Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Fight or flight?

I really have to work on my anger management. When my pulse is elevated, like it was yesterday in a medium intensity run (around 165bpm), my fuse is as short as a very short thing indeed. I was running along the edge of a road in the village where I live - the pavement is too narrow to run comfortably along, and the road has two lanes and a speed limit of 40km/h - when a car "beeped" at me. I stopped and he wound down his window to say that I couldn't run "in the middle of the road" and that he had nearly "killed me" because a bus had pulled out in front of him. I pointed out - no I shouted very rudely - that I had lights (both headlamp and flashing light strip on my ankle) and "what if I had been a bicycle?". This is always my argument: I was running along at a good clip, faster than most people cycle AND I had lights, so why should I not be entitled to use the same space that cyclists are allowed to use? Of course, motorists (and probably policemen, had there been any present) would find my argument rather baffling, as I was clearly sans biciclette.

You can see in my heart rate graph, exactly the point where I stopped, he stopped, we ruffled our feathers and then the "fight or flight" reflex kicked in and my heart rate jumped 10 beats due to the adrenaline injection. If you are reading this, I am sorry for calling you fat and lazy and for suggesting you should get out of your car and do some exercise instead. I'm really not very proud of myself for that. It's just as well we both chose "flight". One of these days I may not be so lucky.

PS: The other spikes in my pace are due to (a) having to pass through a security turnstyle and (b) having to scale a two metre high gate which gets locked at around 7pm.

No comments:

Post a Comment