Saturday, July 10, 2010

Excellent Article on Today's Parenting

At the risk of having my wife complain to me that everything has to lead back to ultrarunning (which I swear I really don't do!),  I thought this very well-written, well-referenced and interesting current cover story article from New York Magazine a friend gave us sheds some incidental light on why we runners, especially the ultra-fanatic variety, repeatedly choose to run so much even when it's sometimes painful, exhausting and difficult.  But if that's a stretch, it's more worth a funny and validating read for what it reveals about parenting, happiness and how one goes about thinking about and measuring happiness.



All Joy and No Fun

Why parents hate parenting.



Referring to the cited study on pleasure versus reward on page 5, although at times running can be unpleasurable, for the most part it both very fun and very rewarding.

Maybe it's because I'm with my kids less than my wife (due mostly to my work schedule and a little bit from, uh, my racing) and she does a higher percentage of the grunt work, I swear I think it's more fun to hang out with them than she does.

By the way, my recent sleep deprived state which has prevented timely blogging is the result mostly of my work schedule and hanging with my kids who have been out of preschool and camp this month, and not from running too much, which I am not.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Working, kids, and alot for running I have to thank Apple for the iPhone! I'm a shy guy and a bit of a geek, and love anything to do with ultrarunning so it makes it easy.