In Pursuit of Excellence

The last time I wrote was after my easy 4 miles on Wednesday.  Today, is Friday.  It is unusual to have a Friday to rest but I do.  I will have one last run tomorrow before the 5K race on Sunday for which I have been training diligently.  The person who helped me develop a training plan says I've done all the right things to achieve my goal.  Now the key is to remind myself of that goal and to visualize.  So what is the goal: 18:59 or better.  Other than the GBMC 5K last year that was short by everyone's GPS watch and for which I didn't feel like I had run a sub-19), I have not run a 5K at a sub-19 pace since I was a teenager.  In fact, probably since 1986.  Ronald Reagan was president.  I had not graduated from high school.  I was probably watching the Cosby Show, Cheers, Night Court, and Family Ties.  It's been a long time.

Yesterday, I ran 3x2x200. Short workout.  Intended for the track.  But there was lightning when it was time to go.  I do track workouts alone.  I do track workouts in the rain.  I've even been known to do one or two alone and in the rain.  But I don't do them alone and in the rain when there is thunder and lightning.  So, I did it on the treadmill.  It is not often that I set the treadmill for 10.8 MPH, 11.3 MPH, and 11.8 MPH--even for 1/8 of a mile.  And I don't expect to hit those paces during the race except for the very end.  If I can run my 6:06 first mile (a little net down) and come through with a 6:06 second mile (pretty flat), then run a 3-ish 800 M, all I will have left is 0.6 miles.  And at that point, anything goes.  And when I have 0.1 miles left, I will dig deep and give the race everything I have.  If all goes well, I'll be able to find it in me to kick like I was running at the end yesterday and set a new grown up PR--and hit my sub-19.

That is my pursuit of running excellence.  My run yesterday put me up to 828.4 miles which puts me coming off the Madison County Transit Nature Trail in Granite City, IL, getting ready to run counterclockwise around the Horseshoe Lake.  The Catholic church in this city is called Holy Family, and that is neat because I want to talk about a few things having to do with family today.

Wednesday we had the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School's commencement ceremony.  I read all the names.  We finished in record time.  It was a great event.  It was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the pursuit of excellence with family.  It was also reflective of pursuit of excellence within the "family" of Carey employees.  We made that ceremony come off as seamlessly as possible and the teamwork aspect was great. 

Wednesday evening, I went to the last 3rd grade parent-teacher evening I will ever attend at the Waldorf School of Baltimore.  We talked about 3d grade highlights and a bit of a 4th grade preview.  And we painted wet on wet.  My appreciation for art has increased since I got my tattoo. My appreciation for the hard work to produce good art has increased even more since I got my tattoo.  When I get my picture, I will have to show it.  (It is not cery good)   Wet on wet painting is one thing that requires patience and control to pursue excellence.  Done often enough one learns how to work with the flowing colors rather than be frustrated by it.  It is kind of like running.  Painful/difficult at first, perhaps.  But after doing it enough times it becomes second nature.  One learns how to work with one's body and the random things that occur around it in the pursuit of excellence for running.  The experience made me slow down and breathe deep, so that was also very relaxing at the end of a long day.

We talked about geography as a unit in fourth grade.  The teacher mentioned that some adults don't have much of a sense of direction.  One of the joys of running alone or designing courses to run with one or two friends has been an incredibly more developed sense of direction about the roads on the runs that I do.  I would not call it a pursuit of excellence for me, but it is definitely part of my development of excellence. And for the kids, it may clearly be a pursuit.

Finally, in terms of family and pursuit of excellence, I attended the Baltimore School for the Arts senior honors recital last night.  Seven young adults getting ready to move on to study music in college who were able to develop a 15 minute repertoire of music to perform in two parts.  Amazing.  Pursuit of excellence celebrated with family and facilitated by family.  It will be fun to see where these kids (including my oldest son and his girlfriend of three years) go.  

The Hamster Half and Risk Aversion

Borrowing a phrase from a friend's post on Facebook, today I trained a "Hamster Half". My friend indicated that he would be doing a snow run because he was not a hamster.  I thought about that comment a lot as I ran 13.1 miles in 99 minutes and 55 seconds--doing it just fast enough so that the counter on the treadmill would not "turn over" (an old arcade term).  I suppose I even felt more like a hamster with the treadmill inclined up just a little.

In any case, many of my friends ran outside this weekend, and it certainly was warm enough to consider it late this morning.  But I have concluded that I am fairly risk averse--reflective of not wanting to take any risk os possibly taking a fall or twisting an ankle on a small spot at a corner or on an un-shoveled walk where snow was not fully removed and could now be slick.

It is interesting to think about risk aversion. In general, I think of myself as a fairly risk averse person.  Wanting to know that things are almost certain to work out before I take them on.  But Friday, someone pointed out that I have taken a new position at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School as the Vice Dean for Education.  It is a fairly new school with a change in leadership and a change of school and a lot of new responsibility for me.  My colleague thought I could not be too risk averse.

So, it is interesting to think about the combination of activities that I have and how my risk aversion fits (or does not fit) with each one.     

Outsiders and Creativity

Despite being on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University, I don't always read the Johns Hopkins magazine (a publication for alumni, students, faculty, etc.) every time I get it.  A couple days ago, I was trying to straighten up some of the mess that is "my stuff" at home and paged through the magazine coming upon an interesting article about whether "outsiders" are more creative.  It was fascinating as it told the story of a paper by Sharon Kim, a faculty member at the Carey Business School, who had done a study that produced evidence consistent with the idea that "rejection is not merely a byproduct of the fact that creative people can be unconventional but that the experience itself may promote creativity."  (For the record, I am quoting the article which directly quotes the paper by Professor Kim and two colleagues.)  The article concludes with a quote from Professor Kim as she thinks "the hero in this story is independence.  That is something that people don't talk about often, the benefits of being different...I think that identifying the ways in which being independent can foster creativity is important."

The article was also careful to note that not everyone who is an outsider is necessarily creative and that not all situations that make someone feel like an outsider necessarily result in greater creativity.  That was definitely neither the article's purpose nor the conclusion of Dr. Kim's research.

What is interesting for me to ponder what this means in my own life. It is neither Biblical nor religious at all, yet the search for meaning fits perfectly with my Augustinian spirituality.  In any case, I think about feeling like an outsider (in some ways) in high school and playing Dungeons and Dragons.  The latter (known as D&D back in the day) was not necessarily creativity for the good of society, but it did involve creativity.  I think about leaving the hard sciences after my freshman year at Penn State and after spending what felt like years in high school preparing for and switching to health policy as an "outsider".  That led to seeing things in ways that may have been a little different.  I eventually moved into "health economics" and the economics part particularly having been admitted to the School of Public Health at Michigan first and then joining the economics department and coming at things a bit differently.  Even my success at Johns Hopkins in the Bloomberg School of Public Health--successful as a researcher, yes, but with a love of teaching that is not as highly rewarded as if I were at a small liberal arts college, and the creativity and new thinking that I have brought to my teaching.

Am I saying that I have been perfect in any of these tasks with extra creativity?  No.  Am I saying that I was ever as wildly creative as Steve Jobs--of course not and I will never be?  Am I saying that I am always an outsider--no.  I just tend to come at things from the outside and then hang around long enough to become an insider.  What is interesting is that once I become an insider new opportunities appear for me to find a way to come at something new from the outside and take a fresh look.  It may or may not benefit society--or even my little niche within society.  But I find the new challenges refreshing, uplifting, and amazing.

What will happen when I turn the next corner?  Who knows--but I'm sure it will be interesting, whatever it is.