Enthusiasm!
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts today, No Stupid Questions, which is essentially a conversation between Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth. They cover a broad range of topics and feed off each other in a fun, informative way. Dubner is a writer/economist and Duckworth a psychologist at University of Chicago. Today’s topic was “How Valuable is Enthusiasm?” Dubner, an avid amateur golfer, was posing how important enthusiasm was for him as he approached participation in a pro-am golfing event. He quoted from Gary Player’s book, The Golfer’s Guide to the Meaning of Life. Those of us of age probably recall the “big three” of golf: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Player. Dubner indicates this book is about much more than golf and draws on Player’s comments about enthusiasm. Perhaps more than is needed for this post. Nevertheless, I highly recommend listening to this podcast, #89 in the NSQ series. This discussion got me thinking about how important enthusiasm is in our running lives. What is it that gets us out to train most days at an intense level? And what allows us to put the hammer down, or keep the hammer down, in a race when discomfort mounts? This is hardly a stupid or theoretical question for a competitive runner, at … Continue reading