three stages of doing things

I was pondering the idea of three stages of doing things when I was running today.

The three stages of doing things are based on some Chinese adages:

The first stage is: "The mountain is just the mountain."
What does it mean is that when you just start to do something, you only know the basic and you only learnt to do the thing by mimicking other people or learnt from some examples.  In this stage, you probably have no idea about the underlying theory, or short of in-depth analysis on how to do thing efficiently or effectively.  This is the beginner's stage.  When I started running couple of years ago, I believe that I was in that stage.  I just knew running is good and I'd like to run on treadmill for 30 minutes. I seldom run outside and seldom run more than 3 miles. The adage tells us that the mountain is just the mountain, you don't know about the tree, about the flora, and animals in the mountain.

The second stage is: "The mountain is not just the mountain."
What does this mean is that you now know more than on just how to do things.  The mountain has more meaning to you.  You not only knows the mountain, you also know the history, the stories, and some data of the mountain. So, the mountain is not just a simple mountain to you. As you have gained more experience and have learned more skills on the subject, you have insight knowledge and in-depth data on how to do things.  This is a long stage and is very important as well.  To my own experience, after I bought the Garmin 305 and read a lot of articles, some books about running, I understand the pace, split, heart rate, lactate level, threshold, vo2max, and so on.  I have dig into different training plan, try to set proper running pace, and explore different running forms.  This stage has lasted for a while maybe 2 years till now.

The third stage is: "The mountain is still the mountain."
This is the third stage of doing things and I think that I am entering the this stage of running. When I run outside, I would just have a simple watch with me.  I don't care too much about the pace, the heart rate anymore.  I just run with my heart and my own felling.  I just run for fun.  That's purely like the first stage of running.  I simply just enjoy running. In this stage, you realized that the mountain is still the mountain, no matter how much details you know, it is still the same old mountain over there.

The three adages seemed quite philosophical and that's the zen, the wisdom of Chinese.