Running Links

 Some running links:
https://strengthrunning.com/2017/03/hill-workouts/

Double Run

 Ran 3 with Denise, then four more on my own. 71 F with 99% humidity.

Deliberately kept the pace slow wanting to save my legs for a longer run tomorrow. Roughly 12:30 for first 3 solo miles, then 12:00 for the last mile.

This morning was a classic bats to birds transition. In the first mile, I enjoyed seeing bats dart in and out of the woods chasing their final meal of the night. As the cloudy morning gained light, they gave ground to birds, so much more subdued than in the spring. 

My goal for next Sunday is 12.

A drink, anyone? More?

 A 5 oz. glass of wine contains about 0.6 oz of ethanol. (1)   This quantity of wine thus has 14 gr. of ethanol.(3) This is 0.21 gr/kg for a 150 lb person.

Alcohol consumption affects hormone production significantly. This effect tends to be strongest with cortisol, which shows a spike after ethanol has been ingested. Ingesting enough wine to raise serum ethanol to over 1.25 gr/kg in a 150 lb person (six glasses of wine) the spike becomes five fold. (2)  

The effects of ethanol on testosterone is more nuanced. At low levels, red wine may have positive effects on both oxidative stress and testosterone production, but this is strictly limited to low does.

(1) https://www.nclnet.org/alcohol_how_it_all_adds_up

(2) https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-7075-11-26

(3) https://www.nutritionheart.com/alcohol-drinks-grams-of-alcohol/

Invitation

The master gunny I work with invited me to his unit's run tomorrow, in celebration of the Marine Corps Birthday. I haven't run with a Marine unit in nearly 40 years. Of course, it's not just a 3 miler. At each mile, they will stop to do pull ups or push ups or mountain climbers or some other such Marine self-entertainment. They will complete at the Commanding Officer's residence where they will stop and sing all three stanzas of the Marine Hymn. I don't remember all three stanzas.

I begged out for this year, citing my slowly healing plantar fascia.

He promised to keep me posted for next year. 52 weeks from now, I should be recovering from my 6th Marine Corps Marathon.

64: Be all you once were.

11/8/2018

53 F, 50 F wind chill out there. I love early morning runs like this one. The gentle breeze caresses as we labor through our run. Yes, I say labor. We've de-conditioned a bit over the many months. But it's just good to be out here.

Before, though, Ares demands his tribute. I missed doing arms yesterday. The ritual of devotion is simple. Dumbbell curl supersetted with dumbbell triceps extensions. 5 sets. I get depressed thinking about all this running time lost.....Hermes has forsaken me.  For my devotion on the other hand, Ares has been very good to me this year.

Gym Thoughts Karma

"You are the moves you make."
"You are the steps you take."
"You're every move you make."  Yes

"Everything you do, comes back to you."

Everything you eat.
Everything you study or learn.
Everything you allow yourself to think.
Every lift you perform.
Every mile you run.
Everything you allow yourself to hear.

Life is totally unforgiving. You are what you repeatedly do. You create your future and everything you've done counts.

The effects of fitness on the aging process.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25157039

Plantar Fasciitis Treatments

 survey
 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Gazewood/publication/7426924_Plantar_Fasciitis_Evidence-based_review_of_diagnosis_and_therapy/links/5681683208ae051f9aec4e59.pdf


heel raises
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25145882
https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2014/09/15/plantar-fasciitis-important-new-research-by-michael-rathleff/ 
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Plantar-fascia-specific-stretching-exercise-in-with-Digiovanni-Nawoczenski/96b18627ee770de36631fbb8944771ba259d2832
 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.12313
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5962984/

stretching
https://journals.lww.com/jbjsjournal/Abstract/2006/08000/Plantar_Fascia_Specific_Stretching_Exercise.13.aspx

Challenge

I have been many things in my life, philosopher, student of zoology and science, engineer, coward, hero, leader. In old age, what resonates most loudly are the lessons I learned in the crucible that is most alien to all of us in comfort-land America. It is pervaded by an ethos that, among other things, teaches the implacable will to accomplish what you think you cannot do. You can hear the ethos in Major Misty Posey's laconic prose as she mentors and guides: https://www.marines.mil/…/SecretToPullupsHowToGoFrom0To20.p…. It is that absolute absence of doubt. https://www.marines.mil/…/zero-to-twenty-plus-marine-devel…/

We accept mediocrity in ourselves, enervate our minds and bodies, and ultimately undermine our health in our quest to be comfortable, professionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually. To be comfortable is to be dying.

Freedom is just another word....

Thought from one of my last runs, months ago. The silly bumper stickers are wrong: Freedom really is free. Freedom is a state of mind. I'm always hearing that we're the Land of the Free, as we sink deeper and deeper into debt and addiction. Despite all our declarations of freedom, we're not free.
What isn't free.....is often very expensive....is Justice.

Walking.....better than nothing

https://www.outsideonline.com/2342346/walking-might-be-best-exercise-there?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebookpost

Single Sets

Interesting results. Size does not equate to strength. Strength can be achieved by single sets, size comes from multiple sets. I've been spending much more time lifting since i can't run and I think it's showing. But the really important message is that real strength gains can be achieved in single sets.....provided you go to failure.
Of course, the body-building community has had it right for over half a century: you need volume for size.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/well/move/in-a-hurry-try-express-weight-training.html

Preventing Muscle Loss as We Age

A good pairing with the previous post: Muscle loss and its associated loss of strength, is entirely avoidable. One set per major body part, 3 times per week.....that's 15 minutes, 3 times a week. So avoidable....if you step beyond the myths about old age.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/well/live/preventing-muscle-loss-among-the-elderly.html

Strength Cardio Dialectic

My plantar fasciitis has quietened my lift/run dialectic. It has removed the choice. Over the months, my mental barriers to lifting have completely melted away.

I realized this morning: in the weekends, I have the time to do 5 sets vice my weekday 3 sets.

Run....Walk.....Crawl

Still having so many problems with my plantar fascia.......Saturday morning, rather than canceling my run, I decided to walk for an hour. That went well. So, Denise and I walked for two hours on Sunday.

Compared to sitting in a recliner, you get 85% of the health benefit of running by merely walking. I can easily walk two hours. Running gave me that ability. When I can't run, my mind and body demand that I walk.

So, Denise and I have devised this scheme. What is 8 hours of relentless forward progress? Does it matter if it is walked or it is run?

I have 63 year old colleagues who can barely walk to the restroom from their desks. Not walking takes me a step towards the place where they are. Walking takes me a step along the path of relentless forward progress. A first 50K is cobbled together with whatever you have.

50K is not such an insane idea: 31.1 miles. It's just a bit further than a marathon. A normal, healthy person should be able to attain it in 8 hours. That's a 15:46 minute pace. It's walking.

Running, walking, crawling is being alive. Reclining is being dead.

Is It Mind or Body?

As I start what I hope will be my marathon training, time forces me to transition from split strength training to full body workouts on just 3 days per week. I ran a 5 day week last week, but for shorter runs. This week my ambition is 4 or more miles on weekdays. 360 compass points of lightening necessitated canceling my Tuesday run. Wednesday, I ran 5 miles. Today, I'm doing my first full body workout: 5 compound exercises of 4 sets each. This is taking me over an hour to do...probably 75 minutes.

Fifty minutes into it, while under the barbell press, I realize that the weight feels really heavy. I wonder, is my mind tiring under the heavy work? By comparison my separate push and pull days seemed so much easier. Undeniably, this is more stress on my body at one time, so I could be tiring. I am unable to tell.

Body and mind adjust. "Where the mind goes, the body follows." I have no doubt that my perception of stress, whether body or mind, will decrease.

There is a wonderful moment in an old movie about another time when men could still be heroes. Omar Sharif exclaims with absolute, fundamentalist certainly, "The Nefuud cannot be crossed." Peter O'Toole, ever defiant child of the Enlightenment, points across the impenetrable desert expanse and replies, "Aqaba is over there. It is just a matter of going."

Heat: 91 F Today

Heat is the ultimate test for the distance runner. The Marathon du Sable events, Morocco and Peru, come to mind. I will never be up to such feats, but, coming from Florida, I know well the feeling of that merciless burning hammer in the sky pounding me relentlessly like a hammer until I'm a sweaty, greasy, salty, incoherent mess barely staggering forward on a run.

In the animal kingdom, for Homo sapiens, heat is the great equalizer. Many species can run faster than us. A few can trot farther. But no species can run as far or as fast in the heat. This became obvious to me in my vertebrate zoology class decades ago: humans have sparse and sweat glands covering the body.  We share with horses, another great endurance species, the ability to dissipate large amounts of heat through perspiration. Nomadic desert humans have been known to hunt antelopes and gazelles by running them into heat exhaustion. Research in the subsequent decades went on to confirm my hunch, documenting a dozen or so adaptations that make us great distance animals. If the distance is great enough, we can even beat horses. Running, particularly in the heat, was our killer advantage.

This year, I want to re-embrace that human trait. Rather than racing the sun as it rises on hot summer mornings to finish early, I will celebrate its rise and accept the heat. I will look up at the sun and realize that it is my creator. Running in the heat is its own form of mental and physical purification. It is a statement of being human and acknowledging what forged us in prehistoric times.

Change your paradigm: Badwater 135.

148.2 Will

I often pick Denise up after work right in front of her building. I stand beside our car, watching as her co-workers stream out. With uncomfortable frequency, someone will come out and  struggle descending the eight steps in front of the building, having gotten so fat that he or she is no longer  able to manage his/her weight and movement on the way down. These individuals are in their 50's, 40's, or even younger. I watch and cannot but help thinking, "My god, what are you doing with your body? And health?"

When I was 17, my love of belle lettres, philosophy, and biology led everyone, including me, to presume that my future lay in literature and/or the biological sciences, perhaps both. While I was adequate in all my studies, nothing presaged any skill in mathematics. Also, no one at the time could envision any serious level of athleticism in my physique. I was painfully out of touch with my body.

My studies of human evolution brought my interest in running. Additionally, I discovered, it freed my mind. As I ran across the hot, humid, sub-tropical savanna that was the University of Florida in the 1970's, I discovered at that early date that humans really were "born to run". The Marines brought strength training. Strength made my days easier. As I gained rank, I learned that to lead Marines, you needed to look like a leader of Marines. Additionally, you had better be able to do whatever you told your Marines to do. When I returned to Florida ten years later, I found my chosen major, electrical engineering, was under restricted admissions: 3.5 GPA in mathematics and physics just to be accepted. I willed those A's in calculus and differential equations into existence by blunt force hard, focused studying.

I watched a pudgy old man amble out the doors of Denise's place of work. He was yelling to another old man approaching across the parking lot: "What are you still doing here? I thought you'd be retired by now." They stopped and amicably chatted. Then I heard the first remark: "I'm 62 now. I'd retire if I had a life!" Oh my god, I thought: that's 62? They parted ways and the first made his way across the parking lot in the growing heat with an ungainly gait.

I have a visceral, negative reaction when somebody refers to my fitness, or even my career in engineering, as being a result of some, natural, genetic, predisposition. I am not the way I am because of disposing genetics: I am this way because even though this morning I woke up for a quarter of an hour at 2:45 AM, when my alarm rang at 3:30 AM, I got up, ran my 3 miles and worked out. I remain uninjured not because my bones and cartilage are somehow more resilient. I remain healthy because I back off when my body tells me to. And I always come back.

In running shoes, under the barbell, in the books, what most determines outcome is strength of will.....and patience.

149.4: 2 Miles - Not Self

The moon was just under half full at run start time. This week, I continue to lift while I experiment with 2 mile weekday runs. I think if my heels hold up on 3 consecutive outings of 2 miles, I'll be pretty much on a solid path to recovery.

Beyond 2 miles and I will have to drop my 6 day lifting. I'll do this regret. The regimen has enabled me to raise my working weights on just about all my movements. I will drop to lifting 3 days per week.

Running calls. When I lift, I strongly feel the element of self in my mind. Lifting is about self and power and domination of mind over iron, mind over body, mind over mind. Running is about not-self. I lose myself in the phases of the moon, in the procession of the stars and seasons, in the cycles of life and death that I inevitably witness when spending many hours as close to nature as possible. The goal of running is to pass quickly and silently across the landscape, first observing it, then becoming part of it. Gradually the wind no longer buffets me, it passes though me. My goal in running is to no longer be there.

149.2 Totally Own the Movement

The first two of five sets of slow pull ups to the sound of Van Halen's Eruption followed by Ain't Talking 'Bout Love at 4:30 AM is a great way to wake the body up. To better feel the movement in all my pulling muscles, I do it slowly, under full control, and holding for a full "one one-thousand" rep count at the top, under full contraction. I have adopted this approach in all movements where it's applicable. Full control and full contraction at maximum flexion truly imprints the movement into muscle memory. This allows me to feel my muscles flush with blood as my body fuels the effort. It seems as if I can feel every muscle, small and large, every tendon, and every ligament strain with the effort, then gasp for more air and energy in the rest period between sets.

This early in the morning, my mind rebels against the effort the really big compound movements in my routine: the pull up and the deadlift. I tell myself that these slow movements train me to totally own the movement, totally dominate it. Slow movement builds an intimate familiarity with the effort. But in this familiarity, I realize that I am wrong. These movements are about training the mind: by testing control, ownership, and domination of the weight, I train my mind to will this action into being. In the end, it is about owning the mind.

When you own your mind, you own the movement. The great Schwarzenegger, "where the mind goes, the body follows". This is true in academia, in all realms of effort.

It's Monday, just under 25 weeks to the MCM. Good morning.

26.2 miles is very very far away

149.2 lbs

149.6: I don't buy the slowing metabolism crap.

I don't buy the slowing metabolism crap. We sit on our asses all day and half the night letting our muscles atrophy away at the rate of  1/2 to 2 pounds a year. We fill ourselves with greasy, salty, sugary junk and wash it down with caffeine, alcohol, and sugary drinks. As the pounds gather on our waists and legs, we tell ourselves "you deserve a break today" or "Everything in moderation". We subvert our natural healthy state and wind up in middle and old age struggling with increasing morbidity and disease, popping prescriptions that often lower quality of life even more.

Age has nothing to do with it, except, perhaps, to allow the food and pill manufactures more time to brainwash us with self-indulgent or self-aggrandizing messaging. This happens while bad habits and vices further embed themselves into our minds. Our bodies and discipline fatten and weaken. We give billions to purveyors of junk foods and needless conveniences in youth and middle age; in middle and old age we add the drug companies to this unholy group.

I haven't weighed below 140 pounds since my 20's, not because of getting older. At 62, I'm not at my optimal running weight of 139 because of lack of will and discipline.

Can you imagine carrying a 10 pound or heavier weight plate 26 miles and 385 yards? Can you imagine carrying far more than that for a lifetime?

You are What You do

Never smoking, lots of exercise, healthy diet, being slender, and moderate to no alcohol are the 5 habits you can have to most increase your life expectancy from age 50.

It's Just A Mile

Typically, on my morning runs, my body doesn't even begin to  wake up and come into its pace until mile 4 or so. But I just don't feel the strength I need to feel on my runs. So Denise and I are sticking to little one-miles; this will be our third of the week.

Otherwise, my legs are doing great. I'm doing dead lifts a poundage and volume that I haven't seen since my Marine Corps day. Weighted heel raises are good, but a little weak. I just feel weak in my arches.

I wonder how much of this is mental. Am I being over-cautious?

On the up-side, my return to 5 set per exercise had been a huge boost my mental outlook as well as my strength progress. My body feels suffused with anabolic hormones doing this 6 days per week, high volume strength training.

Denise came down to the gym just as I was finishing my workout. We went out for our run.....breaking down and rewarding ourselves with 1.5 miles under a misty, waning moon. As we approached a particularly foreboding tree line in the pre-dawn, moonlit darkness, I asked her if she believed in werewolves. She laughed.

Primeval settings evoke primeval instincts.

Procession of the Gods

As Denise and I ran this morning across the commons, the moon's brilliance made my head torch completely unnecessary to light the way. After a full moon on Monday, our way was lit by moonlight. We ran silently in the dark, our path well defined against the dark, dewy, cold grass, marveling at the spectacle above us. This month, the moon is escorted by a procession of Gods across the ecliptic. Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and, lagging behind, Neptune. Powerful pagans, these famous Wanderers wander not at all.

Another why we run moment, this is why we run predawn. Long after the human lunacies on Earth have ended, the procession will continue.

Consistency

In physical, mental, and intellectual training, consistency is everything. Consistency along with the firm belief that with it, inevitably come growth and evolution towards a more perfect state.

Promise to Self while Doing Heel Raises This Afternoon

Finished up my leg day, this afternoon, with slow, weighted heel raises.

People with strong feet and calves don't get plantar fasciitis.

When I get done with this injury, I promise to myself that I will never quit doing slow, weighted heel raises.

Waxing Gibbous

The misty moon, waxing gibbous, was just above the horizon at run time this morning. A chilly wind out of the north-west stirred up the tree limbs, just now showing the first signs of spring. This moon is a good metaphor for the late start in my annual running cycle: it's late April. The year is about to be one quarter over and I am just taking my first tentative steps to rebuilding my endurance training program.

But this run puts me back in cycle with one of the fundamental reasons I come out here. It puts me back into nature, into nature's cycles. The bright moon precedes Jupiter and Mars on the ecliptic this morning. As humans, we look up into the skies and see metaphor, message, and meaning. We delude ourselves and belittle the grandeur of our universe when we imagine reflections of ourselves in the infinite cosmos.

This is run number two in what is hopefully my long ascent to marathon distance this fall. Accomplishing this will be another cycle in nature.

Low Starting Point

It has been 10 weeks since I've run anywhere near a 30 mile week. My diet hasn't been pure as it needs enough and I have floated above my red line weight of 150 lbs. At 63, the price to pay for leanness is no crap food whatsoever, particularly when you're not running 30 to 50 mile weeks.

I've tried a couple of one and two milers in the last 3 weeks, testing my feet only to quit for the rest of the week because of residual pain or discomfort in my arches. Meanwhile, I have continued leg strength training.

Yesterday, I ran another tentative one-miler at the tail end of my weight workout. I had no discomfort at all during the day. This is a first. I woke up this morning with tight, achy arches, but this is not unusual.

This afternoon, I do another one-miler. Let's push it a bit and see what happens.

If I had an ego, I would not advertise these numbers. But the reality is that you have to start low to get high.

Patience: it has been working for me for 12 years.

Body, Mind, One

Not even counting the weeks taken off from running. It would be too depressing. Both heels are so close to 100% again. Been good about doing strength training, particularly leg work. It is surprising to me, that heels can be too sore to run on, but tolerate weighted heel raises.

The 6 or so run-stopping injuries I've had over the past 12 years have always brought some new insight into my strength training. These have usually strengthened my running. This time, my insight has been the rediscovery of how productive and satisfying doing 5 sets of a particular movement can be. When you do 15 sets of challenging, full control, compound reps per week, your mind and body gain an intimate familiarity with the movement that 9 sets cannot yield. Body and mind respond with greater strength and greater determination to attain still another movement rep, building on the last work out.

It is clear to me that physical training is also mental training.

It's Boston Monday

The Boston Marathon...possibly the biggest assembly of highly fit people in the world.

At 4:30 AM, my task is much more prosaic: five sets of strict form pull ups, done to "Eminence Front". It's simple, brutishly so. It's Boston Monday.....dumbbell pull Monday for me. No glory in my subterranean gym, just work.


My heels are perceptively healing.

Good luck today, Shalane.

Life Expectancy

I have recently read research indicating a strong correlation between grip strength and time it takes to up from the floor with remaining life expectancy in my age cohort, the Boomers. Apparently, these measurements are being used increasingly in clinical, hospital, and assisted living settings. I suggest that these are predictors of morbidity expectancy, not life.

Grip strength and the ability to lift are fundamental to the deadlift. Overall, I know of no way to measure a person's ability to generate life inducing strength and power than his/her ability to lift a dead weight off the floor.

Measures and estimates of morbidity expectancy may have their place. I hope they never apply to me. I'm more interested in life expectancy. A better estimate for life expectancy: the ability to deadlift some multiple of one's body weight many times off the floor......the more times, the better.

Simplicity

It is a straightforward protocol: perform the exercise and wait 3 minutes while your pounding heart slows, then repeat four more times. It is brutally simple.

Your breathing and heart rates are direct indicators of how hard your muscles are working. Performing the protocol above with pull ups or dead lifts energizes your entire lower and upper body respectively, leaving your muscles screaming for air as they metabolize fuel. Your system is perfused with anabolic and mood enhancing hormones. Perform this ritual in the early morning and it  rips off all vestiges of morbid slumber, waking your body, alerting your mind, and rendering the world  with razor sharp clarity.

Then something magical happens. Muscles harden and grow; body, heart, and, most importantly, will, become stronger. The pact is fulfilled.

Pact with the Future

I realize that each workout is a pact with the future, a commitment that improvement will come as a result of training.

This is particularly evident in strength training as the trainee watches reps, sets, and weight slowly increase with repeated workout. But it is true in running and even learning. With these last two, the path to improvement is not always obvious, straight, or even continuously progressive. With running, the trainee routinely must hold back to improve. With learning, the path is the most intangible and obscure because, in proper learning, the student does not always know where the path will take him or her.

In this venal and philistine age, learning is often confused with preparing for a trade. At it's highest, learning transforms the student's world view.

Thoughts while pushing iron this morning.

Mists

I've said it before, I love running in predawn fog.

The moon is waning, but still three-quarters full. It is locked in a mutual stare with Jupiter, which precedes it across the ecliptic. The stars are too pale to shine through, even Jupiter loses his brilliance in the gray blanket.

I ran 2 miles, embedded in the various exercises that are my upper body barbell pull work out. It is the second day in a row that I run. Regrettably, I feel a mild burning sensation in my left heel. We'll see how it goes as I baby it for the rest of the day.

Still....I love running in the predawn fog.

Monday, April 2

It's a cold, dark, blustery, raining morning. I have to admit it's nice to be in my warm, brightly lit, basement gym pushing iron. Today, it's upper body push.

Tomorrow, I hope to start running again. I'm mostly only feeling tingling in my right foot and some tightness in my tibialis anterior. It is improving daily. Happily, the plantar fascia soreness I was having this season is also mitigating.

All just in time for spring.

Gods Conspire against Me

The Running Gods have certainly decided against me this year. First, I stop running to allow my irritated plantar fascia to heal and strengthen. Then, on my second miserably one-miler of my return week, I turn an ankle on my predawn run. This knocks me out of another week of running.

Running injuries are always a period of re-discovering my strength training knowledge. I have moved to a triple split cycle: upper body pull, upper body push, and legs. I am getting great pumps and seeing more progress than I have in years. This training takes me back to Marine Corps days: good god we made ourselves strong with all that iron work.

Today is special: the March blue moon is very full as it sets in the west this morning. It is so perfectly round. March 31: 2018 is one quarter over. We should all be one quarter of the way to attaining our resolutions. Unfortunately I am still at square zero.

I find my mind, my will, setting itself against circumstances.

Ruminations on an Injury, though mild.....

My principal heuristic when planning my runs is conservative: "It's not what you run today or this week that matters. It's what you run next week, next month, and next year." This view gives me an inherent tendency to manage any aches and pains early, and to focus on root causes.

This issue I have now is very minor. It amounts to a mild burning sensation in my left heel. I suspect it was brought on by trying to ramp up mileage in shoes that lack adequate support for my feet. The past few years, I have been experimenting with increasingly minimal shoes. It has worked well. I wear them as dress shoes at work and have been running predominantly in them for the past six months. I ran a not particularly high mileage fall season in them, then backed off for the winter.

Late this winter I started my annual mileage ramp upwards. I have to presume that my lower legs and feet could not support the stress of running in neutral lightweight Altra Escalantes and and spending my entire days in what amounted to bare foot shoes. I had also really slacked off on my heel raises, which are fundamental a very strong foundation for the entire leg.

I promised myself one to two weeks of complete rest from running. As the admittedly mild pain attenuates, my mind turns to miles. It negotiates with me: "How about one mile? That can't hurt anything." Compounding the attraction back to the road is knowing that my left foot easily sustained the 15 sets of weighted heel raises that I did this week.

What is running? There is nothing in the universe save the universe. Humans can only perceive the universe by its change, its cycles. Running brings us in direct, unavoidable contact with that universe. We must bend our minds and bodies, softened by disuse, misuse, and unnatural comforts, back to the activity and awareness of our evolutionary origins. By doing so, we cleanse ourselves of the mental and physical poisons of a materialistic, consumerist civilization. We experience, live, and adapt to the cycles that seemingly endlessly repeat all around us. Without that return to the universe, to nature, we remained trapped in the artificial world we have build around us.

I want to weigh what I did when I was in the Marines.....again (Part 1)

When I returned to training in 2004, my Tanita impedance percentage body fat monitor, aka, my “fatometer”, told me I had 25.5% body fat at roughly 185 lbs. This is half a percent above the clinical definition of obesity. I worked that weight down to an average of about 148 lbs by cleaning up my diet and an exercise program of as much activity as my then 49 year old body could withstand.

This past holiday season, my weight crept over 150 lbs. My jeans and dress trousers, all purchased since I regained a healthy weight, started feeling uncomfortable. 150 lbs is my red line.

The facts are interesting. The average American gains one to two pounds a year after age 25. He/she also loses half to one pound a year in bone and muscle mass in this time. This adds up to a catastrophic 1.5 to 3 lbs per year gain in body fat. Conventional wisdom tells us that slowing metabolism due to decreasing muscle mass is the culprit. (1)
While muscle is more metabolically active than fat, a pound of muscle only uses three to five calories a day more than a pound of fat. This decrease in basal metabolic rate results in at most half a pound of fat gain per year. Admittedly, as a person’s fat content and muscular weakness increase, the net gain over a year by replacing muscle with fat becomes quite significant.

What you do with your muscle counts way more than its basal metabolic rate. A beginner can add 3 to 5 pounds of muscle mass in three to four months of strength training. As he/she moves into their senior years, there is an inherent tendency to lose muscle mass no matter what training he/she does. But the frailty that so often appears in old age is a result exercise deficit, not old age. Furthermore, osteopenia can be largely eliminated by proper training while younger. When endurance exercise is added to strength training, you have a powerful tool for weight management.  (2)

The wrong diet can overwhelm any exercise program. Even an informal survey of calorie counts in a typical chain casual dining restaurant, or a review of calorie counts on packaged foods in the local grocery store, demonstrates that single meals of over 1,000 calories are quite common. One thing is very clear: a 1,000 calorie meal is never OK. Even if you’re an ultra marathoner, 1,000 calories in a single sitting is gluttony, not nutrition. It’s not even fine dining.

In the UK, cola companies will tell you that their beverage is a part of a wholesome diet, balanced by healthy amounts of activity. Since the 1950’s, US food companies have been producing ever more appealing products for less money in the perennial need to grow profits. Another point should be very clear: the foods in fast food and other chain restaurants as well as most food in grocery stores maximize profits for their purveyors by being created as attractive, or addictive, as possible. It is absolutely no coincidence that the rise of worldwide obesity coincides with the industrialized mass-marketing of food products. Processed food is engineered to be addictive. As proof of this, just open a bag of chips or cookies in almost any office or work site in America and observe the reactions. They are no different from drunk patrons in a late night bar, smokers standing around outside in a designated smoking area, or even users in a meth house.

(3)

Dear (Workout) Diary,

Today, I learned that being able to shovel snow with impunity is a really good indicator of the effectiveness of your core routine. You do core strength work to be a better runner...and look better. But training for running is training for the work of life.

Dear Diary, the other thing I learned today is that heavy dead lifts are also a great core movement, working back, glutes, and everything that needs oxygen to lift weight. After heavy dead lifts, a shovel of wet snow is a piece of cake.

Spring 2018

I missed running on the first day of spring this year. I regret it. One of the things I love about running is that it keeps my mind aware of natural cycles. I've noted many times that I see more sunrises in a couple of years' distance training than I did in my entire life prior to returning to running. The sun's rays lift my mind from its sleeping darkness and almost always drops my pace by a minute or two. I follow the moon's wax and wane each month, celebrating the full moon and embracing the darkness when it is new. Each solstice, I prepare mentally for the lengthening and shortening of the days. Long days mean warmth and longer runs as I do not lose as much morning time planning what to wear in the cold and then putting it on. Each equinox, I celebrate the arrival of spring or steel myself for the mental and physical stress of running through the winter. The passing of each year presents the previous twelve months as a challenge to improve upon and surpass them in the next twelve months.

For me, the word "injury" is pretty much "the name that shall not be spoken". I monitored the sensitivity in my left heel but did not refer to it as what it is. The soreness after last Sunday's 12 miles constrains me to acknowledge it as plantar fasciitis and decide to stop running for one or two weeks. Mercifully, my arches and calves are very strong. This strength acts as a natural shield against significant injury. The pain is very mild and has mitigated substantially after just two day's rest.

The sun's northbound crossing of the equator marks a day of private celebration and the anticipation of many mornings of long, sweaty, shirtless runs. Instead, I do the "push" phase of my split strength training routine. I console myself that the usual brakes I put on working my quads and glutes can come off: I will not need fresh legs to run.

Since getting back into strength training in a serious way, my time spent not running due to some ache has diminished substantially. But every time I do take a break, I promise to come back stronger.

Ides of March

Today, I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon. It is my first since 2011. I wonder the implications of signing up on the Ides of March: what augures am I tempting?

That I am nursing an occasionally sore left heel is even more occasion to pause.

Solstice

It's the winter solstice. I like to run on milestones like this one, but it is a strength training day. I give a glance at the narrow sickle moon floating just above the tree line, but know that today i need to be in the gym.

A big part of my running is witnessing the cycles of time.

What Doctors Tell Us

The chronic ache in my right shoulder that my doctor said was arthritis was actually shoulder impingement syndrome. It took me two years of self experimentation and research to find that out. Back to the bench press ... with a slightly lower eccentric movement. Funny how getting older really works....

Do not go gently into that good night.

9/2 Body

Epictetus tells us that our bodies are not within our control, that they are not part of the selves we control. To ensure peace of mind, we must not overly covet it. For peace of mind, we must focus on and value what we truly control: our mind, our "self".

As an engineer, my profession has been primarily based on the performance of my mind. While a young student, I loved to learn, but I was often weak at execution, weak at performance. After the Marines, I became better at execution. This skill got me into and through engineering school. Mental execution and performance has served me well as an engineer. These have been functions of my mind. However, the Marines, with its emphasis on performance of body, gave me experience with performance of body. In many ways, the Corps taught me the euphemism: where the mind goes, the body follows. For most of my subsequent life, I made my living though performance of mind, to the detriment of my body. Late in my life, I was given an ultimatum: pay attention to performance of body or permanently undermine my health. I refocused on the simplicity and austerity that I learned in the Corps and focused once again on performance of my body. As I entered my fifth decade, I discovered how much my new focus improved my quality of life. The return on investment seems to have no ceiling.

I understand that, ultimately, body is not within my control.

Three weeks ago, I took a week off from running and lifting to travel to the Colorado high country. The choice was easy. We live at 27 feet. Denise and I spent all of our time above 5,000 feet, and a large part of it above 6500 to 11,000 feet. We hiked, but running would have been stupid. The next week we returned home and I started usual running and lifting. Sunday, however, I caught my foot under a barbell and gave myself a nasty bruise that knocked me out of running for a week.

This last week, I did four of my six weight work out, but have not run in a week because of my bruise.

I'm astonished at how much my sense of well being imploded when I miss two of three weeks of running. When I stop and think about who I am, I realize how much running defines my life....and the hole it leaves when it's not there. Epictetus tells me that I should not overly value my performance of body. But it is so fundamental to health of mind and body. Basic health is not sufficient. I could never accept the dishonor of  succumbing to the myriad lifestyle diseases that arise from our seduction by the self-indulgent society we have built around us. Basic health is not enough; I have to at least try to live my years with a bit of elan, both physical and mental.

Epictetus warns me not to overly value things beyond my control. How do I balance this truth with the truth in Juvenal's "orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano"?

8 miles today.

8/24/2017

I woke up to a steady rain this morning. It picked up as I got ready to take Peanut out. Normally, 67 F in the rain feels good on a run, but as the water hit my bare skin, it completely eroded my mental will and desire to run. Peanut and I both decided we wanted no part of it. Normally I embrace a gentle rain, but not this morning.  As the drops fell, we both shrank away, as if we'd melt. I expect this in the chihuahua. But pride should prevent it in me, but not this morning. I shrank back and cancelled.

45 minutes later, the skies had mostly cleared. By then, it was 4:30 AM, too late for my full run. Somewhere in my mind, I gathered the energy, the sense of need, to get out there for at least 4 miles. Training is an imperative. There really is not an alternative. I thought of my logs and charts that would go without new entries if I failed to go out.

The morning was actually quite wonderful. Running in the cool night air smelling the scent of the newly fallen rain on the grass was refreshing.

Week 24: Challenges

 My mind struggled on my long run this morning. The humidity seemed to sap my will and, with it, the strength in my legs. I understand well that where the mind cannot go, the body has no hope of going, but I plodded on. My psychology has a strange inversion from what I would expect. The first miles are a listless challenge. When going long, the goal seems so far away when I'm in single digits. But, as I pass ten, with the sun rise and my body wakening in its circadian rhythm, my attitude, energy, and pace elevate. Mile 19 may not feel as good as mile 1 was numb, but it is often at a pace that is 2 or 3 minutes faster. Today, the weather certainly did not help. As the morning sun burned off the fog, the heat index went from 71F to 87F. 

My mind struggled this morning....but the struggle is good. Each time you overcome the inertia, you grow. Each time it defeats you, the humiliation of the memory is fuel to overcome it the future. The one thing I cannot allow is to live in an air conditioned bubble, far from the cycles of the sun and the summer and all the life that lives within and by it.

Phases and Faces

The moon is at 99.4% this morning. We're going to lose the firmament lights for a few days, but tonight they are on full display. I turned off my head torch as Denise and I ran the trails; we could see quite easily by just the moon light that illuminated the woods around us. Jupiter and Spica accompany the moon as they make their glowing paths across the clear predawn sky.

The phases and faces of the moon are still another reason why I run.

5.4 miles, 21 F.

Slow Build

11.5 miles / 0830/ 50 F

It is hard to build miles on only 4 days' running per week. This morning, I had my slice of bread and peanut butter too quickly and to late relative my run start. It sat like a lump in my stomach for the first 6 or 7 miles. The blood used digesting my food drained my legs and I could only manage the first miles at a roughly 13 minute pace.

I did not run a harder 5K at tempo pace this weekend. I was surprised how it affected my legs early during the week. I couldn't do any leg strength training until Friday.

That's the dichotomy I constantly balance....running as opposed to strength training. During the fall, I switched back to a 3 weight days per week routine and dropped my running from 5 days to 4. After months of no progress, I'm seeing improvements in both repetitions and weight used, as well as appearance. But it is a mistake to consider weight training as narcissism. The strength training, along faster speed running, both build muscle. This strength translates directly into more efficient, injury-free running. More importantly, it also directly impacts my quality of life. In the age cohort from 10 years younger than me to 5 years older, since I started running, there have been two strokes, one debilitating cerebral aneurysm - he is in his 40s, 3 pace maker insertions - one to someone in his 40s, and 3 people with some combination of hip and or knee replacements. I do not believe I won the lottery of good health through genetics. My 3 uncles  all had cardiovascular disease, perishing between the ages of 41 and 85. My mom and her sisters all died of cancer, the earliest to perish was my mom at age 61. Denise and I seem to have fallen into a parallel universe of slow aging. We're even graying more slowly than our cohorts. The library of scientific research conclusively shows the positive relationship between exercise, particularly intense exercise, and lowered metabolic syndrome, improved immune system response, lower cancer rates, lower CVDs of all types, improved gut bacteria profile, and greater morbidity-free longevity. There is even a correlation between exercise and age-induced chromosome degeneration. Research has demonstrated in studies of identical twins that telomeres of exercising individuals are longer and less degenerated than those of their non-exercising siblings. This is significant because there is much research suggesting that aging is in part due to a build up of chromosomal errors made during cell reproduction.

The effects of getting up at 3:30 AM and hitting the pavement by 4:15 AM in running shoes or pumping in the gym are profound: striving to look like Discobolus or Diana not only improves one's aesthetic, it is profoundly healthy.

Fitfull Moon

4 AM. | 4.1 miles | temp: 36 F. | wind chill: 27 F

Last night's full super moon is still high, being fitfully covered by at least two layers of clouds rushing by. The lower layer is thinner and moving more quickly. When it opens, you can see the moon, almost perfectly round, being partially obscured by darker, higher, slower clouds. Its quite a sight.

Legs and low back a little tired from yesterday's dead lifts and squats.

Time to go running.

By 4:15, the winds had blown the sky to a clear black, with only the moon and a few stars visible. I turned off my headlamp as we ran across the commons. We ran in the bright, cold, light, able to see the trail and everything around us quite well. It wasn't what comes to mind when I hear the words "dancing in the moonlight" sung, but rewarding enough.

Damned Inconsistent

7.0 miles / 0800 / 31 F

I've been running fairly well this year, but have been damned inconsistent. I've hit 40, 45 mile weeks fairly easily, but not been able to hold at that distance for subsequent weeks. Mental challenges have gotten in the way. First came the realization that I will be 61; I never planned to be 61. Then came the realization that I have perhaps as few as 6 years remaining in my career; I've always had a long term professional plan, now there is no long term. Finally the shock that a candidate who openly embraced bigotry could become president of the United States. I'm letting negative thoughts my training cycles. It prevented me from getting into true marathon fitness this year.

The run liberates. It is a stunning cloudless, bright, Maryland fall day. This was a mindless, mindful run. No deep thoughts, no delighted pondering the Jupiter's rise over the horizon. I just ran because that's what I do, to relish the fact that I easily run my standard 7 miles, today made more easy by the beautiful weather. I also ran because I missed my Thursday run and could not permit the inertia to grow into something out of hand.

When the mind creeps into dark places, it gets difficult to leave. It can build and drown you in a sea of inertia and mediocrity. Breaking free stops that slide. The next run brings back life. All that matters is making that next run happen.

Stars

0430 7.0 miles. 2.0@Tempo 40 F.  147.8 lbs.

This morning was the first real harbinger of fall. Both Denise and I dressed in warmer gear.

Given all the time we spend under the morning stars, specially in winter, I thought I'd put the time to even better use by re-learning the constellations. I started with Orion, which I remember from childhood. Since it is now above the horizon at 0430, I picked up the constellations immediately below it, Canis Major and Lepus. Denise joined me after a couple of miles and I pointed out our first constellations to memorize. We marveled at Sirius' brightness, the brightest in the sky. At one point, as she finished her run, we paused on the commons to debate the identity of Betelguese.

Compromise

5.5 miles. 70 F. 147.5 lbs.

Denise had an 8 AM meeting today, so I trimmed my runtime a bit. The distance was only 5.5 vice my preferred 7 miles. Every endurance athlete feels that tension between training time and the rest of life's commitments. We are in the last 10 years of our admittedly successful careers and that side of life is lessening in importance in my mind. The astonishing benefits we have both derived from our training seems to magnify every year, particularly as our cohort ages. I don't like impingements on my training; my growing physicality is a goal and benefit in itself. The sensuousness of being soaked in sweat during hill repeats or straining against the implacable descent of a barbell verges on the sensual. The training impacts your body, molding it into something better. It is small wonder that the Spartan youths of both sexes, not given over to silly trite niceties, trained and competed in the nude.

But other responsibilities demand attention. A career is a form of training, if it has been demanding enough. The drive to perform excellently in a career also molds mind and will, both components of body. If it is not hard, then no training, no adaptation can occur. Compromise to improve as many aspects of life as possible, this all lends to the final self-creation that is an individual.

Still, I love the brutal simplicity of sweat and gasping for air as I summit my hill.

The Idea of Back to Backs

7.0 miles. 72 F. 147.0 lbs. 17%.

We ran easy along Patuxent North Branch. My legs were very heavy for the first three, then the energy seemed to flow. I'm not sure what dynamic is happening, but my body seems to wake across the first three or four miles. This was Denise's long run for the week. I hatched up this idea that I could add on miles by staggering our long runs, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I run my long run on Saturday, then do whatever she's doing on Sunday. The idea comes from the ultra marathon training community, back to back long runs to build strength, endurance, and the mental toughness while running the second day.

This finishes a great week's running. Too often, I judge my weeks based on how well the running has gone. Its been a very good week.

Bats to Birds

15.2 miles. 70 F. 0510

I call it running from the time of bats to the time of birds. Most of my runs begin pre-dawn. Ten years ago, the bat population was greater. Now their numbers have thinned, I believe because of the bat white nose syndrome. But I still see them flitting about near the tree lines. I have even been buzzed on the commons by something small and fast in the dark. I presume my invisible friends are bats. I hear, then see, the birds awake and take to the air. In spring it is a noisy chorus of males calling for mates and challenging other males. Now, they are much more subdued, spent from a summer of mating and raising young.

Some mornings, the dawn is Zarathustrian. Today, the nearly full moon was mostly hidden by the clouds, occasionally showing a bit of its orb. By sunrise, the sky was leaden, as it mostly is in Fall and Winter here in Maryland. It was an easy run under such mild circumstances, no radiant sun to suddenly raise temperatures.

My agency is sponsoring two 5 K's, one in two weeks and one in six. This is enticing, I am thinking of running the first to establish a baseline speed and see if I can improve on the second. Six weeks is a typical training micro cycle, where a training stress is applied and maintained for the requisite six weeks for the body to adapt. I did both a tempo run and hill repeats this week. Consider maintaining the quality runs until the end of October. Can I improve my 5K time over this period?

Pondering the challenge of this micro cycle, I also realize that if I achieved a concomitant weight loss, my time would certainly improve. I'm sitting at roughly 147 lbs. and 15% body fat. Objectively, this is heavy for optimal running performance. With sufficient will, I could, dare I say, should drop down to under 140 lbs. This would put me in single digit body fat levels. I have not been under 140 lbs. since my twenties.

We live a society immersed in indolence and over consumption. Fit seniors are a rarity, given an unhealthy life style that is so prevalent that the resulting weakness, obesity, and ill health are considered normal. Advertising, peers, and a steady stream of temptation in the form of greasy, processed, sugary foods work around the clock to subvert the healthy senior athlete. I cannot escape the analogy of a righteous man in a Boschian landscape.

So, while running today, I dreamed up this challenge. It is two 5 K's with the opportunity to radically improve my time and optimize my body. The challenge isn't really even physical. It is mental: do I have the strength of mind to will it into reality?

First Hint of Fall

7.6 miles, 70 F.

There's a full moon this morning. Hints of fall are beginning to appear: one of the red maples is well into losing its leaves, the hummingbird feeding is dropping off, and the forcast high today is only 70 F.

I woke up stiff and groggy this morning and spent the better part of the first 5 miles wondering if I was up to my speed hill repeats. The cup of coffee and half peanut butter sandwich I had before my run seemed to sit in my stomach. I've never had this happen before. When the time came, I slipped into the faster pace surprisingly easily. Dispite being mildly tired, my legs pretty much powered me up Tendinitis with little challenge. It's so easy to sleep through 5 miles of LSD; the interval work jarred me awake. I had hoped to do 6 repeats up Mt. Tendinitis, but time allowed only 4. Earlier, Denise had come out for a walk and I ran round her, delaying the start of my faster running.

This is shaping into a good week: I got my tempo run done on Tuesday and, now, did a respectable interval workout today.

Second Day

7.1 miles, 70 F.

This is the second of 3 weekday 7 miles. They've become remarkably easy.Yesterday, it was 7.2, with 2 miles at tempo pace at the end. I began my run at 4:20 AM. Sirius hadn't yet cleared the tree line to the east.

Today, I took it very easy, though. Finished off with 2 miles with 4 over Tendinitis.

Wind Chill

This is the first morning I've seen a wind chill on the NOAA website in the forecast. Its a harbinger of the coming season.

31 F. Slight sensation in my calves. I think I need to be aware, but not worried. Signed up for the 40th MCM last night. It will be my 6th MCM, my first was 10 years ago. Easy run under a half moon. Did some leg strength work after the run.

49 F. Its foggy outside. I love running in the fog. Hopefully won't get rained on......much. Going for 4 miles today. Woke up groggy.

35 F, but no rain. Who can complain? The mostly full moon is haloed in mist. Ran 4.0. Feeling sluggish, but legs not heavy. Calves are making themselves felt, but its not pain. Ran 22 last week. Need to be gentle this week. Need to address inappropriate systemic tiredness.

Opted for 3.25 miles in my subtropical basement gym on the treadmill rather than dark icy roads.

Stepping

A week ago, I tried box stepping on an 18-inch box as cross-training while I can't run. I stepped for 15 minutes. I've done the work out three times since then, incrementing by 5 minutes each time. This morning, I stepped for 35 minutes. It was pretty tiring.

2014 Life Injury

George Sheehan said that every runner is an experiment of one. Over the years, I've learned that the rules of running are mostly for older runners. When I was in my twenties, I routinely ignored the hard/easy rule, the 10% rule, or the "listen to your body" rule. The biggest price I'd pay would be sore muscles for a couple of days. I'd get new shoes when my knees started to ache. That was the extent of my running injury awareness. Since coming back to running, I've learned that my body is not as resilient it was in my twenties. My body speaks to me loudly now, though not often clearly. If I don't listen, there can be a substantial price to be paid.

This season, it did not talk to me. I was breaking 40 miles per week with no residual soreness or tiredness. I kept the spring in my step, even the day after my longer runs. As I felt no stress in my arches and calves, I returned to my zero drop minimalist shoes for daily wear. By end of week, I was feeling so good and strong, I reduced my time sitting at work to 4 hours. There were no warnings, it just felt empowering.

The next week, both calves were sore at the beginning of my routine 7-miler on Tuesday. I reduced my run to 3 miles, deciding it was a "down" week, a week of reduced mileage to cut back stress. Wednesday, they were too sore to run.

That was 3 weeks ago, now.  After Internet research, I have decided that I have two strained calves. I don't think they're running injuries. Rather, I think the zero-drop shoes over-stretched them.

Relentless Forward Progress

Every two to three weeks we cut back our weekly miles to let our minds and bodies recuperate from pushing up the total weekly distance. This week, we're trying something different: a hike to test the limits of the time we can spend on our feet. I have been reading some articles and books on ultra running, the practice of racing distances greater a marathon. A key to achieving this is simply increasing time on your feet. Our goal is to be able to  hike and run in our trail running shoes for eight hours comfortably.

I have not moved on from my marathon ambitions. I see the hiking and ultra running as a complement to the marathon. The marathon still about covering 26.2 in as little time as possible. Ultra running is about being in scenic places relating with one's surrounds through the act of physical exertion.

Today is our first effort. We will cover four hours of hilly terrain as a test of the state of our ability to go longer. Its chilly and the wind chills are already in the low 30's. We'll pack snacks and go off to practice some relentless forward progress.

We came back with several lessons learned from the experience. I list them below.

1. You can cover technical terrain much more quickly in hiking boots. This was particularly true at Pig's Run, a steep, rocky, descent from the ridge line to the Patuxent River. The act of coming down the side of the hill while the trail surface was composed of uneven, occasionally loose, rocks was truly ankle-defying. The solidity of the in-sole, coupled with ankle support, would make the experience much easier. That said, see lesson 2.

2. We experienced noticeable DOMS in the next 2-4 days after the hike. Denise felt it mostly in her ankles and upper feet. I was sore from the knees down. The immediate conclusion to be drawn here would seem to be that we should have worn hiking boots. However, the DOMS is an indication of unused muscles being pushed beyond their current state of fitness. When the hiker is a runner looking to cross train and address weaknesses, the DOMS is the advantageous response to training. In our case, the aggressive hike we made in trail shoes stressed various supportive muscles in Denise's feet, both our shin muscles, also known as the tibialis anterior, and also hit my calves quite effectively.These increases in strength should translate into lower risk of injury, greater running efficiency, possibly even greater speed.

3. about stream crossings.... if it looks too far to jump from one slippery rock to the next, it probably is.  "Just keep moving" doesn't always work and sometimes you will land sideways in the water on a big rock with wet feet/clothes and a huge, deep bruise to contend with for the next miles....

4. Trekking poles are a good idea. The would probably help avoid stream tumbles and make negotiating really rough trails safer, particularly descents.

5. Then there's the no-brainer: dry shoes and socks. Changing wet socks for dry ones can be a blister-saver while running. While I seem to be able to run in wet socks, for some, this leads to certain blistering. It goes almost without saying, cotton is the enemy here. Wool and technical fabrics are mandatory for anything that gets wet or sweaty while running. A change into dry socks and shoes can feel wonderful after a long slog on muddy trails.

6. That SLR around your neck will start to be very heavy after hours of hiking. Plan a safe place where it can be hung or stowed, but can be accessed when that photo op suddenly crops up.

59

I turned 59 a week ago. An acquaintance emailed me birthday wishes, remarking that she would always be three days older than me. I replied with a resigned, "Yeah, we're old!". She replied resolutely that we're not.

Some Boomers deny our age. This mitigates the achievements we attain while we age. Ten years ago, to the astonishment of my physician and despite that two cardiologists had refused to put me on a treadmill for a stress test out of fear I'd have a heart attack, I began running. I lost 40 lbs. The result was life changing. But at 49, the ingrained habituation of indolence is hard to overcome. Inertia grows with each year.

Now, as I approach 60, the challenge has evolved. Running and an athleticism have become part of my life style, part of my world view. I have moved to the point where people remark that I must have the genetics for fitness, or that it must easy for me because I'm so trim, or that I have been doing this all my life. But I manage the growing aches and pains each morning getting up. I am learning the compromises one has to make with age, that injury comes more easily and recovery comes more slowly. Conscious form, correct and deliberate execution, and more judicious use of intensity all become vitally important to avoid injury. The fitness momentum carries me into my older years, but the aches and pains of effort are beginning to grow. The dull ache in my hips upon arising in the morning are not an excuse to do nothing, they are an ugly harbinger of what life would be like if I stopped what I am doing.

With each passing year, many of us justify the growing sloth and its resulting frailty and weakness with excuses that we're too old, that we don't have the right genetics, that it is natural to become impotent and frail as we age, or, insidiously, that "we deserve a break today". Even now, 10 years after the herculean effort it took to re-adopt athleticism, I have refocus daily on the absolute necessity of keeping a strong mind in a strong body, defying the cultural current all around me that tells me that its ok to degrade.

Saying that 59 is not old is lying to oneself. I am old, but I redefine it with growing strength and resolve. To say that 59 is not old is to deny the magnitude of this achievement to myself and to all others who chose this way.

Shoes

3.0 miles // 82 F // 63% // 83 HI

Easy 3 miler in the sun along WB&A.

I had hit 460 miles on my NB 860s and was having a lot of PF stress. The "a-hah" moment did not come until I was in Road Runner Sports flexing various models of new NBs. All the shoes had a uniform bend and marked stiffness along the length of the shoe, particularly past the arch. Then I flexed the shoes I currently run it. It practically pivoted along a particular point in the length, just forward of the arch, possibly at the ball of my foot. It also flexed with no resistance. I was really surprised, having become complacent because I typically cause very little out sole wear.

As my running has progressed, and I presumably have become a more efficient runner, my out soles show progressively less wear. I assumed that all other aspects of the shoes were wearing equally slowly. This is now obviously not the case.

I plan to keep a new pair of shoes in inventory as a benchmark by which to compare the shoes I'm using as I track the mileage on them. That makes 3 shoes in the pipeline: one pair with 0-100 miles, on pair with 200-400 miles, and one new pair.

3.0 miles // 70F // 70 H.I.

Easy run. Low PF feelings. Low energy also.

Begun to wonder if my 860s are too light. I don't have records of when I first started running in this model, probably last year in the summer.

3.2 miles // 72 F // 72 H.I.

No PF tightness this morning.  It will be an interesting run: its 100% humidity.

half mileage

3.1  // 65F // 65 H.I.

Since my PF keep nagging me, I'm cutting my mileage in half, then hoping to raise it again.

My feet were remarkably tight while stretching afterwards.

Longer Run

7.5 // 65F // 65 H.I.

7.5 up the Patuxent Branch Trail from Wincopin. An out and back. Gentle net increase in elevation going out.

My PF will bother me minimally after this run. I think the modest pace and elevation change may

6/21: Solstice Rest

6/20: PF management

6.5 miles // 67F // 67 H.I.

I've taken to stretching my PF each morning as a prophylactic to initial PF discomfort. It is mitigating the sensation completely.

Legs have mild DOMS from yesterday's leg work out. I don't typically run on DOMS, but its mild.

Easy miles. Legs not more sore after running. PF stress nowhere in sight.

6/18: Do the miles.

77F // 80H.I. // 6.? miles

After some weeks of PF irritation, I've taken to massaging them before getting up in the morning. I'm doing this even if I'm asymptomatic.

6/17: Another week.

6.6 miles // 77F // 80H.I.

I'm struggling to add miles this year. By end of each week, my PF are sore. Not painful, just sore. This is a warning not to up miles. I hit just shy of 30 last week, with an 0.4 aerobic sprint up Mt. Duckettstown.

5/2: Finally

No snow, no ice, no -10 F wind chill, no driving rain: just pastel blue predawn sky, watercolor clouds, and birds singing all around. Its another "why I run" morning.

The wind sounds like a train out there this morning.

Frost Glow

We've seen the fog glow in the moonlight on early morning runs under the moon. The fog seems to have a life of its own. Whenever I see it, I still remember my childhood suspicion that the fog was the aggregate of the spirits of Indians who lived on that land in prior times. This morning the sky was utterly clear. On the way out, it was still dark and full of stars, but on the return it had turned into an expanse of glowing blue. When we came upon the commons, Denise asked me if there was a fog over it. Instead, we realized that it was the heavy frost glowing under the sky. It was glowing pale blue. Frost glow.

April Frost

The morning opened with a veneer of frost on rooftops and exposed lawns. We worry about the hummingbirds during late season chills. The feeder at the kitchen window keeps us apprised of their spring time arrival and level of activity. I dread to see a sudden drop in squabbling over the sugar water in the feeder after a cold spring night.

I ran 6.5 today. Its been eight years since I returned to running. At the time, I picked up a book on marathon training and was depressed to see the long run of the first week of training was 6 miles. There was no way I could do that distance when I started again. For the past several years, my standard 6 mile run is the backbone of my weekly training program, doing 3 or 4 runs like that each week. All around me at work coworkers of my age are in full physical decline. They don't even seem to be aware that there is an alternative.

My plan this year is to slowly build the daily 6-miler into a daily 8 or 9 miler.

April Full Moon

It the end of April and the month's full moon is brightening the pre-dawn sky. The hours I spend every week running outdoors synchronizes my mind with the cycle of day, month, and year. I celebrate each dawn, each full moon, each spring as a new beginning. We tell ourselves that we get to choose our course at each beginning, but the past exerts a strong influence on determining the future. When we do not think, when we act out of the habituation of so many rehearsed previous actions, we give up our control of the new beginning nature lays before us.

Season's First Ice Puddle

Running under the waning moon, we came across a puddle on the road. Denise squealed with delight when she realized it was iced over. Stepping on it, it was as if she had forgotten how slippery ice could be.

I thought the bright dot next to the moon was Venus. http://earthsky.org/tonight tells me it is Jupiter. Note as romantic, but just as beautiful. Jupiter is so large, it could be the much closer, albeit small, Venus.

Choose

In my mind, to run is to chose who you are. By running my nine miles, I chose to eschew the indolent self-indulgence that Wall Street and Madison Avenue always tell me I deserve. The Maryland weather was chilly today, 37 F, but breezy. This yielded a wind chill of 25F. My miles came and went easily. I saw a hawk high above, patrolling our neighborhood like a fighter plane from 1944.

To run is to embrace Sparta over Madison Avenue's Gomorrah.

Set

I ran the sun down today. Running the sun up is a completely different experience. Your body wakes slowly with the world around you as you click off the morning's miles. Morning is beginning, it is potential and possibility. The world of bats and foxes turns to one of robins, hawks, and mocking birds. The wind picks up as the warming sun disturbs the air. The sun rise braces me for the day.

I watch the sun, low on the horizon, preparing for its final drop to the earth. The day is closing; my mind always wants to close at sunset. For 37 years, the day's pall has curtained the world and my mind. I continue to run under the blustery blue fall sky. The sun offers no warmth. My run comes easily. Nine miles tick by. My legs feel fresh, effort is the only warmth at this sunset.

The stresses of the summer reduced my weekly mileage to 10 to 20 miles per week. I don't know if I was right or wrong, or weak, or unfocused to let it happen. But now is the time to re-balance my life. It is ironic that I find success more stressful than failure. That life continues to give me everything I shoot for startles me. I feel indebted at my good look and beholden to make the best of this fleeting chance. I strive harder to take advantage of this one break of good luck. But the good luck always comes.

9 miles today on this first return to standard time. What I run in the next 7 days is all that matters.

Trail Running Season

Its appropriately the Saturday after the autumnal equinox. The morning's temperature was in the low 50's and we decided that deer tick activity would be suppressed. So we ran the first trail run of the season in Green Belt National Park, 3.5 miles along perimeter trail. Denise loves the trails and hurled herself on the downhill sections. She easily out-ran my comfortable pace. I worried that she wasn't wearing gloves, fearing she might have a close encounter with mud, rocks, and roots.

She exclaimed that she felt 12 again. I couldn't help ponder the remark. Just weeks after her 54th birthday, she's racing down rough, single-track, woodland trails feeling like an adolescent. With her commitment to exercise and healthy living, each year underscores how different her path in life had become when compared to her peers.

I know that endurance exercise is not pill for eternal youth. By comparison with it, though, what is passed off as normal life to the rest of us is actually suicidal. 

New Starts

I had gastroenteritis over the weekend and missed my long run. It has been a challenge to work up to that distance this month.

I began my run this morning in the darkness of the new moon of February. As I clicked off miles in anticipation of my 1200 meter repeats at mile 5, I realized Mars was hanging large, low, and red in the West. It was all the brighter due to the lack of the moon and Venus. I thought that it was somehow fitting to run intense repeats under the light of Mars.

By mile 5, Mars was waning in the gathering light of the dawn. The repeats went well, my pace was fast and easier than expected, despite the food losses of the weekend. As I finished my run, the sun was cresting the hills in the east, but not yet above the trees. Long fingers of light reached up into the dwindling mists of the pre-dawn morning.

It was a good run.

Mind

This is a "down" week for me. Only 3.7 miles in a light 50 F pre-dawn drizzle. On reduced mileage weeks, I get into that "its only 4-5 miles, so why do it at all" mentality. With the rain compounding it, I had an unusual struggle to get my behind out there.


The running is self-defining. Running in the rain is more so. I don't know why this has come to be. In the end, we have nothing but what we have produced in ourselves. Even that is transient.


But its done. Through in a mile above anaerobic threshold pace for good measure.

Its almost 60 F out there this morning. I could hear frogs chirping in the wetlands in our subdivision as I ran by.

I did 8 miles in the warm, wet, windy weather. 2 miles at tempo pace. I could have been without a shirt and comfortable.

I almost didn't go out this morning, having awaken sluggish and really tired. Three 8 milers in the workweek combined with standing all day at work is really taxing my system. As a plus, I've been good at holding to my weight training schedule, something I've not achieved over the past few years. The total effect, however, is to be fairly tired on Friday morning.

One has to apply stress to get the adaptation.

Athletainment

I work in a casual environment, more like a college campus than corporate America. On Fridays, many come to work in NFL jerseys celebrating the entertainment and athletic achievements of their respective football teams. During the playoffs, troops of highly specialized entertainers compete to play in a final performance held in February. This annual rite of passage costs its spectators millions of hours and dollars. Fans of the final winner come away bloated with pride and ego, though, in fact, the only thing they have achieved is an extra pound or two from the over-eating and drinking that usually occurs while watching the games. In twelves months most will not remember the final score.

I have five MCM competitor jerseys now. Each Friday, I wear an MCM jersey to work to celebrate my own athletic achievements. They were earned on runs like this Sunday's: 15 miles in quiet, under a cloudy, gray sky, with 29 F. and 22 F. wind chill.

Bragging rights are something you personally earn. They do not result from the accidents of being a fan.

New Beginnings

After my last marathon of the year, I go into aimless running. It is both good and bad. I run because it has become part of my nature, but I don't run the hard runs that result from goal-setting. It is a hiatus from ambition, where I just express the nature I have created for myself.

New Year's day the weather was magnificent, nearly 50 F. and sunny. Denise and I ran, reveling in the spirit of the beginning of a new year. My aches from October's marathon efforts were gone. Like in previous years, I felt that need to train myself to go longer and faster once again.

I failed to achieve a PR in 2011. Now I feel set against my 2011 self: I feel the need to overcome what I was and produce a new state of being.

I have to wonder how many 56 year old males still look forward to their next lifetime personal records (PRs).

Life is an act of self-creation. You are what you have the will to be. In the end, what you have created is all you have.

Ego

I'm sitting here pondering my relative standings in the various marathons I've run. One would think WineGlass was a disaster. Actually, I ran a fairly good time despite the rain. The field at WineGlass is faster than most marathons, particularly large ones like the MCM. Big city marathons attract many relatively slower first timers. WineGlass is a small, rural, marathon. Additionally, it is prefered by runners in search of Boston qualifying times because of its fast course. I have not seen as many Boston jackets at the pre-race event anywhere as in Corning.

I just wish that I'd be one of those running a BQ on that day.

Layoffs

One to four week layoffs are universally recommended by running coaches. The weeks after a marathon are usually my layoffs, enforced by being too sore to run. They are also a welcome mental break. Not this year however. While my legs still feel quite dead, I'm anxious to get back out there and run. The desire is different now, though. It is the desire for goal-less running: just get out there and run.

It starts again tomorrow: trail run in Greenbelt National Park, maybe three or four miles.

Can't wait.

36th MCM

What I learned:

• The after-effects of a full effort marathon last longer than 4 weeks.
• If your hamstrings feel like they're at 90% when you start, they'll feel much less so as the race progresses.
• Expect more DOMS than after your first same-season run.
• You'll be slower than you expected, at least for your first same-season marathon.
• Don't attempt to start out even at a pace you objectively think you can hold. Start more slowly.
• (I didn't learn this, I had the good sense to forecast it.) As you decline, do not attempt to push through the exhaustion. Let your body slow down.
• The freebie breakfast at the Residence Inn is busiest at opening. If your hunger allows, wait till about 7:10 AM. (We knew this from previous stays, but manage to forget each year.
• After you're up for a while - at least if you're in good shape - the aches will subside and you will just have a sensation that nothing in your body is willing to move quickly. Specially your legs.
• Running with and for the Marines at the MCM is worth it, specially in time of war.

New Moon

On the morning of the new moon, it hung just above the horizon, minutes before the dawn. The tiniest sliver shone bright gold, while the rest of the orb glowed dimly with Earth shine. Counter-intuitively, the orb blended almost indistinguishably with the blue morning sky, making its boundary nearly imperceptible.

This morning, at 5:45 AM, I experienced another why I run moment.

I woke Denise up with a cup of coffee in bed and the pounding sounds of the Village People singing "In the Navy" and "YMC". I guess the life of an endurance junky's spouse isn't easy. We went for her run, then I did a few more miles.

We have some good winds out of the NW after yesterday's rains. This is a pattern that repeats all winter. Runner's who have done the MCM more than once know it well: those last 6 miles are often into a stiff wind from the NW as run from Crystal City to the Iwo Jima Memorial.

7 miles today, once again. I had hoped to get in 10, but I'm struggling to get out by the requisite 5:30 AM start time for a 10-miler.

Missed Destiny

I took vertebrate zoology as an undergrad in that major. It became obvious to me at that time that humans had evolved to be best long distance runners in the animal kingdom. I let life's distractions lead me away from that first academic love and the revolutionary insight that I had nurtured. Someone else pursued my insight and brought it into focus: http://barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/

Corning Wineglass Marathon

What I learned at Corning:

• Don't start off at a pace you instinctively feel is too fast saying: "We'll just see what happens."
• You won't be able to "will" your way through the consequences of the first bullet.
• Adjust for the weather. If its 42 F and raining, don't try to take 15 minutes off your PR with the rationalization that the course is mostly down hill.
• Static stretching after seems to break up adhesions. It alleviates the soreness and stiffness.
• 26 miles is roughly 3000 calories. 10%-15% of those are from metabolized protein. You may need the carbs right away, but get that protein.
• A technical long sleeved top, shorts, gloves are sufficient for 42 F with rain and light winds.  
• When a big rain drop hits the bridge of your nose, it bursts in a small explosion of water. This is usually entertaining. At mile 22, deep into a wall you brought on yourself, it is startling and a little surreal.
• If its raining, use the BodyGlide in places you wouldn't normally expect.

Limits

We place limits on ourselves defining what we consider reasonable. I realized how easily these limits can be pushed back last winter. Denise and I started to experiment with trail running. As the cold deepened, we began running the trail under increasingly snowy and icey conditions. I remember driving out to Greenbelt National Park with Denise sharing doubts that the Perimeter Trail would be runnable only to arrive and run it, enjoying the challenge and novelty.

Today's run was one of those moments where my sense of what is reasonable was expanded. Today's run was 10 miles in 60 F rain, occasionally breezy and heavy. I can't say it was fun. My legs were feeling heavy and the sensation was increased by water-logged shoes. I also went into the run feeling sluggish and my clammy technical fabric top did not help my mindset. It was too warm for my hat, so I left it. Water drops hit my eyes on occasion, leaving red-eyed by end of the run. I occasionally inhaled the rain, choking on it lightly.

Sitting

I did not run today or so far this week. My 50-mile training week left me with several aches and pains which inclined me to a week off. Additionally, early meetings, a doctor's appointment, and paperwork all collaborated to consume the early morning time I usually set aside for training my body.

This morning I spent extra time doing my stretching routine, which primarily has its Western-style emphasis on muscle flexibility but also includes yoga elements of focus and relaxation. I did my zen-sitting.

Running and zen-sitting have much in common. They are extremely simple in practice. The act of running is the simplicity of performing what humans are naturally engineered to do best. There are no external aids that can enhance the core experience. It is simplicity of the body. The act zen-sitting is a conscious disassociation from anything arising from externals. It is simplicity of the mind.

Irene: Another Why I Run

This morning, I had another experience that reminds me why I run. It was 77F and 69% humidity, a bit more mild than usual, but still good sweating weather. I ran shirtless again, under a heavy, leaden sky. It was still almost oppressively dark at 6:00 AM.

It started to rain at 5 miles. It came down, at first light, then grew in intensity over the next mile. The cold rain washed away my coating of sweat. Since the water was much more cool than the air, it actually got me cold: I had goose bumps in August.

I thought about how such an experience is unique to what we runners experience. While the rain was finished by mile 6, I was refreshed in mind and body. It was still another "why I run" moment.

Nature

I've watched the moon's lag on Venus grow every day this week. Now, at 5 AM, the planet overs in a moonless sky. The bats are still out; so are the mosquitos. The latter are really bad this year.

I've never played The Sims or World of Witchcraft. I had to google "best selling computer games" to know their names. They seem like a waste of time; this is more real to me. Certainly the inactivity advances poor health, perhaps mental health also.

Its 77F/80%. Its going to be another sweaty one.

Heat and Exhaustion

I started my 16-miler at 80 F, 75% humidity. What I did not realize that before i finished the temperature / heat index would grow to 95F/100F. Half a mile out from the finish, after already walking in the heat several times, the nausea, faintness, and muscle cramps informed me that I had heat exhaustion. Thank heavens my 100 oz. CamelBack had ensured that I was properly hydrated. This is a first for me, and I felt lousy for the rest of the day.

Be careful out there in that heat, folks. I'm just glad I was within half a mile of my car.

Then There Were Two

I started the summer running shirtless with some trepidations. Unlike the South, you just don't see many male topless runners in Maryland. This morning, I crossed paths K, a friend who started marathoning a few years ago. This time, he was shirtless, too. Maybe its a trend.

Maybe I won't get stared at quite as much now!

56

Thank you, Becky and Charlotte!

smiles.

Healthy running.

56

I find analogies between sports and life facile and popular, yet on this occasion I cannot help myself but indulge.

Life is a marathon. There are no downs, no special teams, no time-outs, no halftime, and no coaching from the sideline. Despite the cheering, you do it alone; no one can do it for you or truly help you along. All depends on  your body and your mind: how well you care for them. Mistakes made early will exact a price, sometimes a terrible price, as you near the end. How you run the first 20 miles determines how you survive the last 6.2.

There are no "Hail Mary's".

Zoned

I zoned today and ran 6.5 vice 6 miles. I was pondering my impending 56 years. I guess that's a good way to ponder. Not happy about 56; enjoyed the run.

During my down time, I developed my own on-line running log using Ruby coding, XML-based data storage, and Apache to serve it up. I get no small amount of gratification storing my daily running and health status, and being able to tweek the GUI and data I store. This is part of a longer term plan to implement Jack Daniels' running calculations for pace and cumulative weekly training stress.

Its warm. As my weekly mileage pushes back beyond 30 mpw, I'm feeling that old familiar tiredness.

God its good to be back.

I'll Say It Just Once......

short and slow is BORING!!!!!!

Old runners never die....

they just heal up and return to running. That one popped into my mind around mile 2 of 3 today and brought a chuckle from Denise.

No matter what happens, success in running is coming back again and again. This probably is true of life, too.

Not Running, Stoicism, and Other Things

I started true speed work this year with tenth of a mile repeats along a section of country road at the entrance of our neighborhood. My first week included one sprint precariously called a repeat. I built up to 10 over the course of 15 or so weeks. I find the feeling of speed exhilarating and with it came a new sense of efficient flow in stride. I achieved a new sense of being light on my feet. My leg, arm, and core movements seemed to balance one another.

Greg McMillan puts describes it: "You feel these adaptations (improved neuromuscular function and acid buffering) as a smoother, less jerky stride when running at full speed. You feel that you are powerful and can simply fly across the ground. You begin to imagine yourself looking like the sprinters, smooth and powerful. Sprint zone training seems to greatly affect the torso of the body as you begin to run not just with your legs but to generate power through your stomach, pelvis and hips."

This form of training puts great stress on the posterior muscles: glutes, hamstrings, and calves. Minor aches gradually accumulated in my right hip and hamstring. They were minor and I ignored them. After a few weeks, I realized that they were not transient and were in fact slowly increasing.


So, I stopped running this weekend. Full stops have worked well for me in the past, healing in a few days what I suppose would otherwise take weeks. I'm fairly disciplined in my breaks, not letting the idleness affect my mood. This works as long as the break is not longer than a week or so. After than, despite on-going weight workouts, I'll begin to feel flabby and soft physically as well as mentally.


Epictetus tells us that our bodies are beyond our control and we are well to not base our identities or happiness on them. Yet in six years I have moulded my physical being from obesity to a physique that displays a level of athleticism that elicits comments from strangers. My body plays a significant role in my image of myself. Beyond that, I realize running is a spiritual act. All-weather running purifies me from the "You Deserve a Break Today" culture in which we live. We are immersed in unsustainable, self-serving, enervating cocoon of air-conditioning, recliners, glowing displays, and greasy, salty, sweet foods. The resulting mental and physical flabbiness is destroying our lives, our culture, and our planet. I can't influence our culture, but I can purify myself of it. The simple, sometimes brutal, experience of running all year in outside washes off the greasy film that our indolent lives deposit on us.


The hamstring soreness diminishes each day. Hopefully I will run again this coming weekend. I am going to use a classical training cycle: rebuild my mileage base, add stamina/tempo runs, and finally add speed. Amid all the miles of slow distance I've run over the years, I never realized how much I enjoyed going fast.

Bare Chest Running

In the last 3 miles of my long run Sunday the shirt came off. It was pushing 80. While this is a common thing in my home state of Florida, its somewhat unusual to see bare chested (male) runners in Maryland 'burbs. Well, this morning, I took it off again: it really is cooler in 70 F / 75% humidity to be running without a shirt. When I was young in Florida, I never thought twice about it. It is senseless to impair my training by being warmer than is necessary due to an ill-conceived sense of modesty.

So, in this my 7th summer of return to fitness, I'll do it shirtless. I have to say Rachel Toor's almost lyrical article in Running Times on the topic some months ago helped validate my new found freedom!