Coach Laura's Rad & Wretched Reads for April 2024

Coach Laura discusses the books she read in April 2024 and how she’s going to implement what she learned into her coaching and training.  She also dives into why reading is so important for the development and maintenance of the human brain.

Non-Fiction:

No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts

Other Works Referenced:

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest by Mark Synnott

The Full Circle Podcast Episode 007: Live to Climb Another Day

Sources:

Wolf, Maryanne. ‘“Success in Circuit lies”: How do we cultivate deep reading processes in a digital age?’

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 What Reading Does for Our Brains
• 8:48 No Shortcuts to the Top
• 18:01 The Bottom Line
• 18:45 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 7:21)
Hello and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host Coach Laura Henry. It's time for rad and wretched reads. 

In April I had a lot going on personally and while I still did read a bit each day, I did not have time to read as much as I normally do. And what I did read was really long so for all of those reasons, this month's book list is shorter than normal. Since the book list is shorter than normal this month, I wanted to take some time to talk about why I value reading so much and what reading actually does for the human brain. 

The science behind this is actually really interesting. A great article by Marianne Wolfe called Success and Circuit Lies, How Do We Cultivate Deep Reading Processes in a Digital Age, summarizes a lot of the things that I've anecdotally observed and seen in other sources and studies. There's a link to this article in the show notes. 

Marianne Wolfe is the director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the University of California in Los Angeles. According to many, many sources, including Marianne Wolfe, literacy literally changes the human brain. Reading is not a natural thing. 

It's something that we've created. We created writing. It's one of the things that distinguishes our species from every other species that's ever been on the planet. 

Long-form reading, which is reading a book or an article that takes a longer time to read, it's at least 1,000 to 20,000 words long, specifically changes the brain. 280 characters on Twitter, I refuse to call it X, doesn't cut it, not by a long shot. Posts don't cut it. 

Even articles don't cut it. Not only does the actual act of reading change our brain, but what we read, how we read, and on what we read, for example, print, e-reader, phone, and laptop, also impacts and changes our brains. Marianne Wolfe discusses how it's important to develop a bi-literate brain, and this is a brain that is adapted to both digital and print literacy. 

We cannot escape electronics and these related technologies. They're here to stay, at least in our lifetimes. But we shouldn't be shunning all other things, such as actual books and actual print media, in favor of screens, no matter which screens those are. 

Obviously, we all know that there has been an increased dependency and addiction to screens in the last 20 years. Specifically, there has been a tremendous increase in screen reading for children since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A recent study published by JMA Pediatrics showed that increased screen time is associated with weaker development of the brain regions responsible for the executive function skills that govern attention, impulse, inhibition, and some aspects of memory. 

Detrimental effects on cognition and academic performance continued well into school years for children. The authors of this study wrote, When watching a screen, the infant is bombarded with a stream of fast-paced movements, ongoing blinking lights, and scene changes, which require ample cognitive resources to make sense of and process. The brain becomes overwhelmed and it is unable to leave adequate resources for itself to mature in cognitive skills, such as executive functions. 

And while this study did focus on children, this same impact is felt by older children and even adults. Since the surge in screen time, it has become common to skim to inform, and it's become the new norm for reading. We seek information so quickly that we don't take time to reflect on what we're actually reading and to expand our thoughts from what we're reading. 

And this, reflection on what we're reading and expanding thoughts from what we're reading, is a critical step in reading and it is what makes long-form reading specifically so valuable. It's not enough just to skim it or just to read it. We actually need to engage with it mentally. 

We need to think about it and we need to create other thoughts. We need to see where our thoughts go as a result of what we've read. Admit it, you skimmed the last thing you read on your phone or on your computer and you cannot specifically recall what it said. 

If I'm being honest, this entire problem is why I started this podcast. Even though I've been blogging for more than 10 years now, no one really was reading my posts anymore. I needed to switch to a different medium. 

Skimming means that we miss out on deep reading processes that require a quality of attention that is honestly increasingly and alarmingly at risk because we culturally are shifting towards mediums, smartphones and computers, that are distracting and they're splintering our attention and our focus. Wolf writes that the processes at risk include connecting background knowledge to new information, making analogies, drawing inferences, examining truth value, passing over into the perspectives of others, expanding empathy and knowledge and integrating everything into critical analysis. Deep reading is our species bridge to insight and novel thought. 

When we skim, we literally don't have and don't give ourselves time to think or feel anything about what we are quote-unquote reading. Skimming is shallow. That's really what we're getting at here. 

It's something that's deceptive. It makes us feel like we've done something but it's not actually doing anything good for us. It's not helping us grow, become more thoughtful, more empathetic or more intelligent. 

Reading deeply activates areas in our brain that are used for feeling and movement. Researchers have shown that the difference between skimming and reading with all of our intelligence is the difference between fully activated reading brains and their short-circuited screen-dulled versions. Wolf writes the medium of print advantages slower, more attention and time-requiring processes. 

The digital medium advantages fast processes and multitasking, both well-suited for skimming information's daily bombardments. Check yourself. Do you often read the first line of a page and zigzag to the bottom or read the first line, middle section and the end? Eye movement researchers call these Z and F patterns. 

What is lost lies between the lines, literally. Details and plots, the beauty of an author's language, immersion into others' perspectives. The consequences of these losses cascade from decreasing empathy and critical analysis to susceptibility to fake news, demagoguery and their corrosive influence on a democratic society. 

If children are learning from screens, which encourage skimming, and adults are increasingly using screens for everything, again, which encourage skimming, this means that there is a real and looming threat to literacy throughout our entire species in all ages. Reading comprehension is decreased when we read the same thing on screen versus reading it in print. E-readers like an actual Kindle are an exception to this because of how the technology works. 

So for those of you who don't know, e-readers only use electricity to flip very small tiles that are black on one side and white on the other. The tiles and what you're reading on an e-reader itself are actually not electronic. The tiles are flipped to make words or e-paper depending on what the page is that you're reading in the book. 

Even lighted Kindles are lit with real lights and they're not backlit the same way that phones, tablets and computers are. So I'm actually talking about real e-readers, not the Kindle app on your tablet or phone, an actual Kindle or an actual e-reader. So e-readers count as print, but other than that, everything else needs to be a physical print medium.

(7:22 - 8:24)
That's what we're talking about here. And like I mentioned earlier, the danger is that people think that because they're doing something faster, skimming it on electronic devices, that they're doing it quote-unquote better. And faster is not always better. 

Deep reading is impossible on a screen. Impossible. Screens are associated with distraction and when we're using them we are experiencing what is known as continuous partial attention. 

This means that we have less time that can be devoted to abstract thought about what we are consuming. Wolf recommends having real books alongside digital devices and not leaning only on digital devices for reading material. And she concludes her article with, let us make books anew. 

The places where we can all leave ourselves behind and explore knowledge, people, places, ideas beyond our imagination, which in the process transforms, challenges and expands us as individuals and as a species. I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment and it's one of the reasons why I share what I read every month as part of this podcast. Reading is profoundly important.

(8:24 - 14:02)
It helps make us better people. It helps make us smarter people. But most importantly, it causes us to grow in a way that cannot be substituted by screens. 

So like I said, there's a link to that article in the show notes if you're interested in learning more or if you'd like to talk about this. I love the science behind reading and what it does to our brains. So I'm happy to talk about it. 

Reach out at hello at fullcircleendurance.com. But now moving on to the books I read this month. So nonfiction. This month I actually read two nonfiction books, but I can only talk about one of them. 

One of the books I read was a manuscript that is being submitted for publication and I'm not allowed to talk about it right now. So stay tuned in the future for when I am able to talk about it. The book I can talk about that I read is called No Shortcuts to the Top, Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Veesters with David Roberts. 

This book was a memoir by Ed Veesters and he was the first American to climb all eight thousanders without bottled oxygen. The eight thousanders are the mountains in the world that are higher than 8,000 meters above sea level. There are 14 of them and all of them are in the Himalaya and they are the highest mountains in the world with Mount Everest of course being the tallest. 

Climbing these mountains without bottled oxygen is significant because all of the 8,000 meter peaks are in the so-called death zone and this is an area that is above 8,000 meters or 26,000 feet. At this altitude the pressure of oxygen is insufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span. So if you stay in the death zone you would die. 

That's why it's called that. It's common for mountaineers to use bottled oxygen on climbs to help them navigate this zone more safely. So no level of acclimatization can sustain you in the death zone. 

You need to either get in and out of it quickly or if you want to get a little bit of extra time in that zone you need to bring bottled oxygen. I love anything and everything about mountaineering. I will read books about it. 

I'll watch documentaries about it. I'll listen to podcasts about it. I love it. 

My unrealistic unicorn life goal is to climb Mount Everest and this will never happen for so many reasons but the top reason is because I am terrified of crossing a crevasse on a ladder wearing crampons. So a crevasse is like basically a deep pit and they literally strap together ladders to cross them and you have to do this wearing crampons which are basically big spikes on your boots. No I'm not doing that. 

But that being said I do have the goal of at least one day hiking into base camp at Mount Everest so I can see it and I can at least be there. Knowing that I do love mountaineering and learning about it one of the athletes I coach recommended this book to me. I listened to it as an audiobook which is something I like to do for memoirs when the author reads it and Ed V. Scherz does read this. 

The audio quality of his voice almost caused me to abandon this book early on like right in the beginning and the audio quality is not amazing and it sounds a bit scratchy and like it's in a room with weird acoustics. This annoyed me literally the entire time I was listening to it. I will admit it I am a really big snob when it comes to media quality. 

That includes audio. My undergraduate degree is from Ithaca College's Roy H. Park School of Communication and is in television radio. I had a video production concentration and an English minor. 

So even though I'm not currently working in either industry that relates to my degree or my minor I still use the skills I learned to this day. This podcast and the blogs I write are two such examples. As a result of this I detect issues with media much more frequently than regular people do and I can hear mistakes and poor quality almost instantly and it drives me nuts. 

The audio book is also clearly a rip of the CD version of it and I can understand why they did this. Rerecording the book would have been a lot of work and a lot of money and this is especially true because this book was published in 2006. So to redo it now would cost them a lot and it may not get an ROI since it's not necessarily relevant since it's almost 20 years old. 

There's another voice on the audio other than the author saying things like end of disc one start of disc two that interrupt the audio of the book and quite frankly I found this distracting stupid and annoying. I have no idea why they didn't edit this out. I could have done it on my computer if they had asked me when they were generating the audio file for the audio book. 

It just felt super lazy to me like why didn't you take it out? And finally Ed Viesture's voice honestly makes him sound like a bit of an arrogant snob and there was more than one time when he was narrating that I wanted to roll my eyes and or abandon the book. While I was trying to like him in many ways his voice made me not like him as much as I feel like I might have if I had actually read that tangible book. So there were several reasons that I honestly almost classified this book as a wretched read but since there were parts of it that I enjoyed and I'll be getting into those in a second and things that I do remember about it and things I learned that I can see myself using moving forward it just barely gets classified as a rad read. 

So what are some of the good things about this book? What are some of my key takeaways? Ed Viesture's is a cautious climber and this may sound like an oxymoron given what he does and what the death rates in mountaineering and specifically on the 8,000 meter peaks are. Just FYI generally speaking the death rate on the 8,000 meter peaks is anywhere from 1 in 4 to 1 in 2 so like a 25% to 50% chance of dying if you climb one of these mountains. And this death rate actually goes up the more someone climbs these type of mountains so one expedition you might have a 25% chance but if you keep going those odds are going to increase just because you're doing it more that's how odds work. 

At the time that Ed wrote the book he had been on 30 expeditions to the Himalaya in pursuit of his goal of climbing the 14 highest peaks without bottled oxygen. He has a motto, reaching the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory. I talked a bit about this perspective in episode 7, live to climb another day.

(14:02 - 19:32)
Most mountaineers share the perspective that there are actually other things that are more important than the goal that they are trying to achieve in an expedition. It's a perspective that endurance athletes could benefit from considering. Ed specifically implemented this in several key instances including in 1996 when he was on Mount Everest. 

His team, which was actually the IMAX team they made a really great documentary, did not attempt to summit on May 10th 1996. This was a projected summit window that's when you're on the mountain and the weather is looking like it's gonna be a decent day to try to go for the summit. His team had concerns about the amount of traffic that was on the mountain that year and the weather forecast that was later in the day and they were not convinced that they would be able to safely descend and get back to camp after summiting. 

They thought they could get the summit but they weren't sure they could get back down to their high camp so he deployed this getting to the summit is optional getting back is mandatory and he did not go for the summit on this particular day. But on that day, May 10th 1996, two other teams did go for the summit. They were teams with companies called Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness. 

Eight people from these teams died on their descent from the summit and this helped to make 1996 the deadliest season on Mount Everest in the history of the mountain at the time. Unfortunately it has since fallen to third place because there's been two other years that have been more deadly since 1996. And these deaths, which included the deaths of the expedition leaders Rob Hall and Scott Fisher, happened because the leaders of these expeditions became blinded by the promises that they had made their clients and by their determination to reach the summit. 

Even though both Rob Hall and Scott Fisher had proven that they could in the past, they did not accurately assess risk on this expedition. It cost them their lives and it cost the lives of six of their clients. Ed turned around at least four times when he was within 350 vertical feet of the summits of 8000ers. 

In other words, to put this in endurance athlete perspective, Ed turned around when he could see the finish line. How many of us can say that we would actually be willing to do that? That we wouldn't try to convince ourselves that the risk wasn't there? That it'll just be okay? That we talk ourselves into going for the finish? I've seen so many athletes do this so many times and in fact at a race once, and I did talk about this on episode seven, I was at a finish line and I watched somebody go down and he died because he didn't make that call early enough, unfortunately. It was devastating to see. 

We never think that things are gonna happen to us like that. We think that that's gonna be something that happens to somebody else, but the reality is that it could happen to you. This is why self-awareness is so important. 

We need to know when we're actually in danger and when we're not. Both are important. Some of the most challenging conversations I have to have with athletes are about when it's prudent to give up on a goal. 

Sometimes it happens right in the middle of a race. Sometimes it happens as we're working towards that race and training. Sometimes abandoning a goal is the best option, even if athletes don't want to admit that. 

This book that Ed wrote, like many mountaineering books, reinforces the truth that goals are important. Big goals are important, but there are other things that matter more and it's critical that we don't lose sight of that. Rob Hall and Scott Fisher, who were the expedition leaders in 1996 on Mount Everest, had tons of experience and they had previously proven that they could be effective in the mountains. 

However, they literally made fatal mistakes even with that experience. This is important to note because it shows that no matter how experienced we get in endurance sports, we too can become blinded by our ambition, blinded by our goals, and blinded by our desire to see what we started through to the finish. This kind of relentless driving pursuit is glorified in our culture, especially in American culture, and it's not necessarily a positive thing in my opinion, because that glorification fails to account for the very real possibility that it can be blinding. 

This book was a good reminder of this mindset and how important it is. It also gave me some language to use in my conversations with athletes when I do have to advise that they scale back or withdraw from their goals. So all in all, this book was okay. 

It wasn't wonderful. It wasn't the worst. It was just okay. 

Into Thin Air, A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer, or The Third Pole, Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest by Mark Sinnott are better choices if you're looking for a really good mountaineering book that's overwhelmingly good. I didn't finish any fiction books in April 2024. I'm working my way through one that is more than a thousand pages long, and given how busy I was this month, I just didn't have the time to complete it or any other fiction books. 

It just was a really busy month. So I hope that you enjoy my rad and wretched reads for April, which consisted of a whopping one book. As always, a list of that book and the other books that I referenced during this podcast will be available in the show notes, so make sure you check that out. 

I really hope that you discover and get immersed in a book that you cannot put down in the coming month. Happy reading. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. 

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Thanks for listening.