Proving yet again that running has done more for me than a Harvard education, Scientific American Mind has a feature story this month on how physical fitness makes you smarter. Among the studies cited by the article is one that asserts significant exertion is the key to the mental edge provided by working out; moderate exercise is good, but the strongest predictors of cognitive improvements are “strenuous activity and peak pulmonary expiratory flow rate.” To me, “pulmonary expiratory flow rate” sounds a lot like “hemorrhage,” so I’ll have to trust the scientists on that one. But any argument that I’m smarter than most other people in a nation that is woefully out of shape sure seems like robust empiricism to me.

As if runners don’t already feel physically superior to everyone else, we now have been gifted with hard evidence that we’re smarter. Now we get to moralize about fitness and intellect–yee-haw! Everyone also knows we have better taste in music, and I bet we’re funnier and cuter, too.

Vanity is also one of our assets.

Whether or not we’re smarter (of course we are; also funnier, cuter), 21st-century runners love studying their data, especially when it shows how clearly superior we are to some guy who is 1,000 miles away and a couple seconds slower in the Nike+ race. It would seem that runners are staging a coup on the media to prove our love of digits, because Wired also features a cover article on the role of data-tracking in the culture of running (what they term “living by numbers”) and the New York Times ran a comparison of running logs last weekend.

The upshot of our lust for data, as all these articles indicate, is that we’ve created a quantitative feedback loop for our running, through tech like Nike+ (the focus of the Wired article), Garmin, and online logs like Map My Run. If we are smarter than the couch potatoes, maybe it’s because we’ve all become small-scale statisticians with self-styled continuing ed in the study of our own data.

Despite my stubborn inability to understand and use my heart rate info, I’m as much a slave to my stats as the next girl. When my Garmin lost the satellite twice during last week’s long run, I wondered if there was even a point in finishing the 15 miles. I mean, if I can’t be rewarded with a readout of pace and distance, why even bother? I run trails for the process; I train for the shallow, gratifying increments of time that wield more power over my mood than any beta blocker.

The thing is, I’m told the pretty colors on my log and the gratification of the little beep signaling my lap pace on the Garmin are enough to make me a dork but insufficient to make me a good runner. Matt Fitzgerald (hi, Matt, how are you today?) proposes that we need several types of feedback, one of which is subjective, a qualitative assessment of how we feel. Obviously he’s talking about the color of my aura and the sensation of my oneness with the universe, so kudos to the science man for that.

Matt may perhaps also be referring to how our bodies feel, in my case, miserable, sucky, burning pain. I mean, what do I do with my subjective feedback if I often feel like crud? That’s how I know I’m running well, and it’s why I prefer to focus on the numbers. Numbers don’t hurt, unless I fail to meet my goals; then they feel like serrated daggers driven repeatedly through my heavy soul. In other words, a bummer.

In the end, what does a running life devoted to numbers amount to? Do we etch our PRs into our headstones?

A running life based on numbers, to me, does seem a little like loving our kids according to their test scores, which I only plan to do if Henry is in the 90th percentile. There is joy to be had from the subjective experience, and digit-driven running negates the sensations we get from running itself. Employing numbers is one thing; being a slave to them is another. Nike+ and Garmin are great tools, but ultimately, the significance of mid-pack running has little to do with its statistics. Underneath the numeric data is some good stuff, such as joy, invigoration, sport, and beating our obnoxious colleagues who also run.

Running for the sake of the numbers must obscure a deeper existential meaning that I plan to figure out by the time I reach that big finish line in the sky (21 years early). And I’ll be damned if that pulmonary expiratory flow jazz can’t help my intellectually superior runner’s brain come up with the meaning of life.

If not, I am so going to etch my PRs on my headstone.