Marshmallows and Marathons

My new job is such that I can turn out good numbers while listening to music, plotting running routes in my head, or finally catching up, after over a year, with podcasts of This American Life and Radiolab.

This morning, one of the Radiolab podcasts was called "Mischel's Marshmallows," and it told the story of a psychological experiment interesting not only in its scope, but its results. I don't want to spoil the story, but in short, this study started with some kids left alone in a room with something tempting like marshmallows, or, more effectively, I would think, Oreos. It tested the ability to delay gratification, a skill that supposedly starts improving at around age four. Where it gets interesting is when they revisited these same kids a decade later, and found dramatic and undoubtedly nonspurious correlations to SAT scores, GPA, and behavior.

So, I'm listening to this, as I hope you will (it's only 15 minutes long), and I was excited because it actually feeds into one of the main reasons I enjoy coaching and feel that running is good for us.

The kids in the experiment all suffered horribly from the temptation of the Oreos. Some kids, though, naturally used strategies to either dissociate or associate from the stimulus - they would distract themselves by making up a song, the boys would sit there and kick the table, or they would mentally put a picture frame around the the yummy, delectable sandwich cookies. These are the kids that did well, then and later in life.

The other kids could be taught tricks to help them delay gratification, and it would help them become "high delayers". Unfortunately, teaching a kid tricks to keep themselves from eating a cookie in a room isn't going to translate to every day, lifelong strategies, right?

In comes running. The doing of running, even showing up to do it, requires discipline, self sacrifice, delayed gratification. I've seen the varieties of those kids in the adults that show up in our group wanting to run a half marathon and marathon, and their success is obviously tied to their discipline and their ability to push themselves into discomfort or inconvenience. But I have alos seen people learn these skills in training. They take little steps, day by day, just getting that day's run in. They are encouraged by their teammates who are doing it with them, and they are boosted by the amazement and approval of their families and friends. Eventually, they find something within them that drives that effort to deny their own comfort and convenience, because they know there's something of value in it.

And while it may be a bit idealistic or megalomanical, I believe that something like running, more than yoga, more than basketball, requires so much repetition and commitment that it really reinforces those better qualities in us, perhaps enough that we carry those same stronger virtues into the rest of our lives. So, really, here's my grand evil plan - I want us to be better runners, but I want us to be even better people.

So, please, listen to the podcast, and give it some thought - what are your strategies for delaying your own gratificaiton, and staying committed? And what is your payoff - why are you doing this? Feel free to comment...