Morning runs
Some thoughts on homeostasis
“This is 45 seconds of an eight-count hold… ooooooOOOOOOOEEEEEE!”
…is a thing you hear while running past a pilates studio at a little past sunrise.
Out of nowhere, I’m a morning runner. Not a new routine, but a thing to do: Wake up, tie sneakers, go out the door. The hills are dark, slightly misty. Sunrise is maybe thirty minutes away. I go slow, muscles groaning. No headphones. No real thoughts, just noticing sinus congestion.
I know at the terminus of the jog, there will be three different coffeeshops open, and I start to imagine what the treat will taste like—cappuccino, cortado, iced Americano, maybe a bean and cheese burrito, too.
(I remember the first time this happened, the phantasmic delayed gratification: I was backpacking for a week in New Mexico, and by the last couple days, a pepperoni pizza had started floating just in front of me, enticing me to take a few more steps. Of course, when we got out of the wilderness, the pizza didn’t taste nearly as good as what I’d imagined.)
The human brain, if I understand the biology, wants homeostasis. Endorphins, neurons, it’s a balance, and too much of one thing will be countered; anyone who’s done MDMA and been depressed the next day knows what I mean.
And there’s the incredible thing: how a morning run may suck for the hour or so required—I don’t really enjoy running, I’ve only experienced “runner’s high” once or twice when I’ve gone long distances—but it pays out for hours. Literally the whole waking day: buoyant mood, positive thoughts, a lighter spirit. As if my brain chemistry is doing things with neurotransmitters to reward me for the pre-dawn suffering.
Is this how the brain thinks about happiness, always tied to survival? Am I so simply programmed? Where else do I find myself unknowingly seeking balance?
To the run, Wednesday morning, being alone on the pavement in the chill-dark, it was its own meditation, with so much to see. House lights flickering on. Women in sweatshirts walking their dogs. The road I chose curled north, and sunrise was a gradual glow behind hills to my right, with other joggers nodding hello.
I passed a very tall, elderly man wheeling out his garbage cans.
I passed the pilates studio with its glass walls and open door—all women, seemingly middle-aged, their instructor shouting into a clip-on mic.
The morning started warming, I wish I’d worn a T-shirt, not a hoodie, I wished my knees didn’t creak. Still, I picked the coffeeshop that’s furtherest off, to put an additional half-mile between me and the finish line.
Being middle-aged, not having children, there’s a lot of time spent wondering what the point of all this is. To care for one another? To take care of ourselves? A friend asked me this recently. She’s in her forties, life is good, life is stable, still she recently dropped the two lovers she’d kept for a couple months, there was something missing, she’d noticed a void. “Seriously, what is the point? Just to keep doing… this?”
Into a void, maybe I ask, am I a receptor or an effector, or am I both?
Into a void, maybe I ask, is my internal environment regulated from the outside-in or the inside-out?
The same week, I read a line in one of Sheila Heti’s diaries and wrote it down: Knowing that bad things are going to come should make you really calm.
Predictive homeostasis, in other words.
Elements, perhaps interdependent, sometimes just seem to fit. Wednesday morning, end of run, I slowed to a stop. The baristas smiled. I ordered an iced americano and drank three cups of water, standing around. When the coffee was ready, I took two sips and shouted, “it’s so, so good!” Because on balance, it really was.
I’m going jogging again today, maybe that’s the point.
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What the what
“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
For magazine articles, bio, contact info: rosecransbaldwin.com.
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https://apps.apple.com/us/app/running-running-tracker/id1566469795 my favorite running app if you need one. It’s free and doesn’t make you make an account and sometimes mixes up miles and kilometers.