Stumbling upon the Joy of Running Bengaluru Ultra 2019

For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark

2019 has been a weird year of sorts for my running. I got PBs in 24h, 50k Ultras and many intermediate split best times too. I became a running coach and a motivational speaker. But somehow I “feel” I haven’t been enjoying running as much as I did in my past. And then, I read “Stumbling upon happiness” by Dr. Gilbert (blog title inspiration! and all italics sections in the post are from the book). Awesome book, I will try to take you through my recent Ultra marathon Bengaluru journey with excerpts from the book.

I was the ambassador of the Bengaluru Ultra, so I was of course automatically signed up. But I was thinking I would be “happy” to race this fast flat ultra easy distance, after all, I had gone past this distance many many times this year.

Prospection and Emotion


Prospection can provide pleasure and prevent pain, and this is one of the reasons why our brains stubbornly insist on churning out thoughts of the future. But that is not the only one. People find it gratifying to exercise control. We all steer ourselves toward the futures that we think will make us happy, but what does that word really mean?

In Part II of the book, “Subjectivity,” Dr. G tells you about the science of happiness. The word happiness is used to indicate at least three related things, which we might roughly call emotional happiness, moral happiness, and judgmental happiness.

Happiness, then, is the you-know-what-I-mean feeling.


And talking about judgmental happiness - Our remembrance of things past is imperfect, thus comparing our new happiness with our memory of our old happiness is a risky way to determine whether two subjective experiences are really different.

Comparing with the Possible

Dr. G says we derive support for our preferred conclusions by listening to the words that we put in the mouths of people who have already been preselected for their willingness to say what we want to hear.

Exactly, both D and Ath agreed the previous weekend; that I was in perfect shape to run a low 4hour for the 50k! I listened to the words that I put in the mouth of this preselected sample, lol!

The bottom line is this: The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye (ear) has agreed to look (hear) for what the brain wants.


So basically, my brain has tricked me by “filling in memory” of my last ultras to making me believe I will be happy. 

That when people make predictions about their reactions to future events, they tend to neglect the fact that their brains have performed the filling-in trick as an integral part of the act of imagination.

The details that the brain puts in are not nearly as troubling as the details it leaves out.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that the gritty details of running an ultra that are so salient to us as we execute them were not part of our mental image of running it, when we imagined it a month earlier, but what is surprising is how surprised we are when those details finally come into view.

Yes. After having completed the first 2 loops 12.5kms each, in 60mins and 64mins, the legs start to feel like they have lead inside them. How could I have not remembered this feeling from before; What *was* I thinking?

Looking Forward to Looking Backward

The psychological immune system defends the mind against unhappiness in much the same way that the physical immune system defends the body against illness.

A healthy psychological immune system strikes a balance that allows us to feel good enough to cope with our situation but bad enough to do something about it. So, I ploughed on, slowly, rationalizing that will still get me to finish in under 4.5 hours!

This is profound: we will feel better soon as we begin to discover facts that support this conclusion (“I went out too fast for the 2 loops, didn’t I, Ath?”), but the process by which we discover those facts must feel like a discovery and not like a snow job. If we see ourselves cooking the facts (“If I phrase the question just this way and ask nobody but Ath, I stand a pretty good chance of having my favored conclusion confirmed”), then the jig is up and self-deluded joins jilted in our list of pitiful qualities.

Net-net, don’t try to cook this feeling, sitting on your couch on a Sunday morning. You gotta be out there to “discover” the facts.

Indeed, in the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did, which is why the most popular regrets include not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities, and not spending enough time with family and friends. (and, if I may dare add – not running 50k ultra marathons!)

Let me now try and explain the run itself, but first, a caveat.

Explanation robs events of their emotional impact because it makes them seem likely and allows us to stop thinking about them. Oddly enough, an explanation doesn’t actually have to explain anything to have these effects—it merely needs to seem as though it does.

Outside Looking In

Experience and our awareness of the Experience are generated by different parts of the brain. Apparently, it is possible – at least for some of the people some of the time – to be happy, sad, bored, or curious, and not know it!!

Was I happy when I finished, and not know it??

So when Sunil asked me as I was crossing the finish line (clock reading 9:12:52AM, 4:42hrs after the start), the world’s most familiar question “How are you?”, did I not know my own heart?

Go to your bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. – Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

The Way We Weren’t

Where do I go from here?

The fact that the least likely experience is often the most likely memory can wreak havoc with our ability to predict future experiences.

Apparently, the way an experience ends is more important to us than the total amount of pleasure we receive—until we think about it.

We show a pronounced tendency to recall the items at the end of the series far better than the items at the beginning or in the middle.

Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends.

You will remember feeling as you had expected to feel, and not as you had actually felt.

All convoluted - the problem with this error of retrospection is that it can keep us from discovering our errors of prospection. Our inability to recall how we really felt is one of the reasons why our wealth of experience so often turns out to be a poverty of riches.


Reporting Live from Tomorrow

I quickly cancelled my plan to run from Bangalore to Mysore the next weekend, and rationalized why I should not run the Chandigarh 24hr run and by extension not be on the national team again.

The Inescapability Trigger

We are more likely to look for and find a positive view of the things we’re stuck with than of the things we’re not (and more likely to achieve the positive view of a bad experience than of a very bad experience).

The show will go on, and in 2020, I will continue to lead you to mindless long posts, I am stuck to running, and if have come this far, you are stuck with my posts!!

May you soon stumble upon “Happiness” in 2020