In many ways, I’ve built my entire exercise regime around Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object in motion tends to stay in motion while an object at rest stays at rest … unless a force acts upon the object. It’s more eloquently stated but that’s the gist. It’s all about inertia. And I’ve based my plan of races whenever possible upon the notion that if I stay in motion, stay running, and stay traveling to another new race whenever I can, I’ll keep moving forward.
The downside is that there is that pesky third law of motion. The third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So by constantly trying to keep up my routine and my race schedule, there’s an equal and opposite force trying to prevent me from running…. and let’s be honest there’s also the second half of the first law. I occasionally do tend to rest. It can be as simple as having a shoelace come undone in a race that I have to stop and retie; getting back into the race can be a MASSIVE, HERCULEAN struggle. But beyond that one-off where the adrenaline and visceral experience of being in a race can jumpstart the movement, there’s the far more insiduous issue of getting out for a run on any given day.
I had that inertial push-pull all day today. I had every intention of getting out the door early… and indeed had every intention of running twice today to make up for the inadvertent but totally my fault cheat days of excessive junk food that I’ve found myself scarfing down the past 48 hours. But I just couldn’t do it. The mind was mostly willing but the body? The body wasn’t having it. It was resting… or at least not moving. It wasn’t going to let some mamby pamby weak force try and break it. It was going to take a massive force to overcome the inertia… and so 10 hours after I had intended to go for a run, I finally got out the door.
But even in the running shoes and sweats, the body was resisting the force to move. I was sluggish and meandering and mentally I wasn’t much help either. I just wasn’t in the mood and I was feeling guilty about the more than a few dollops of ice cream, the bag of pretzels and chips, the various snack bars I had stuffed into my distending belly. This was precisely why I needed to go… and yet it was the force that was keeping me from going.
Which brings us to Newton’s Second Law — Force equals mass times acceleration. The reductive physics for kids description is that the more force exerted, the more acceleration attained. Unfortunately I’ve been adding on the mass which means I needed even more force than usual to get the acceleration up and revving.
I never quite got any kind of speed… sure, sure. I could blame uncooperative stop lights and crosswalks… or notions of “pacing myself” for Saturday’s marathon. But the reality is, it’s all Sir Isaac Newton’s fault. Him and his stupid laws of motion. Who made him Sheriff of Physicsdom?
Sigh… no, no. That’s not fair. I’m partly to blame too. I may be living in the era of “blame everybody but oneself” but there’s still a bit of self-awareness and personal responsibility in me.
Of course, if Google is to be believed, I can also partly blame King Tang of Shang for ordering 94 ice men to concoct what could be viewed as the original ice cream sundae. As for the US of A — The International Dairy Food Association claims:
The first official account of ice cream in the New World comes from a letter written in 1744 by a guest of Maryland Governor William Bladen. The first advertisement for ice cream in this country appeared in the New York Gazette on May 12, 1777, when confectioner Philip Lenzi announced that ice cream was available “almost every day.” Records kept by a Chatham Street, New York, merchant show that President George Washington spent approximately $200 for ice cream during the summer of 1790. Inventory records of Mount Vernon taken after Washington’s death revealed “two pewter ice cream pots.” President Thomas Jefferson was said to have a favorite 18-step recipe for an ice cream delicacy that resembled a modern-day Baked Alaska. Check out President Jefferson’s vanilla ice cream recipe here. — The History of Ice Cream, http://www.idfa.org/news-views/media-kits/ice-cream/the-history-of-ice-cream
So, yes, there’s plenty of other people to blame… but given today is officially the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek’s premiere and in many ways it was born out of a Kennedy-esque desire to reach the final frontier of space, I’ll invoke a JFK quote:
“Victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan…”