketball, do pushups- but I’d always neglect my legs. In the first 30 weeks or so I was determined to change that, but I was afraid to suddenly confront what I’ve always been hiding from, and chose an indirect approach, through compound lifting.

I decided to take running more seriously- I’m doing a half-marathon in May. I took a 2 week break after 8 weeks of all-around muscle building in the gym (focusing on the overall posterior chain) and then decided to start running.

My first runs are always very painful. During the run I get breathless and my legs go weak, and afterwards my head throbs for hours. I perspire profusely and I get a dry, sandpaper feel at the back of my throat.

I persisted. Second run was less bad, but not good either.

The third run I tried changing things around a little, doing intervals. I’d run at a faster pace from one bus stop to the next, then stretch and catch my breath and repeat. This time I felt really good- warmed up, high on oxygen, heart beating. And most notably, my head wasn’t pounding this time. Well it did for a short while, and then it dissipated, much quicker and more smoothly than it did before.

And that got me thinking, as I was thinking about systems in general, about the processes that were going on in my body as I ran, and somehow it all seemed really interesting.

I mean, what’s going on when I run? I decide to run, and signals from my brain go to the nerves in my legs telling them to contract as necessary. As this happens, a complex dance begins to happen- my conscious movement of my legs is supplanted by my brain’s finely calibrated requests to the heart and lungs to adjust their activities accordingly. I breathe deeper and harder, taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide- the aerobic respiration process supplying the necessary nutrients to my muscles and whisking away the waste products, whatever they are, I forget the finer details. This process generates and sustains movement, a destruction of balance.  But my muscles are underdeveloped, as are the tendons supporting them and the nerves instructing them. The circulatory system is not used to the increased demand and is overwhelmed. The central planning system, the brain, starts to throb and hurt.

In a way, isn’t all this really similar to any other system that we put under stress? When I start to look at it this way, running becomes something powerful- a kind of pursuit of elegance, in a way- to streamline the processes in my body and to boost the capacity of my mind and stuff like that. I know it doesn’t really make a lot of sense and it seemed a lot more beautiful as a concept in my head, but there’s something in there.

Running reveals to me the weaknesses and inconsistencies and structural failings of my body, and gives me an opportunity to strengthen them. I suppose we could say the same of any kind of focused, directed hardship- be it for an individual, for relationships or for larger systems like businesses or even governments, maybe? What then, is protectionism? Lots of interesting thoughts and ideas to be derived from this little analogy. I’ll think about it as I’m running tomorrow.