Jan. 8: Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility

I remember back in college learning about The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility in Economics. Basically, if I remember correctly, it attempts to describe the relationship between one's satisfaction, or enjoyment, with something and how it changes with repeated consumption of that same thing. Let me use Thanksgiving Dinner as an example.

Thanksgiving dinner is one of those special dinners where there is just a little extra sauce, a little extra dessert, and basically a little extra of everything. This is a dinner you have been anticipating for the last month. So your first bite of whatever is on top of that food mound that that looks like a mini volcano with gravy instead of lava is delicious. It is so good that you are already stuffing in your second bite before your first mouthful has even had a chance to travel back to your molars. But this bite is even better, because now you dipped your turkey in some sweet potato, gravy, and you even managed to get a little stuffing on that fork as well. So with remnants of your first bite, and with your second bite still clearly visble in your mouth to Aunt Martha across the table, you bulldoze that third, even tastier bite, on into that black hole that once resembled your mouth. On this goes for awhile, each bite just a little tastier and sweeter than the one before...

But suddenly you realize that everything is just starting to taste the same on your plate. Your tastebuds are no longer dazzled by the sweet ham and they are starting to have trouble distinguishing the wine from the gravy. On any normal day, you would stop here and be completely satisfied. But this is not a normal day and plates of new, undiscovered food are still being passed infront of you. So, not wanting to offend your new found long lost cousin, you are compelled to try a little of his Road Kill BBQ or whatever it is that he is begging people to eat. And on this goes, each bite becoming more challenging and daunting than the rest. You might even spend a few moments of self reflective time, staring off in a distant trance with your eyes half shut hoping you can disguise a few silent burps and farts as "grandma's brand" in an effort to vacate just a little extra room for dessert. But alas, you soon find yourself holding your belly, lying on the living room floor infront of the TV sleeping with a sweet, sweet tryctophan buzz promising yourself that you will never do that again.

Now, just as we measure weight in pounds, and speed in miles/hour, the economists measure our degree of satisfaction in a utiles. So given the above example, we experience a period where our satisfaction (or our total utile count) increases, followed by a period where it marginally decreases from the time previous (or decreased marginal utiles (utility)...hence the name of the law).

All that just to describe that is how my run felt tonight! The first couple of miles I felt great. I felt alive; the cold air cleansing my lungs with each breath. By mile 6-8 I was starting to get a little bored of slipping on patches of ice and the novelty of running within the tight wooded paths of the Bois, dancing between the eerie shadows cast by the pale moonlight was starting to wear off. Miles 8-10 were just a bored grind...my utile count was definitely low! The run went as follows (you can tell where the icey bits and the dry bits were by the pace!):

7:18, 7:07, 7:25, 7:18, 7:21, 7:14, 7:17, 7:16, 7:11, 7:05 min/mile

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