Changing Your Definition

My buddy Justin posted this up on my social media wall the other evening, not many minutes after a perfectly decent rowing ergometer workout at my local fitness gym...

I swore last year to not deride people who purchase fitness center memberships in January but never use the facility after March, or how infuriating the first two-to-three months of the year can be for persons who have a well-developed workout habit.  The smart "resolutionists" at least take advantage of the "complimentary" fitness assessment; they know how far they have to go to meet the airbrushed (and most-likely "cosmetic-surgeried") image of quote-unquote "fitness" plastered on billboards.  When it comes to that 'oh, gosh, I'm THAT unhealthy?' revelation, perhaps ignorance to a certain degree is bliss.  Some would prefer to not pay the extra dough to have someone beat up on them for the next three/six/twelve months...or longer.

As a runner/triathlete-type, I have near-epistemological opinions about what does and does not constitute fitness.  It used to be if it had nothing to do with swimming, bicycling and running I preferred to avoid it at all costs.  An Outside Magazine story on climber-turned-hard-core-fitness-trainer Marc Twight, and ESPN's telecast of the CrossFit Games caused me to channel my own inner Pontius Pilate and re-ask: 'what is fitness?'  But that's what philosophy - and coaching - is all about, isn't it?  Believe it, test it, re-work it, retest, and repeat.

So, this year I've decided to engage in some personal resolutions, not necessarily run-focused, but resolutions which will most likely carry over into life pedestrian:

Read more - I refer often to three or four good training books, but this last year provided me the opportunity to branch out and read works in genres I hadn't touched since college.  If coaching had only to do with the heart, lungs, muscles and skeleton the learning process would be simple.  Ah, but there are brains, minds and souls; opinions, concerns and fears involved.  And the scariest territory of any fitness enthusiast or athlete would have to be that space which is between the left ear and the right ear.  Luke Humphrey's "The Hanson's Marathon Method" is on my short list of acquisitions.  A conversation with my step-son, Scott has inspired me to re-read Phil Jackson's 'Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior."  Expect a few nuggets in the future from these minds.

Recover more - Reading is a great form of recovery from both the physical and mental stress of training, as well as the stress of the work day.  Contrary to the opinion of some of my co-workers.  Recovery is everything you are doing when you aren't working out: Sleep, food, massage, hydration.  Those are important, but don't forget the Bowerman-esque "hard day-easy day" theory, or Bannister's training impact.  Contrary to the dictum of the great Hungarian coach Mihaly Igloi, 'every day hard training must make,' we don't need to do every workout at one-hundred percent intensity.  When's the last time you had a rest day marked on the training schedule?

Resist more - Several definitions of resistance can be covered here.  Weight training, or cross-training which involves friction (rowing ergometer, elliptical trainer, indoor cycling) can raise heart rates a touch and strengthen muscle groups which are important for running performance, without the worrisome impact which can make joints (especially older ones) ache.  The second form of resistance comes in the form of avoidance; like unhealthy food and drink choices (here I am most definitely speaking to myself!), of toxic persons and situations, and workouts which become contests.  Ah, but none of us have ever treated a Sunday morning long run as a long race, have we?

Destination race - There's nothing like putting a target race on your training calendar to encourage a training focus.  My wife is much better at finding opportunities to travel and race within days of a conference or a business meeting.  Besides, you can only run the "Rancid Possum 5K" course and drink the same post-race beer so many times before things...get...old...  We have one "destination" race already on the calendar, and I suspect two or three more will soon follow.

I hope these thoughts will encourage you to look a little more closely at your running and fitness habit and see if there's something which cries out for a little change this next year.

Instant Running?

I was "batching it" last week, as Suzanne was out of town at an internet telephony conference.  There are benefits and drawbacks to these one-week separations.  The benefit, I guess, you could say, is that I become sort of a hermit; I focus all of my attention on taking care of the dog, as well as my training runs/cross-training.  That meant I had to wake up early enough to feed and walk the dog before getting ready for work.  We do have a coffeemaker with a timer on it, which if I prepare accordingly will awaken me with the aroma of mountain-grown goodness.  Unfortunately, we ran out of "real" ground coffee and I had to settle for freeze-dried instant coffee. 

When you're desperate enough, even freeze-dried coffee tasted pretty darn good.  I wrote myself a little mental note: "stop at the local grocery by the gym; don't forget the beans, stupid."  But, naturally, all I wanted to do once my afternoon workout was completed was get home, change out of my wet soppies, feed the dog and grab a cold beer.  Each morning I kicked myself in the behind for my laziness.  Each evening I conveniently forgot the need to go to the store.  Until Suzanne got home and we needed to go shopping to replace the freezer-to-table, microwave-friendly entrees with frozen veggies, bread, meat, and our other "real" food staples.  Oh, and beer.

We are a lazy, "instant" generation.  I can hear all of the responses from here:  "Duh," you say.  Microwave ovens make freezer-to-table entrees possible for even the most ham-fisted and inept of cooks.  Writer/chef Anthony Bourdain dedicates a chapter in his book "Medium Raw" to the need for culinary literacy for all persons, not just married women.  Face it.  You never know when you're going to have to fend for yourself. 

But we always have a deadline standing in our face; a target which we need to hit at least once a year, sometimes twice.  How many persons do you know who race one event a year; train for six weeks, eight weeks, do the race, then nothing for the next 40. 

It happens every October in my workplace.  The training manager who works next to administers the twice-yearly fitness testing and weigh-in.  If I had a dollar for every time an instructor questioned him, "how soon do I have to be fit?"  Duh.  Isn't that part of your profession?  Aren't you supposed to be ready to go do your job whereever your employer (and mine) tells you? 

The great New Zealand running coach Arthur Lydiard didn't have a lot of nice things to say about American runners, which probably had a lot to do with the American "overnight success" mentality.  He said that to become a good runner (besides winning the genetics and parenting lotteries) it took "...a lot of hard work for five, six, or seven years.  There is no secret formula.  There is no shortcut..."

Unless you're participating in a program where there's at least one pop icon serving as a judge, I cannot think of any other "American Idol." "The Voice," or "X-Factor," I can think of no human endeavor where success occurs quickly or instantly.  Definitely not running, as I've seen while watching the ups and downs of guys like Dathan Ritzenhein.  Or in rehabilitation; my own stumbles and failures have made me much more compassionate, or at least emphathetic, to the struggles of persons who "would love to run" but are perplexed by physiological, psychological, or economic (and when I say economy, I'm talking time, which definitely is a limited commodity) barriers.

It's easy to go the "microwave" route and focus on running for that all-too-brief period of the year, ending up with something that really doesn't satisfy the taste buds and looks like, well, like something that's been microwaved.  There are smells, sights, sensations and feelings which can be found from running throughout the year...even if most of the mileage is done on a treadmill...which we all need to "read," to "loan out" to our friends, and perhaps to "write about" on occasion.

Bad Workout? It's All In Our Mind

The latest books I've read have not been without their own degree of controversy. Much like the reading (running) public stepped to one side or the other of the line drawn in the sand over barefoot running and Christopher McDougall's "Born To Run," they seem to stand on the same kind of dividing line over Matt Fitzgerald's newest work, "Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run."

Sometimes you have to look at the subtitle a little more closely. While Fitzgerald writes, with the assistance of two decades worth of research materials, about Scott and Allen, it's...well, it's not all about them. Iron War also tries to explain what made them different in 1989, and what makes endurance enthusiasts different now.

Yes, there are biographical pieces on Scott and Allen (which for this writer drew a parallel to other freakishly-good athletes like Michael Phelps and Lance Armstrong), but Fitzgerald looks at the sport of triathlon and the type of person drawn into it, especially the ultra-distance multisport events which were born of a bar room argument after the Honolulu Marathon thirty-plus years ago. He asks not only what drives the elite endurance athlete, but also what keeps their foot on the accelerator when the vast majority of us are begging to mash the brake pedal?

Or, as I began to think, why is it we tend to have crappy workouts when we are rushed for time; when we shoehorn in that speed workout in between the morning budget meeting and the afternoon conference call? Samuele Marcora says it might be more in our mind than we care to admit.

Marcora believes fatigue is more a perception of our mind than a physiological state. Watch runners break into a sprint for the last 200-to-300 yards of a race when they looked like they could not run another step just a half mile before. Timothy Noakes' central governor model of exercise performance says the brain makes a conscious effort to limit energy expenditure in order to save fuel for the heart, brain and lungs. But Marcora says the anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, the area responsible for control of our heart rate, breathing, autonomic responses, and conflict resolution, is the "boxing ring" for the struggle between the part of us that wants to quit and the side that wants to keep going.

Why do we feel physically fatigued after a sustained period of sedentary office work, like reconciling a budget spreadsheet (or sitting in a foreign language class)? The anterior cingulate cortex is engaged when we engage in an activity - even mental - which involves sustained attention to detail.

That might be another reason folks hate treadmill running so much. All that data - time, pace, distance, heart rate, calories and the like - is displayed before the runner. We start to do the mental gymnastics of how much longer before the end of the treadmill program, etc., and the little voice in the head begins to remind us of all the other things we need to get done...right away.

Even those runs which get shoehorned in between the rush-hour drive time and the drive to the youth soccer match can be affected by the other "noise" in our heads. The mental to-do list makes us more tired on our run, which makes us get down more on ourself because we're not running as well as we would like.

Sometimes it just pays to know "when we're training well we're probably not training well." It's not the "mark-a-star-on-the-training-calendar" runs which do us the most benefit...it's the ones where we want to beat ourselves up mentally which make us stronger.

The One Book

My wife, Suzanne, received an e-book reader for her most recent birthday. She naturally was pleased to have the new acquisition, graciously offered to let me load books on it, and use it at my convenience.


Ah, but that's the way she is.


She's downloaded a couple of business and marketing books and a few biographies from the Barnes and Noble site. She's able to tuck the reader in her carry-around bag, mark passages she likes, and have hundreds of books - all that information - in one little place.


I, on the other hand, like paper and binding and glue and thread. I am 'old school.' I like the heft of a good history text. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll carry it with me the entire semester but it will stay opened on my work desk until I've taken all the notes I need. It then fills up another bookshelf and makes people think I'm more of an intellectual than I truly am.


There is at least one book, however, I would love to have available everywhere I am but don't want to risk damaging my paperback copy.

If I were forced to buy (again!) only one book (either for downloading to an e-reader, or in paper form) it would have to be Daniels' Running Formula.


Dr. Jack Daniels has been described as "America's Greatest Running Coach." There are great athletes - including several Olympians - who have made a successful transition from athlete to coach. But the list comes few and far between. Not every gifted athlete makes a great coach. Sometimes the smart, physically-limited athlete knows how to tap into the head of their charges. That's what makes a great coach, in my humble opinion.

But where many coach-turned-authors seem to lack bonafides, Daniels brings both personal performance - two Olympic medals as part of the US team in the modern pentathlon (a combination of swimming, equestrian, pistol shooting, fencing and cross-country running), academic credentials - a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, and outcomes - team and individual national championships, and All-American distinctions in cross-country - to the table.


If a self-coached runner is willing to take the time and effort to carefully read through Formula - don't be scared by the mathematical calculations for VDOT at the front end - they can put together a reasonable training plan based on several past race performances, as well as their goal event/s. I like to use the VDOT chart to divide my own training group into smaller ability groups based on a 5K or 10K time. The VDOT chart not only helps to predict performances at other distances (once the other variables are equalized), but provides insight to proper pacing efforts for long runs, threshold runs, and interval workouts. I like to borrow from the pace charts for my "longer repeat" workout day of the week: I might assign an early-to-mid-season workout to a runner with a VDOT score of 38, (a 3:29 marathoner), of 6-to-8 400-meter repeats at "threshold" pace...which is 1:51 for a 400, or a 7:25 mile, with a minute recovery.

Daniels provides plans for runners who are focused on short track racing (800 to 1500 meters), as well as the 5k, 10k, half-marathon and full marathon. Naturally, the plans can be adapted to fit the schedule of the (often) time-constrained runner; don't have enough time to run all those 'easy' paced runs? Schedule the quality training efforts first, then fill in the remainder of the week with the easier efforts.

Regardless of whether you download a copy to an e-reader or you purchase a hard-copy for your library, Daniels' training and racing guidance is probably the next best thing to a coach's advice a runner can have at their fingertips.

Hubris, Humble Pie, and Just Desserts

A little over a year ago, Pat Williams, the president of the Orlando Magic, joined a group of state representatives and board members of the Road Runners Club of America for a luncheon meeting. One of the major takeaways from that luncheon speech I got was to read something on a daily basis. "What kind of reading?" said Williams. He was not the slightest bit concerned with the material as long as it was something we enjoyed. My wife, Suzanne, has told me she can learn something, even from a science fiction story. I, on the other hand, prefer to pick up a book which has something directly to do with what I want to learn. Sometimes you find when you close the book at the end you learned something far different than your initial expectations.

My most recent completed books on the Spanish Civil War and the life of John Belushi varied in the "surprise" factor. I knew little about the struggle which served as the "warm-up" to World War II, and quite a bit about the man I like to call the "real Last Samurai."

This week, I started in on the autobiography by foodie/chef/traveler/party animal Anthony Bourdain, "Kitchen Confidential." I was drawn to Bourdain by his snarky commentaries from his Travel Channel program, "No Reservations," but couldn't justify the read sooner because I really wanted to learn something else. Silly me. I'm three chapters into the book and love it. Bourdain describes his his second summer in New England's restaurant business in the same way I have entered my first workout with a new training group; naive as hell.

More often than not, hubris at the beginning of the workout usually is the appetizer for a full-course meal of humble pie, crow and just desserts. With a to-go bag.

Open your mouth to say how simple a workout is? Did that after a two-mile road loop around the perimeter of the U. Tampa campus during the early spring of my junior year. I was hanging tough at the back of the pack; found out minutes later from the team captain the loop was only a warm-up. Three or four 1200-meter repeats later (I cannot recall exactly how many; it might have been closer to five.) my attitude was much more humble. When I came back the next day ready to work, truly ready, it was the first step on a long road to being a runner.

We had people who you would never thought would stick it out; we had (seemingly-)motivated people slip and slide away. I still have a photo on the wall of my team from the autumn of 2000; a dude named Greg came out to one workout, received a uniform, and stood in the team photo. After that workout, Greg was never seen or heard from again. As small as that campus was it would have been an amazing feat if he had not been seen by any of the dozen guys...or the dozen girls, for that matter.

Three years later, I "ordered" the same "hubris with a side order of suffering" during a late-November evening workout of repeats on a grass loop behind a football stadium. You would think human beings are smart enough to not make the same kind of mistake twice.

Well, it wasn't the same kind of mistake; more like the same mistake, just later in the workout.

When a coach talks about perceived effort in a workout, they usually mean it's the athlete's perception. The hardest lesson to teach, especially to the new athlete, is that their "70-percent effort," for example, may not be the same speed as someone else's "70-percent effort." The second hardest lesson to teach is to preserve their energy until they are certain the workout is soon to be concluded. Run like the second coming of Prefontaine for two sets and suck wind in the third? If I had a dollar for every athlete who's done that, I'd retire wealthy.

So, if you're going to your first training session with a group, take the time to ask the group leader or coach about what to expect. Most will be good enough to communicate to you if a cautious approach is necessary for the first few workout sessions.

And make certain to take a "to-go bag."

NPR Mornings

"...every day on the street I study their faces; the ones who rush on through the crowd, towards their own quiet worlds, their separate places, somewhere I'm never allowed; 'cause I've always been one to say what I need, then the next thing it's done and I'm watching 'em leave, and I'm thinking, 'I wish I could be alone but not lonely...'" - Mary-Chapin Carpenter (2001)

...so, a week out from what initially was to be my target fall half-marathon, I decided to take what I like to call an "NPR morning." Now, for me, NPR means two different things: National Public Radio, or No Planned Run. Depending on the weather conditions it can be both, but it definitely means a large part of the morning spent with coffee, thick tomes of "mindless reading," & Suzanne. If the weather is beautiful there can be a run plugged in on the front end. If not, then I climb into my sweats or warm-ups, make a large pot of coffee & turn on the stereo to listen to our local public radio station. This time the weather was pretty, save for the sudden drop in temperature. We decided to go to the coffee-and-baked goods joint at the mall.

Minutes after we settled into our booth I saw a local runner/coach walk in, bundled up post-run in his warm-up outfit. I got up to refilll my coffee as he ordered a pecan sweet roll at the counter. I walked up & said: 'you realize that stuff will kill you, right?' He responded with much the same kind of retort I would have given in his position: 'since I ran 6.8 miles this morning I think I'll be fine, thanks.' We chatted for a few moments, then I went on to get my coffee.

A couple of minutes later he stopped by our table, presumably on the way home. My wife asked how the Sunday morning run group he headed up was faring; he mentioned the past couple of weeks were good, but that this week was a little on the light side.

She said, 'how light?'

He said, 'one. It was only me this morning.'

I can sympathize with his situation. I've run with large groups of people & I've trained solo. I cannot say I like one state more than the other; depending on the day, the weather, my mood, & my physical state, I can absolutely dig a group run...or a group run can be akin to nineteenth-century dentistry. It's kind of the reason I keep my iPod charged up & ready; in spite of the potential dangers of blasting Kanye West into my skull at half-volume while cruising the road behind the local airport, the music does what a good running companion would also accomplish.

"Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another." - Proverbs 27:17, New American Standard Bible (1995)

While Suzanne has learned to suck it up & run solo, she often wishes for my own sake that I had a regular training partner. I could & would gladly accept a runner who runs anywhere from my pace to a solid minute per mile slower, if nothing else but for the "easier" effort days. If there's someone running with you, especially someone a little slower, you're more likely to back off the intensity to meet their effort. Since the end of the summer, I've been blessed with a couple of good athletes during my twice-weekly track workouts. Their efforts keep me honest, & mine theirs. But they have their own weekend training & work schedules, so I don't have company on the long run I would truly enjoy.

There's plenty of opportunity to make excuses - want to go to the beach, for a drive, to sleep in, to spend time with family - when the days are perfect. Then, before you know it, you've got a bunch of those "too-days." "Too-days" are those days when it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too dark, too early, too late, etc., to go run. The best way to not get sucked into those "too-days," I've mentioned before, also has to do with two - train with an additional two persons. A training triad of three accounts for the inevitable need to take care of something else which has suddenly popped up in one person's life, yet keeps the remaining two members accountable to each other.

Those "NPR mornings" are a nice way to earn what my friend (and Marathon Nation coach) Patrick McCrann calls "spousal approval units" (more on this topic at a later date) & treat your body to a little extra (planned or unplanned) rest, both of which which can make all the difference in your training regimen.

S'weat's New?

Every once in a while I write something that upsets the few - outside of my immediate family and some close friends - who actually take the time to read this blog. Many of them overlook the caveat I shamelessly adapted from the blog of Canadian triathlete & two-time Olympic medalist Simon Whitfield: "Whatever is said here - as with any blog/"tweet"/mountain top announcement - is an opinion, a perspective, a rant, a cry for help; some innocent chest-thumping, painfully-inane humour, useless/useful banter and/or all of the above. Take all that is written within with the amount - grain, shake, shaker or entire box - of salt to make it palatable. Heck, you can even apply that to this disclaimer..." Today's thoughts may do exactly the same. However, these are my thoughts, supported (on many occasions) by reading, research & - at times - trial & error.

My body loves working out twice a day but my joints & tendons are too old to handle the cumulative stress of running on pavement for 60-to-70 miles a week. When I lived in Tampa I could drive 15-to-20 minutes from my home and run on dirt trails. However, I haven't seen trails like those where I now live, & I only get to run trails now when I travel up north. Thank heavens for Jay Yanovich at the gym on the base where I work, as well as my wife, Suzanne.

Jay is an ultrarunner & served as my strength coach in years past - he suggested using the elliptical trainer as a way to get that second workout without beating my achilles' tendons to death. My wife managed fitness centers in her younger days, she also knew the benefits of ellipticals. So when I've done a little too much on the pavement & I'm eating ibuprofen like candy I take a couple of days to do the elliptical at our local gym.

There are some people in this world who have high sweat rates. I'm one of them. The easiest warm-up leading into a workout or race can have me soaked within five minutes. When the comments begin, I often inform the source, "I sweat when I think." Naturally, when a person with a high sweat rate works out indoors on an exercise machine, all that sweat stays in one confined area. And when the workout is over the majority of my cool-down before going home is taken up by toweling down the machine & the area immediately surrounding.

The other day, the gym owner stopped to talk to me; I had just started my workout on one of the machines. "Mike, some folks have commented to me about your dedication & your effort, but they complain that you leave the machine soaking wet when you're done." I told him, "Ed, I wipe off the machine after every workout, believe me. I know what my sweat can do to machines...and electronics..." I - pun intended - stewed in my own juices for the 40 minutes of my workout, then walked to the office to get Ed's attention. I then showed him my exact post-workout wipe-down of the elliptical trainer. When I finished, I pointed to the footpads, which were still damp, & said, "This morning, the footpads were a little less damp than that, but everything else I showed you was the way I just wiped." Ed smiled, shook his head, & said: "Yes, I guess this is a gym, right?" The tone of his voice told me we were on the same page of sheet music.

I guess people look as critically at the way I work on machines as I look at the way they, um, don't work on the machines.

I marvel at elliptical trainer users who never get the RPM count above 60 per minute. I also marvel at users who never get their heart rate any higher than 50 percent of their maximum rate. And what really gets me spinning like a top is the user who decides to use the reverse pedaling workout. Really? Do you, when walking or running, go that slowly? Do you spend 15 to 20 minutes of your life continually walking or jogging in reverse? Unless you're an offensive lineman or a defensive back for the Saints I can't see any need for going in reverse on an elliptical trainer.

The objective of an elliptical trainer is to simulate the act of running without the potentially damaging impact. The most efficient runners, according to research done by Jack Daniels, Ph.D., & other coaches, have an average footstrike of 160-to-180 steps per minute...that's 80-to-90 RPM on the elliptical trainer.

I know the objective of most elliptical users is to burn fat rather than to maintain or build cardiovascular fitness, but most fat burning programs on the elliptical trainer are assuming a heart rate at least 50 percent of maximum heart rate. Ellipticals, for dinged-up runners like "yours truly," are used both to burn off that excess fat & to maintain or build the cardio. In that case, getting to 50 percent is not so much the issue...cardio enhancement needs a heart rate closer to 70 or 80 percent of maximum.

So, if you see me sweating all over an elliptical trainer, don't worry: I promise to wipe down everything that might potentially be touched by your skin. Now, let's talk about this time you're wasting on the machine, shall we?

Post-Race Criticality and Holistic Dieting

I managed to get through one of my target (preparation, really) races with only a few minor aches, pains, & disappointments. The goal was (in reality) to finish in the top 500, which earns you a numbered lithograph poster. When there are 20,000 participants & 3,000 racers, finishing in the 200s isn't so bad. It's when you start getting critical & crunching the performance numbers things appear disappointing: Compared to last year I finished about 70 places farther back in the pack, & 90 seconds slower.

After a disappointing race you have two choices:

1. You can whine & complain about how you're out of shape, you suck bilge, & so on, or

2. You can look at the factors...

a. ...under your control which you could have changed,

b. ...out of your hands which you could not...

...and then go back out & train. I prefer to do the latter. Of course, you can always blame factors which had nothing to do with a bad day. Lots of folks do. But if you look realistically at the things which can be improved & do something about it, y'know...things might improve.

It's like, for example, someone who complains about their weight. My wife & I had a great chat about this during our Sunday morning stroll. She knows people who complain about the need to lose a few pounds. When she recommends they get out to walk or jog more often than twenty minutes a day, three times a week, most of them look at her as though she had an eggplant growing out of her head. Or, she'll receive what might be better known as the litany of obstacles. It's the 'I can't do that because...' song.

Hey, we all know the tune. We just need to stop singing it.

We had a perfectly decent fitness gym membership until a couple of months ago, but couldn't get our workouts to fit within their operating hours. My wife was visiting a tanning salon near our house which had a 24-hour gym facility; she said, 'I like the other gym, but it's too far from the house for me to go before or after work. If we transferred to this one I could walk or bike over during the work day, or the middle of the evening.'

Personally, I don't care how she gets her exercise; I know she's happier when she gets it. Well worth the extra dollars in my humble opinion. Bottom line: You will spend your time, money & energy on what takes your highest priority.

We also talked about diet. For me, it's an athlete's equation:

Calories Out - Calories In = Change In Weight.

However, I came to a revelation this weekend. Diet is a holistic thing. Dealing with what calories you take in is not the only part of the equation; you also have to look at the mental & spiritual "thing." If you are happy with your body habitus - if your doctor has not said you are at risk for all those things which can hurt you indirectly caused by having too much weight on your body - you don't have to be so anal about what you take into your body. Get out & do something active every day; don't eat to excess.

But, if you're not happy with the way you look, I suggest you take a closer look at the magazines you read, the people with whom you spend your time, the television programs you watch. I would make a wager the persons who are the least happy with their body are the ones who spend the most time/effort/income purchasing & reading tabloid magazines like People, Us, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan (okay, there are dude versions of those rags, too...), watching Lifetime, E!, & so on. The more time you spend pumping mental & emotional junk food into your brain & psyche, the more likely you are to compare yourself to the people who pay fitness trainers & coaches to help them stay in shape because they want to remain in their careers & make money. These are people who, if you spent enough time with them, you would find out are more screwed up than you could ever be on a bad day.

And if you don't believe me, I have one word for you: Brangelina.

Now, think about the amount of time you spend reading the mags & watching the programs. I bet if you took the time/money per week pushing that garbage into yourself you could get in one extra good workout or pay for that trainer/coach, who will give you the (gentle, but often necessary) kick in the butt your training regimen needs.

I remember reading an interview with Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers some time back. He was talking about how he prepared to go into the studio & record, or write music (okay, you might not like their opus, but their cover of Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground is nearly as funky as the original), saying something to the extent of: '...if there are people out there who are going to wear down my spirit or cause me to be upset, I'll avoid them. I learned about it from Robert DeNiro, who did the same thing when he prepared for a movie role. So now, if I know there's a billboard ahead I don't want to see, I'll make certain to avoid it on the drive.' The very same thing is necessary in our own lives; negative people will cause you to look at yourself in light of your failures, your shortcomings, & what they see needs to be changed...which, in many cases, is perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch.

We are not only what we eat, but what we take in & who we let in.

Questions Of Our Age

I'm not quite certain whether I'd freak out over that particular observation. I guess I'd be more jealous over the fact some people have jobs that permit them to sit around a Starbucks' (or any other coffee shop) on 11 in the morning on a Monday. Obviously, some of them are spooling up for an afternoon/evening of work...something I used to do. But there have to be some people with little more to do (I was going to say better, but who am I to judge?) than caffeinate themselves into oblivion, read all 15 volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization, and ponder their navel.

Where do I get a job like that?
Even the moments when I feel inspired to bore people to death with passages of nothingness I think about how bad it would have to be to be a professional writer. There was a terribly funny cartoon drawn by Shannon Wheeler, which I think I referenced a little over a year ago; in essence, it said Anything You Get Paid To Do S*cks. Sometimes there's no music, no art, no television programming, and no life experience that will provide sufficient inspiration for a writer's blathering.

Here's a good question: Why do electronic devices which can last for years in the hands of other runners of equivalent fitness (and equivalent sweat-producing properties) die on me in the space of a year (if I'm fortunate)? It's not like I go out in the pouring rain with them, or leave them in direct sunlight, dusty conditions, near angry (or incontinent) canines/felines/ovines/bovines, whack them against walls or more-resilient structures, etc. These little boogers will last their warranty, then BRZZAAAP! They croak on me. I complained about this before when my last MP3 player went toes (or in this case, case) up. Perhaps I need to stop buying electronic cr*p from eBay. After my Nike Triax SDM went kaput the other weekend, I decided it was time to go back to what Chuckie V(eylupek) called caveman running. No heart rate, save for fingers on carotid pulsation. No distance measurement, save for Gmap Pedometer or MapMyTri. Go back to running by feel. Yes. That's it, young Skywalker. Trust your feelings, you know I am your father.

Of course, the positives of this decision are that I spend less time dumping cr*p into Excel spreadsheet files on my computer. The negatives are that I have less hard data to look back upon when I overtrain myself into that old iliotibial band stress/achilles' tendonitis situation again.
Maybe if I trust the physiological data, including the way I feel in the morning, I might not work myself into a stiff-legged shuffle five or six days a week...or have the deep, unrelenting need for more sleep...or the irrational desire for junk foods I haven't snacked upon since last spring. Then I won't ask myself that other question of the age: How the #@*% did I gain all that weight!?

Myth America

As the holiday season nears its end, I have no doubt whatsoever the track facility where I train will be filled with well-meaning persons trying to undo the damage inflicted upon their bodies since the end of October. I hold out hope (however fleeting) they will keep at it long enough to develop a healthy habit of daily (or near-daily) exercise.
I'm not certain what is more frightening, the pile of fitness, health and dietary myths printed on a regular basis in the public media...or those that are not only printed in the media, but repeated by medical professionals...with no scientific evidence whatsoever.
The British Medical Journal traditionally carries light-hearted features in its Christmas edition. Two U.S. researchers took seven common beliefs and searched for evidence to support them.
Despite frequent mentions in the popular press of the need to drink eight glasses of water (in fact, repeated on the health section of Yahoo!), they found no scientific basis. The lack of evidence is recorded in a study published in the American Journal of Psychology.
So, let's take a look at the other six "myths" (and my editorial commentary):
1 - Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight - unlikely to do permanent damage, but may make you squint, blink more and have trouble focusing. (If you're reading Runner's World, some of the articles will make more sense.)
2 - Shaving makes hair grow back faster or coarser - no effect on thickness or hair regrowth, but stubble gives the impression of coarseness. (So if I let my mustache, beard and head and leg hair grow long, I can slick it down for aerodynamic effect. What do you think, dear?)
3 - Eating turkey makes you drowsy - tryptophan is involved in sleep and mood control, but turkey has no more than chicken or beef. Eating lots are probably the real cause of sleepiness. (Not to mention slowness and fatness.)
4 - We use only 10 percent of our brains - imaging shows no area of the brain is completely inactive. (The jury is still out on the effects of skull thickness.)
5 - Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death - the skin dries and retracts after death, giving the appearance of longer hair or nails. (Hm...there's an untapped market for manicurists...)
6 - Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals - studies found minimal interference with medical equipment. (People using mobile phones in public, not only hospitals, are more a pain in the @$$ than anything else. Mobile phones are still dangerous in airliners and while driving on the roadways, however.)
So, go ahead and use that cell phone (quietly) in the hospital, back off your dietary intake a skosh if you're feeling sleepy, and drink when you're thirsty. If you're one of those persons who believes all the stuff you read in the newspapers, stop, already. Always, but always go to the source documents. And don't believe everything your physician says, especially when they tell you that running is bad for the knees. :)

Summer Reading

I've always tried to take some time during the summer - vacation - to read some different books from the staples I enjoy during other times of the year. A couple of my recent acquisitions grabbed my interest from the bookshelf of the local major chain bookstore.

The first, Positively False: The Story of How I Won the Tour de France, is Floyd Landis' cycling autobiography, as well as his take on life as a member of the US Postal Service cycling team under Lance Armstrong and Phonak Hearing Systems cycling team under Tyler Hamilton, and life as a team leader while at Phonak. Landis talks in great detail about the meltdown in Stage 16 of the TdF, his evening after the meltdown, and his Stage 17, which has been heralded as the greatest one-day comeback in cycling history. After reading Positively False, I haven't changed my take on the use of performance enhancing drugs. I'm not completely certain that Floyd didn't take PED, but the procedural screw-ups on the part of the French anti-doping laboratory, WADA, UCI, USADA, and all of the individual parties involved within those organizations makes the Stage 16/17 episode, as well as the implications of PED use, a conspiracy theorist's fantasy. I began to tally in my mind the number of former associates of Armstrong who have been dinged for PED/doping: Frankie Andreu, Dr. Michele Ferrari, Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Heras, possibly Floyd Landis...is this the European cycling establishment's attack against an athlete blessed with fantastic cardiovascular gifts and the ability to literally outride all comers, or is it proof that professional cycling is dirty, through-and-through?

It's one reason I cannot speak well of a local sprinter, who happens to be an Olympic medalist and took a coach known for doping infractions after he earned his medal...later earning a two-year ban for PED. The operating question that comes to my mind isn't so much 'what the hell are you thinking!?' No, there's too many words there. 'Are you thinking!?' Yeah, that's better. Poor guy's busting his @$$ doing local public appearances and all, I think he'll be helping to coach one of the local high school athletic teams, too, while he's serving his suspension. I hope like hell he gets up in the morning and kicks himself squarely in the @$$ each day. It would beat having someone like me stand by and remind my guys/gals that they, too, are vulnerable to testing.

Athletes who take PED, and the coaches and trainers who actively or tacitly tolerate or encourage its use, are engaging in fraudulent acts. Ignorance of the law (or the conconction being taken) is no excuse.

HOWEVER:

I think the World Anti-Doping Agency and it's US counterpart, USADA, are failing on the procedural side of the issue. Let's begin to take a look at doping as a criminal act - fraud - and use some legal ground rules on evidence, guilt/innocence, right to counsel, and punishment befitting the 'crime.' I wonder if I could get away with a bumper sticker that says, 'TEST THIS, USADA?'
The second book, From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Contreversy at the Tour De France, is a follow-up (in English) to the broad-brush attack by Irish sport columnist David Walsh on Lance Armstrong. His previous book L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong, was co-written with French journalist Pierre Ballester, and has not been translated into English as far as I can tell.

Walsh continues to interview the increasing circle of former Armstrong associates and teammates. I've read the first three chapters, and find the pace to be very slow. If Walsh has an argument forthcoming, he is developing it in a very cautious manner. Does he have an axe to grind against Landis? I cannot tell at this time. It's evident he has one against Armstrong.

Reading Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong's War, Landis' book, and even in Armstrong's two biographies, you can tell Armstrong has little time for former associates (especially whose who parted on less than friendly terms) and seems to hold a grudge against persons he feels have done him wrong. The only book - books - I've seen so far that holds Armstrong in a completely positive light would be Brad Kearns' How Lance Does It and Chris Carmichael's training books, co-authored with Jim Rutberg and Armstrong.

Is Armstrong - or any of us - an absolute saint? Not hardly. We all are subject to hard days, hard weeks, errors in judgment, slips, falls, single (or multiple) tokes over the line. The best lesson I can pass along after reading Landis, is to provide a simple, truthful story, at all times. It might not make for entertaining press, but it keeps them from coming back and saying to you: 'you said (fill in blank with lame-@$ excuse) last (fill in blank with time interval), now you're saying (fill in blank with new, improved, but still lame-@$$ excuse)...'

It's always easier to remember the truth.