A few weeks ago, Holly attended a business conference where, amid a week of hectic activity, there was a noon-hour 5K race. It was an intriguing mix - not just of business and pleasure, but of intense mental work . . . broken up by intense physical activity. When it was over, she wondered how the world would be different if we could do that more often.
Obviously, there are jobs in which you simply can't take time off to jack your pulse into the stratosphere. At a minimum, you need a long enough lunch break . . . and a shower. But millions of people are noon-hour joggers. Why not noon-hour competitors, whether it be running, basketball, or a vigorous game of squash?
Taking the leap, however, is intimidating. Holly was at the conference - a highly technical scientific meeting -- as a freelance reporter. Being ambitious, she was trying to file at least one story a day. What if the race stole energy from her work?
But ultimately, she couldn't resist chasing a bunch of Ph.Ds. How often do you get the chance to do that? Or, in her case, whipping their collective butts? As it turned out, she was first woman, second overall.
Afterward, she was startled to find that she returned to her work fresher than before. And it wasn't simply the mental freshness you get from a good workout - this, after all, was a race and she'd run to win. That's hard work. It's also uncomfortable: you don't do it for that warm, fuzzy runner's high you sometimes find on a training run. You race . . . well, often because you simply have to -- despite the effort, the labored breathing, the protests of muscles taxed to their limits. You do it because, briefly, racing is all there is. You do it to live in the moment.
And when the moment was over? Well, suddenly the article she had to write looked easy. Her legs were a bit stiff, but her mind was unlimbered, no longer pressured. Workdays, she realized, often give her a lot of pent-up nervous energy. Letting it out with physical activity, especially to the point of exhaustion, was a way of purging it.
Would a jog have done the same thing? Probably not. When Rick had his last office job, before he took up full-time writing, he was a noon-hour runner. Most of his runs were easy trainers, but once a week, usually on Wednesdays (right in the middle of the business week), he did a noon-hour speed workout: a hard, solo effort on a riverside road with no traffic, no other runners - nothing but him and the effort of pushing himself, hard. It was a time devoted entirely to the effort of lungs and legs -- of not doing anything else and not even thinking about anything else, because running that hard puts you totally, all-consumingly in the moment.
And when it was over? He too went back to work and began accumulating new stresses, all over again. But for a while they weren't as significant. And when they mounted again? Well, there was always the next week's speed workout, kind of like revving the car up and burning all the gunk out of the engine.
It really is too bad that more work schedules don't allow us to do the same.
