I’ve written before about how my thinking seems to slow, running on the machine, as the speed rises above 7mph. Today that didn’t seem to be the case, although it was this subject that I was thinking about so maybe it doesn’t count.
I was thinking that the reason why thinking slows is that the subconscious draws energy reserves away from non-vital organs to focus on those that really need it. I remember from the Michael Mosley’s BBC series about High Intensity Training that that the energy-management programme errs on the side of caution, persuading us that our muscles are more tired than they really are, so maybe the same applies here… especially since the brain is such a power-hungry organ.
I remember from both the marathons I have run, Berlin in 2004 and Brighton in 2010, that I succumbed to what I can only assume is a version of ‘the wall’. My experience was of an increasing internal dialogue, almost voices in my head, trying to persuade me to stop… which I eventually gave in to. It’s hard to get going again afterwards as the conscious resolve has been weakened and the subconscious is more fully in control.
As I ran on I started to think how this related to hypothermia, where signs of early onset include disorientation… I wonder if this is the same mechanism at work. A tragic example of this in extremis is mountaineers, such as those on Everest, who sit down for a rest and slowly freeze to death. It often happens on the way down when their energy reserves are significantly depleted after 12 or 15 hours of extreme exertion at altitude, in sub-zero temperatures.
The intense fatigue prevents the climber from thinking clearly: it is this lack of judgement that allows the subconscious need to ‘maintain energy reserves’ to override the conscious need to keep going. I have read and heard a number of chilling accounts of climbers finding someone technically alive though deliriously unable to move and one, though I can’t find the book in my bookcase, where the account is given in the first person by someone whose conscious fought back from the warm & comfortable seat in the snow. In that case, though being given up for dead by others, he did actually manage to make it off the mountain… a herculean feat of both body and conscious mind.
3.77 miles in 30 minutes is an average speed of 7.5 mph was no such herculean feat. Whilst my cognitive excursion might have it’s roots in all kinds of stimuli, it might also indicate that I’m at least adapting to the speed as a result of the recent fast but short Sunday runs. Something more to ponder on!