Nature, red in tooth and claw

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific. I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit. Beatrix Potter

Has anyone else noticed the proliferation of runners’ memoirs lately? There are so many runner philosophers running amok in the aisles of bookstores recently that one yearns for a world where pro bowlers were half as prolific.

But when a friend recommended a certain running memoir to add to my collection, I had no choice but to run out and purchase it straight away. First, I feel compelled to read every runner’s memoir out there, much like some people memorize every word in the Oxford dictionary. Second, the author of the book was Bernd Heinrich. That’s right – Bernd Heinrich. Those of you who are familiar with the page turner The Trees in My Forest, or the equally enthralling Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, will no doubt understand why Mr. Heinrich is a favorite author. Third, the book was almost entirely about the physiology of running distance events. It had all the hallmarks of a classic great read, and it did not disappoint.

Why We Run is a book that must be digested slowly. I found myself putting it down at frequent intervals so that I could fit what I had just read in with what I knew of the natural world. Then I came upon what was perhaps the most significant passage in the book.

“We are psychologically evolved to pursue long-range goals, because through millions of years that is what we on average had to do in order to eat…A quick pounce-and-kill requires no dream. Dreams are the beacons that carry us far ahead into the hunt….We see our quarry even as it recedes over the hills and into the mists. It is still in our mind’s eye, still a target, and it becomes the main motivator. When 50,000 people line up to race a marathon, they are enacting a symbolic communal hunt, to be the first at the kill, or at least to take part in it.” (Italics added)

To translate, Mr. Heinrich believes that our ability to run long distances (and presumably, to run them fast) came about as a direct result of our need to hunt. As far as scientific conjecture with absolutely no actual evidential support goes, the only construct that comes close to this in sheer beauty is astrology. And frankly, who needs scientific evidence to support something that is so clearly true? For me, this passage solved the age old question: How do you know if it is mental or physical? The answer of course is this: It is never either mental or physical. It is always both.

We’ve already established elsewhere in these pages that I am a bit slow on the uptake. So it will not surprise you to learn that it took three entire days for the other shoe of this little running theorem to drop. If Mr. Heinrich’s construct is correct and our distance running capacity evolved lockstep with our ability to hunt prey that were out of sight but very much not out of mind, what does this say about runners whose food doesn’t run away? Switch that around a little, and the question becomes: Am I a slow runner because I am a vegan? Or am I a vegan because I am a slow runner?

The construct suddenly looked suspect to me, so I decided to throw a little science at it to see if it could hold up under scrutiny. But how best to set up an experiment that might get at all the complicated components of this question? I quickly discarded my first idea, which involved white mice, mazes and meat. Last time I checked white lab mice were not known for their carnivorous predilections. Furthermore, IRB approval would have been difficult to obtain. I also considered setting spinach salads at various spots along my route to see if my speed would increase knowing that a delicious meal lay in wait just around the next corner. But it was frigid that day and I wasn’t sure how to make that work while running on a treadmill, so that idea also was discarded. Finally, in a rare flash of brilliance, it hit me. Of course! In order to logically examine the effect of food on speed, I could only conduct this experiment in one place. The modern day version of the Serengeti plains, the source of all food in Southeastern Connecticut, carnivorous or otherwise, the Mecca of conspicuous caloric consumption, the one, the only, the super: Stop and Shop.

Only by comparing my shopping habits with those of a carnivore could I really examine the truthiness of this theory. Plus, I had to go grocery shopping anyway.

Using myself as the vegetarian shopper subject, I went first went through my usual shopping routine. After driving around for 10 minutes looking for a parking spot close to the door, I finally parked in one of the empty handicapped spots and headed in for the kill. Except for a tragic shortage of organic strawberries, the trip went off without a hitch (Figure 1). In and out in less than 15 minutes, I loaded up the hatchback, disguised myself by donning on old pleather bill cap, and lay in wait for my quarry, er, subject. In no time at all, I was rewarded with the arrival of a carnivore wearing leather Uggs, a leather coat with shearling lining, fur trimmed lamb’s wool mittens, a silk scarf, and a leather hat. I grabbed a shopping cart and followed her into the store to observe her in her native habitat, lab notebook in hand.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that most of my assumptions about meat eaters were dead wrong. First, they are a far braver lot than I had imagined. Carnivorous Carla, as I dubbed her, didn’t even blink when she marched up to the deli counter. I myself am extremely fearful of this area of spinning blades, and usually try to keep the banana display between myself and the deli whenever possible. Secondly, I was heartened to see Carnivorous Carla engaging in the Buddhist practice of purchasing an animal to re-release it into the wild (in this case she was purchasing lobsters). I also hadn’t bargained for the fact that all animal flesh looks alike. Poor Carnivorous Carla must have spent 20 minutes in the meat department, trying to discern the difference between the various animal parts on display. The biggest surprise was that fully one quarter of the Super Stop and Shop is dedicated to the worship of ruminant mammary glands. Who knew? I finally left Carnivorous Carla at the pharmacy, where she was no doubt picking up her cholesterol medication. The tortuous route of this poor woman’s shopping trip is recreated in Figure 1.

The results of my study were intriguing. The amount of time dedicated to food acquisition alone by carnivores is roughly 6 times that of vegans (Figure 2). Note that this figure does not incorporate the additional time required for food preparation and cooking time. Furthermore, as evidenced by the time to item acquisition, there are significant clusters where considerable thought must occur in order to ensure correct item selection (Figure 3). No such clusters exist for the vegan shopper.

Clearly, Mr. Heinrich’s theory has some merit. Veganism, laziness and slowness are all combined in one large and tangled neural knot. While everyone else’s ancestors were sharpening their wits with their spears and gearing up their enzymes for the long hunt, mine were wandering aimlessly around the lettuce patch, trying to remember if it was the red mushroom with white spots or the purple mushroom with beige stripes that killed Uncle Ungooga last week.

Furthermore, this theory, like most good ones, has broad explanatory power. Just about every single aspect of my life can be explained by either my laziness or by my inability to keep a thought in my head for more than one minute at a time. I will list just a few: my self-proclaimed inability to clean a bathroom or shovel a driveway, my parenting methods (Montessori), my teaching methods (experiential), my fascination with the drive-through window and, sad to say, the great sense of satisfaction I get in working with a certain zooplankton laboratory.

I now realize too, that the layout of our local Stop and Shop was created with people like me in mind. I’ve always wondered why the tofu was located next to the Odwalla smoothies. On the surface, these two products would have little to recommend themselves to this sort of layout. But by placing these products together, the store managers have made it that much easier for me to remember what is on my list. Bless their little hearts.

So what does this mean for my running? Am I really destined to be slow all of my life? Will the clown prevail?

I think not. Long before Mr. Heinrich came along with his shocking quasi-evolutionary Tennysonian physiological constructs, there existed a truism with centuries of evidence to support it: Hatred is the best motivator.

7 weeks…

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