Unable to one sleep one night, I heaved the quilt off me, flopped my legs over the side of the bed, rested my heels atop its wooden frame and hung my head down.
Not in sadness though, but in retrospection. I was glaring at my phone, rapidly typing into a memo as fast as my thumbs would take me.
I do some of my best thinking when I’m alone, lost in myriad thoughts and just flat out feeling less than stellar. It really kind of sucks, but it gets the job done. Ideas rush toward me like they’re kids and I’m Santa.
-Oh do this! I want that! Can you do this? Remember that?
Before then, I’d only had a handful of story ideas for future adventures to write about for this website. I was thankful for that sudden surge of inspiration, since after it was all said and done, I laid back down with a big yawn and 20 future stories to consider.
That’s just under a year’s worth of content whipped up on the spot.
But I don’t just think about story ideas, sometimes I think about numbers. Despite being a writer first, I do a lot of math while not particularly loving that subject. Not super often, but sometimes when I get stressed, like really stressed, I block out negativity and think about patterns and things like that. I do mental math and figure out, huh, did you know that 102 and 12 are pretty similar? I’m not even sure that example really works. I can’t really explain it. I guess it’s easier to just focus on numbers and fire all my synapses on that instead thinking about whatever the alternative in that present moment is.
That’s probably a little strange? Perhaps the weirdest incorporation of math into my life is when I’m running. It’s pretty easy to figure out that 4mph translates into a 15-minute mile. Makes sense. Run four miles in an hour, divide that by four, easy to get. Likewise, 5mph is a 12-minute mile, but I didn’t really math that one out. While running, I noticed that a quarter-mile took 3 minutes at that speed, so I multiplied that by four and got the answer. Confirmed it too once I hit that mile mark. Easy enough.
I was curious, though, as to what made a 13-minute mile without using the Internet or anything like that to give me the answer. I kind of liked the challenge of testing my hypotheses against myself in the middle of a run. And I learned that decimals matter. Without going into all the point-threes and point-sixes and all that, I figured that a .4mph speed increase equaled about a 15 second difference over the course of a quarter-mile. Thus, over the course of a full mile, you’ll gain a minute on your time. If 5mph is a 12-minute mile, then 5.4 must be 11, 5.8 is 10 and 6.2 is 9.
That’s the goal: 6.2. That’s a 5K in half an hour. And it’ll come in due time.
I’ve also continued walloping on my ghosts since I first wrote about them. I still use them to motivate me on the treadmill and have tried using them even more in my life besides just when I’m working out or playing basketball. Beating my ghost the first time by a mega margin of 80 seconds was an incredible feeling. And finishing that run at 43:25 was a huge accomplishment for me.
Now? That’s a bad time. My best is now 37:58. I’m averaging 40:20.
I used to measure how much time was left in my run based on the distance; I never knew the time I would finish at. Now, I can watch the clock because I know that a quarter-mile at 4.6mph is 3:15 and that a tenth of a mile is about 1:20 at that speed. As such, 3:15x4 is 13 minutes; do that three times to hit 39 minutes and three miles and bust out another tenth to finish a 5K at 40:20.
It’s kind of weird though.
I used to like not knowing how long it would take me, because it was just a matter of going until the distance hit the number I was shooting for. Now I just watch the time and do a quick jumble of numbers to realize that at 18:50 into the run, I should be almost a mile and a half into it with 23:30 left to go.
It’s a lot of numbers to read, yeah, but doing math on the treadmill has enhanced the experience. It’s fun to lose yourself in the sweat and the music, but it’s also kind of fun to have a goal to focus on. And when I’m not in a mathy mood, I just bump the speed up for a bit and try to lose track of where I’m at, forcing me to figure out just how far I have left with new number jumbles.
The upside to measuring how close I am to finishing a run by time rather than distance, is that when I hit a threshold like “oh boy just 12 minutes left,” I’m heartened.
That means, to me, I’ve got less than a mile at this speed I’ve been going at. It also means that I now have fewer than 12 minutes left, if even by just a few seconds, than when I said “oh boy just 12 minutes left.”
The most important thing that realization brings to my tired lungs is that I’ve already ran for 28:20. Instead of focusing on how much I’ve got left, I can look at how far I’ve come during the run.
I try to instill that into my brain not just when I’m running and gasping for air, but when I’m just sitting at my desk typing away or laying down in bed. Don’t look at how much story is left, look at how much I’ve written. Don’t worry about bad feelings, revel in the good ones.
That also ties back into the ghosts and defeating them. Yesterday’s ghost might have been at this time on the treadmill, but he also might have been feeling bad for whatever reason. And you can beat that ghost by overcoming those negative feelings.
And then crushing it beneath your bootheel when next you run.
Doing that creates of cycle of ever-improving ghosts that you must, in order to beat them, continue to improve yourself. Be better than you were the day before. If it’s hard, either part of that equation, you’ll get there eventually if you keep at it. Just remember to look at how far you’ve come, instead of how much farther you’ve got.
On the website front, Storygank’s going up Wednesday. It’s going to be amazing. Adventure on Saturday is a nice one too. I’ve never written about it before, despite it absolutely being worth a story. And I’m grateful for everyone’s continued support. I care more than you could ever realize.
Thanks for reading.