How Adventurous Are You???

#382 - There's no exact line to say who's adventurous and who isn't. There are some guidelines and these loose guidelines can be applied to anyone who's trying something out of their comfort zone. I don't feel anyone else should pass judgement on us when we determine where that line is. There are too many in running and endurance sports telling us we need to take more chances, try more, do more. That's a personal decision and no one can decide that but us. This week, I give us something to think about, perhaps on your next run. Are you the type who likes to try next experiences head-on? Or do you like to stick with what you know? As I said, there are no judgements, no trying to talk you into doing something new. That's entirely your choice. We're just doing some long run thinking today. Enjoy the run! 

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(Cont.) How Adventurous Are You???

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Hidden West share stories you might not hear anywhere else. Want to know why the last chance grade might be the most dangerous bit of highway in California? Why did the Japanese drop bombs on the western part of the U.S.? And where is the state of Jefferson? All these stories and more about what makes the Western U.S. so great are here. There's a new story published every week. Check out Hidden West on YouTube. Welcome to Martha Runs the World, a podcast with a new take on running, fitness, and all things health-oriented. I'm Martha Hughes, your host, and each week I present a new topic that is of interest to all runners. Hi, and welcome to episode 382 of Martha Runs the World. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it each and every week. I'm doing something a little different this week. I'm going to get into some deep thoughts and a little psychology. Don't worry, it's not going to be that deep. But a little psychology over what we runners think is adventurous. Now there's no judgment here at all. Each one of us has a different level of what we think is adventure seeking. We have different levels of adventure seeking. We take different risks. I may take risks that you may never think of doing, and you may do things that I would never do ever. So this is just all fun and thinking about what we consider adventurous or risk taking. And there are a lot of factors involved. Our age, experiences, and environments factor all into it. So it's all one big mix, as they say, melange, as the French would say. For some, getting married, having kids, moving across the country doesn't seem adventurous. But to some of us, like me, that's really adventurous, and I don't think I'd ever take that risk. So that's, I mean, moving, yeah, I'm going to be moved next year, but the whole married thing, no, that's not for me. But for some people, that's wonderful. Another example is I run 99% of my runs alone. And for some people, that would be too much. And I do all these runs, including trail runs, all by myself. And many runners would never run alone. They won't go out if they can't find someone to run with, or they'll just stick to the treadmill. So we all have different levels of risk, and that's fine. Uh, we, like I said, we're all different. There's absolutely no judgment from me here to you. Whatever your level of risk is, is your level of risk. That's just it. Um, some runners really look forward to doing sky runs. I did a whole episode about skyrunning and where there's a lot of rock climbing and climbing up mountains as much as there is running, and I would never think of doing a race like that because I don't climb. It's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. So everyone has different levels. Research on adventure seeking reveals that what we casually call being adventurous is actually the product of several psychological traits and systems, each operating somewhat independently. And here are a few of them that I found. Novelty seeking and openness to experience. This involves your appetite for the unfamiliar. Psychologists studied uh different personalities and identified openness to experience as one of the five core dimensions of human personality, and I'm not getting all into that whole thing, but that's one thing. If you are open to experiences, you are more likely to be a risk taker. If you like don't really like new things or like to try things, you're less likely. People high in this trait show intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, and a preference for variety over routine. That's not necessarily seeking danger, they're seeking difference. This is the person who lights up at the chance to try a cuisine they've never encountered or explored an obscure museum in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Now, see, to some that might be a risk. Going into a neighborhood they don't know, going to mu even going into a museum. A lot of people don't go into museums. They feel intimidated by them. That's a risk. Trying new food, that's a huge risk for some. I love trying new cuisines and I will try any type of food, almost any. There's a couple I won't. But I will try almost anything because I if I don't like it, I don't have to ever eat it again. But I want to try it. I like doing that. That's a risk that I will take that maybe someone who climbs mountains won't take. So it's see, that's a different thing. If you're open to different things, though, especially in sports, if you're open to different sports, you're probably more likely to take risks. Now, here's another part of the puzzle here. There's a little puzzle that we can put together. Sensation seeking and optimal arousal. This is more psychological. Um a psychologist named Marvin Zuckerman developed the concept of sensation seeking, proposing that individuals have different optimal levels of arousal. High sensation seekers have a higher baseline needed for stimulation. Their nervous systems require more intense or novel experiences to maintain engagement and avoid the discomfort of under-stimulation, which is boredom. This explains why some people need to feel their heart racing from physical exertion or controlled fear on a regular basis, while others find such experiences overwhelming rather than energizing. Brain imaging studies have since shown that high sensation seekers show different patterns of neural activity, particularly in reward processing regions. Now, a lot of people really need to be extremely active all the time. I know a couple people like that. When they go out and they do things all the time, they can't like sit still. And that is part of their personality, I believe. And I'm not like that. If I get bored, yeah, I hate being bored. I I I stopped drinking because drinking bored me. Sure, I was tired of being hungover all the time and and drinking too much all the time. And well, that's a whole nother story. But the reason why I quit wasn't because of all the horrible things that happened. It was because I was bored. And boredom to me, but I'm not going to go out and do something crazy to me, that's crazy. Sorry, sorry about that. I'm not going to go out and do something extreme because I'm bored. But some people will. That's their personality. That's that's what they do. And that's them. Um, but it just really and and and I think these people uh and a lot of these people do the the intense the intense races, the sky races, the really, really long races, the 200 plus mile races, and they have to keep doing them because they need that stimulation. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just what is. Tolerance for ambiguity. This involves how your brain responds to uncertainty. Psychologists have found that people differ dramatically in their tolerance for ambiguous situations, such as scenarios where the outcome is unclear or information is incomplete. Some individuals experience ambiguous situations as threatening, activating stress responses. Others perceive the same uncertainty as a puzzle to be solved or an exciting variable in an otherwise predictable life. I think this is how do you respond to changes? How do you respond to uncertainty? Some of us respond well, some of us don't. Some of us freeze up and the world collapses around us when change happens. Others of us take it head on and move forward. How do you when something absolutely when something happens when a change happens in your life, how do you take it? Do you do you run from it or do you move head on into it? It's just a personality trait, how you handle it. Now you can always change things, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But just first off, there is a an initial way that you handle things due to your personality. And that comes about from experience, from age, and and from how you grew up, your environment. Spontaneity versus planning orientation. This reflects your preference for structure and time. Some people derive deep satisfaction from spontaneous action, like the ability to pivot quickly and say yes without extensive deliberation. Others experience spontaneity as stressful, preferring to approach new experiences with adequate preparation time. Again, this dimension is partially independent from the others. You can crave intense physical challenges while still wanting three months to train and plan. Or you can be utterly spontaneous about low stakes, social activities while remaining cautious about anything genuinely risky. And I would take this to mean someone who hasn't planned for a marathon and just decides to do it. And a lot of times these people actually rock in it. They do really well. I don't know how they do really well, but they do really well. I, if I did that, I boy, actually I did do a marathon and without a whole lot of training. And boy, that was really hard. And then it was like it was like the baton death march. It was way, way my younger life. Way, way, many, many decades ago. But I would, but and I would say I was under trained um for my 50 mile miler that I tried last summer. That was another one. So I can be quite spontaneous. I can be um I can be quite impulsive. And I'm going to do a whole episode about impulsive and compulsive as it regards to running, because I really like diving into some of the psychology stuff with running. I think it's really important to understand how it relates to us and how we can understand what we think, because our mental game in running is what do they say? Uh a marathon is is 10% training and 90% mental. Yeah, it's true. It's true in some ways. In some ways, it's true. But yeah, I like getting into this stuff because it can really help us when the going gets tough if we understand how we think and how we can work past some of our not faults, I'm not going to say faults, but some of our weaknesses that we have. I think it can really help us. And I include myself in this too, because I am definitely have a lot of weaknesses. Probably more than you. So I'm helping myself as we go along here. Now, with these traits in mind, here are some guidelines as to what an adventure can be. As I said in the beginning of the show, there are absolutely zero judgments. What adventures for you may not be for me, and vice versa. There are absolutely no judgments. If you don't like going out running by yourself, then don't do it. If you want to try it, try it. If you don't want to do anything more than a 5K because you're afraid to go longer, if you don't want to race because you don't like to be around people and that makes you that that makes you fearful, that's you. That's who you are. And if you're fine with that, I'm fine with that. It just really depends on your comfort level and what you want to risk as a risk taker. If you're a low risk taker and you're good with that and you're happy with that, that's great. Now, here is an adventure. Now, let's first talk about what an adventure is. An adventure is an experience that is exciting and remarkable. As a species, we have shared our knowledge for millennials through an oral tradition. Unless something is remarkable, meaning worth remarking or talking about, it's not culturally relevant. So an adventure has to be something that's a little bit out of the ordinary. Let's say you you went on a training run that's supposed to be five miles and you got lost, so you had to run an extra two or three miles. That's kind of an adventure, right? I've done that before. I went on a hike that I had to that I got totally lost at and had to hike an extra 10 miles. That was really fun. I caught the last bus home from Marin. I was so lucky to get that bus. My goodness, I was so tired. But that is an adventure. I actually thought about what I would do if I had to camp out overnight. And it's not that bad. It does it doesn't get that cold up there, but it was like, okay, if I have to camp here overnight, what am I gonna do? I just sleep underneath this tree. Oh goodness. Yeah, it was it was kind of hard. And okay, another one here. Possesses adversity or risk, preferably perceived risk. Without a challenge and a chance of failure or success, there has been no adventure. You have to have a challenge that you can either do well at or fail. A distinction, though, that a stink a distinction though is that adventurers don't need to risk their lives. You don't have to risk your life for an adventure. It can just be something that pushes you past your boundaries. Although the brain processes imminent danger, like if you're going down a trail and you might be uh bit by a rattlesnake. Differently than a perceived risk, you're going down the trail and one side of the trail is a cliff and you might fall off. Our physical response to both is identical. So um, let's see, the the snake is an imminent danger and perceived risk is falling off the cliff, which is very, very, very unlikely. Well, both are unlikely, but you're not going to fall off a cliff. I mean, you're really not. It's not the the trail is pretty is pretty wide and you're pretty safe that way, and you're more likely to get bit by a snake, which is highly unlikely anyway. Our physical response to both is almost identical. Someone could perceive being alone on a trail for a few hours as extremely frightening, while for others of us, we look forward for the quiet time alone. This means that you can have the experience of overcoming a challenge without ever actually having to risk anything. So being alone on a trail doesn't have to be frightening for you if you want to get over it. Also, adventure brings about growth. The person you are at the end has to be distinct from the person that started. You have to expand your comfort zone and overcome some sort of social, physical, or emotional boundary. Consider that all great adventures are changed by the journey. The Hobbit would not be an interesting story if Bilbo stayed in the Shire. When you leave your home, do you push the limits of your comfort zone? Do you push your physical, social, and emotional boundaries? If not, you are missing an opportunity. The gift of an adventure is not only the great stories you will recount for years to come. It is the person you become in the process, the new skills you acquire, and the deeper friendships you create, especially in running and on the trails. You can make so many friends, and if you just say hi to a few people, introduce yourself, move out of your comfort zone, and become and just be friendly and meet people, you might make some friends for life. I have a problem with that sometimes, especially in a crowded area. I kind of uh I'm an introvert, if you would believe that, around people I don't know, so I kind of get a little um little shy around them. So I have to push myself a lot to introduce myself. If you run your first ultra and spend hours on the trail alone for the first time, you have changed as a runner, haven't you? If you go out at an ultra and meet people at at the at the start, and then all of a sudden you're out on the trail by yourself and you're doing it, you're working it, and you actually finished a race. You have changed. Maybe you'll feel differently about running by yourself in the future after you finish that race and after all the time that you've trained. You probably are a little bit different, aren't you? One of the big questions we may ask is how do we become more adventurous? And I haven't really, I mean, I don't have the perfect answer for this. I still get afraid running single track trails. I fell, if you if you just started listening, I fell on a trail I knew very well in 2023. I'm not going to go into complete details here, but I did that trail a number of times. I fell and I wrecked my shoulder. I had to have my shoulder replaced. That's how bad it was. Now I won't run on a single track unless it's like perfectly smooth without any rocks. If there's rocks on that trail, I am hiking. I hike quickly and fast, but I don't run on it. I don't know if I'll ever get over that. I get nervous about it and it just kind of freaks me out. So I have to stop and I have to hike quickly. So the question remains: if we want more adventure on our running, how do we accomplish this? And here's some things that can help us, and maybe this will help me too, I don't know. To become more adventurous, start small by breaking your daily routine and trying new low-stakes experiences. Well, okay, if you want to change your way of thinking, if you're at adventures all around, we'll just use this as a general all-around, and you you can apply this to running. Cultivate curiosity, embrace uncertainty without waiting to feel perfectly brave, and reframe everyday challenges or minor mishaps as opportunities for discovery and growth. And start with these following steps. Uh start with microadventures. Now you don't need to travel around the world or take extreme risks to be adventurous. Change your environment. Take a completely different route when walking or running or hiking. Take a path or trail or a street or somewhere in a park that you've never run before. Go there and do it. Just do it. Just don't even think about it, just go do it. Everyday experiments. Order a dish you've never tried at a restaurant, watch a film that you've never a type of film that you've never seen before or never thought of before. Or try a new hobby that intimidates you. Local exploration. Go to a museum or a neighborhood you usually overlook. Or like I said, run in a different environment you've never run before. If you never run on a trail, run on a trail. Shift your mindset. Redefine adventure. Think of adventure as a state of being open, present, and excited rather than just an adrenaline rush. Embrace spontaneity. Try to say yes more often to sudden, safe invitations or last minute plans with friends. At the last minute, if your friends offer you to go for a run with them, go. Do it. Why not? Reframe the unexpected. View minor mishaps like getting lost on your run or um going the wrong way or something. See that as part of the adventure rather than a failure. Take action before you feel ready. Don't wait for bravery. Courage often follows action rather than preceding it. Sign up for a class or activity. Or get a running coach if you want. That's a great way to get over your fear of risk. Before you have the chance to talk yourself out of it. Sorry about that. Challenge limiting self-beliefs. If you find yourself thinking, I'm not the type of person who does that, tell that little voice to hush up and push yourself to test that assumption just once and see if you can do it. Step out of your comfort zone gradually. Talk to strangers at a race. Like I said before, go up and introduce yourself and just make a little small talk about the race and talk to them and see what how they're doing and how they feel and if they feel they're ready and if they've done the race before, find out if they have any tips for you if you've never done that race before. That's all actually quite helpful. Runners love being asked their knowledge. If you've never done the race and someone looks like they've done it, say, Well, where's the toughest parts? Or where's the prettiest part? Or what part do you like best in this race? And they love talking about that. We all do. We love that. So just do that. Travel slightly off the beaten path. Travel or go to a race by yourself, or travel to a destination race and see how that goes. Why not? If you've never traveled to a race, especially by yourself, do it. It's really fun. You won't be alone. You'll have hundreds if it's a road race, probably thousands. If it's a trail race, hundreds of friends right there. Everyone's a friend at a race. Now, will I ever get over my fear of rocky trails? I don't know. But one thing is for sure, I can hike pretty quickly over those trails. So we'll see. I don't know. We'll see. I when I move up closer to the mountains, I'll get more practice, and so maybe there I'll be able to do it. And I'll be retired so I won't have to work. Anyway. So let's see how we can do with our with our risk taking if we want to change it. If you don't, that's fine too. Now I wanted to talk about uh Coca Dona. I did an episode on Cocodona a couple weeks ago, and I unfortunately, tragedy has struck the Kokodona 250 race this year. A Michigan woman in her 40s passed away on the trail last week. And out of respect for the family, the race isn't sane any more than that. And I'm fine with that as far as I'm concerned, it's a good thing. Runners on the course dedicated their rest of their race to her. If you go back and listen to my episode on Coca-Dona, or if you watched the race live on YouTube last week, you'll know just how difficult it is. I think if you go to the to the YouTube channel Mountain Out Outpost, it's done by uh Aravipa Running. They run it, but it live streams should be up there and you can actually watch them. They'll be recorded, so they're not live, but you can actually go and watch them if you want at any point in the race. Um you see a few of those, you'll know just how difficult the race is. This is the first time anyone has passed away on the course. They take so many precautions and they work really hard to make it as safe as they can. So even though it's extremely difficult, it's as safe as it's ever going to be. My heart goes out to her family and friends, and I know that Martha Runs or listeners will think of them in their runs to come. Alright, so that is it for this week, and thank you so much for listening. It's always appreciated. And um, I hope you have wonderful, wonderful runs. And on that note, let's tie up our shoe laces and go for a run.