The posts before have shown the dramatic outcomes of too much exercise and training. In between, I would like to take another perspective on the whole topic to encourage your efforts, and perhaps give you more cues at hand to make the detrimental results of too much training and racing more understandable.
Modern exercise physiology and biology put a lot of work into studying the healthy body. That has not been the case for many decades where scientists only looked at sick bodies. Exercise physiology gives an amazing insight into the body's "normal" way of functioning.
Recently, I have been training with my personal coach as I do twice every week, and it came that we were discussing the topic of symmetry. I enjoy this luxury of having a coach since I am suffering from pains in my foot that I cannot not control anymore. The pain keeps me away from running which really influences my mood negatively ;-)... sorry, I am zoning out!
Analyzing my body we found out that over decades I have developed a kind of a patchwork of asymmetry that disturbs economic and efficient movements. Compensatory actions and postures added up. The result is a mess that is extremely difficult to tackle. Symmetry, so my hypothesis, is an ideal state of a biological organism that facilitates optimal functionality, and is rarely achieved or never, as it would mean complete perfection.
Today I found a talk by Marcus du Sautoy about symmetry that just fits into my current deliberations.
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (born in London, 26 August 1965) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory.
Two views on a virus.
In biology it is problematic if you draw an organism like being a part of your kid's toy box like the first image below, no activity state visible, no change in time. The other one shows you a beautiful pattern. It is the electron microscope that is giving you this image. You have to have the eye of a virologist to be able to understand either. Or you need a long explanation allowing you to enter the world of an expert in biology. Then you may be in their world and understand, but that does not necessarily mean that you ended up at the essence of form and function of a virus. It still may be all very different as knowledge and perspectives drift, shift or change.
credits
credits: all American patriots
Model of an influenza virus seen by a virologist with drawing skills
Viruses seen through the lens of an electron microscope
Yesterday before I decided to upload this video, I knew that it would cause controversial reactions and eventually antagonize people. I made the decision to publish this video anyhow, because it shows the problem we currently face with the swine flu in a very charming way. In times where you hear voices that even want to forbid a friendly handshake or the grabbing hold of the handle in a bus the most different perspectives through which we see the world are disclosed, and may eventually roughly collide.
Since years the notion that hygiene is the solution for the increasing number of virus infections or allergies is under scientific scrutiny. The huge amount of data indicates that hygiene is very likely leading us up the garden path.
... without even realizing it? Dan Dennet, philosopher and cognitive scientist, opens our eyes, and makes us wondering why the heck we allocate causes in such a decisive way. Our Western rational tradition created a reality = world of evidences and reasoning, endless lines of cause-relationships. Doubts are sparsely spread along these lines. Dan Dennet shows us how arbitrarily the cause-relation loop is punctured and straightened out by us into a line with a starting and an endpoint. On TED he talks about our post-hoc reasoning and Darwin's role in this game.
One of our most important living philosophers, Dan Dennett is best known for his provocative and controversial arguments that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes in the brain. He argues that the brain’s computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn’t.
Remark: Our Biestmilch universe is very much built on thoughts and reasoning like those of Dan Dennet, thanks to him. It is always encouraging to listen to poeple of his kind.