Not Too Far To Walk Back

It's great to be able to link up with many of my fellow run enthusiasts and classmates by way of social media.  Every once in a while I hear a doozy:

"u know what the trouble with jogging is...by the time you realize you're not in shape for it, it's too far to walk back."  I'm not that shocked to hear a statement like this coming from a fellow Baby Boomer.  Most of my high school companions, including the sporty ones, would consider themselves to be - unlike Sir Paul McCartney - more than the man they used to be.  Even though, if asked to judge our health on a 1-to-100 scale, we would most likely give ourselves a score in the 70 range, I'm starting to see some around my age "leave" in ones and twos.  An insurance company-sponsored survey of 1,800 persons, ranging in age from 25-to-64, found folks my age more likely to define "healthy" as visiting the doctor and filling the necessary check in the block on the questionnaire each year...and the requisite bodily fluid work-up, etc.
Only one in five of us would say we're doing something to "look good in our underwear," such as a regular exercise routine.  And when it happens, it's more likely to be because we've got a goal staring us in the face; men usually tie it to an endurance event, such as a marathon...women to a wedding or reunion.

Like any 12-step program, the first step to working through the problem is admitting the problem exists.  Lots of Boomers invested the lion's share of their time and effort on raising families and developing careers.  Now that we've begun to have more time to do other stuff we receive the sudden and frightening message that we're not as fit as we were when we were in high school or university.  How do we get back to where we once belonged?  First of all, like our generation is more likely to inform the Gen-Xers and Millennials, we need to not sweat the small stuff. 

If I were going to go back and develop a running habit from the outset I would start with finding a loop course, just big enough to traverse that I felt like there was a level of accomplishment, but not so large that I couldn't do it in five minutes or so...so we're talking probably something in the range of 600 or 700 meters; no bigger than half a mile around.  Grass and packed dirt would be fantastic, but an asphalt bike path will do in a pinch.  Start by doing one minute of running, followed by walking until you're ready to run one minute again.  Do this for at least 30 minutes, every other day for three weeks. 

Test yourself at the three-week point:  Run for as long as you can without stopping.  Divide that time by three; make that the new "run" time.  Once you get to the point where you can run comfortably for thirty minutes you can start to add on time here and there as your body tolerates it.  Have fun with it; alternate hard running with easy running, easy running with brisk walks.  There are many benefits of running for time rather than for distance.  Unless you're in the surveying (or course measurement) business, a second is a second everywhere in the world (great for those persons who do a lot of traveling), and your heart and lungs will gain the same benefits whether you're doing three or five miles in a thirty minute span. 

And if the heat and/or humidity happens to be an obstacle, treadmills can be the best alternative.  I know people who despise treadmills with a passion, but I like the ability to control almost all of the potential variables which can affect exercise performance, namely air temperature, surface hardness/softness, elevation and speed (I'll include the ability to immediately stop the run, live to fight another day,should something begin to hurt badly.).  And if you're at a gym facility where there's lots of traffic, often the scenery isn't only limited to what's on the television screen.  To make certain you're not going at too quickly a pace during the run pieces, I would running the "talk test" during the first bout on the belt - start at five miles per hour.  Can you talk to yourself, or a person next to you, in complete sentences?  Bump up the speed a notch.  check yourself after a minute.  When you find the sentences are shorter, or you can't finish it without taking a deep breath you've probably found the right pace.  The walk recovery pace is not a problem; set it for anywhere between three and four miles per hour and you'll be fine.

Some persons say that treadmill running is not the same as running on the roads or trails, and they are correct, but in very small ways.  Other than wind resistance, there's not much difference between how our body reacts to running on a moving belt and how it reacts on a gravel road, or dirt trail, or rubber track.  Purists can kick the elevation on the treadmill up one notch just to make it feel more like you're working into a self-made breeze.

So don't fret if you're a boomer who's started to worry if they'll ever be able to regain lost fitness, or wants to drop weight, lower the risk of obesity-related diseases.  As long as you remain patient at the start, consistent through the process, and progressive in adding intensity once your body begins to tolerate the new (or renewed) stressors, it's never too far a walk back to a fit lifestyle.

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.

Sometimes, Gratitude...

Once a week, for the past four years, I've taught a study-skills and test-taking seminar as part of my "real" job. The presentation method, as many who read this blog (or the articles which often come from this blog) might guess, is a blend of storytelling and instruction.

For the most part, I've enjoyed the time in the classroom; every group of 25-to-65 students - the vast majority young enough to be my child - presented its own unique "terrain" on which I take a brief 60-to-90 jaunt (back) into the academic world. Not every one of them needed to hear what I felt like saying. Strangely enough, some of them wanted to know a little more about road running or triathlon than how to beat a multiple-choice test.

This morning I received a note from the indoc staff. Curriculum additions mandated by the persons in charge of Navy training, only three miles down the street, left no room to add this (perhaps the last) hold-over from the Navy's Revolution in Training.

The change was eventual. I've been through three revisions, three cubicles, two commanding officers, two supervisors, a reduction-in-force, a defunct survey database, and a cycle in training delivery methods from instructor-led to self-paced...and back...since I started teaching this seminar. I have to admit a sense of gratitude that it is finally over.

Steven Covey, in "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," says the first habit effective persons cultivate is to begin activities with the end in mind. I think he was talking "end state," not necessarily "end date."

Sometimes we complete a target event (marathon, half-marathon, triathlon, just to name a few) and between the time when the euphoria departs and the muscle soreness arrives we get the athletic version of the "existential dilemma": 'I completed a (blank)...now what?' Could this dilemma exist because we don't like empty schedules and blank calendar spaces? Mary-Chapin Carpenter, in "The Long Way Home," sings that many people are driven with the need to '...gotta go, gotta be, gotta get somewhere..." We don't take the time to appreciate what is now in our mental and emotional rear-view mirror; negative or positive.

So now it looks like I have an extra hour in my calendar. I'm not necessarily ready to fill in the blank with anything, at least for a couple of weeks. It's a little extra daylight time...something else for which I can be grateful.

Your Potential - Bring It!

A frustrating day yesterday - no run in the afternoon and a few less yards in the morning swim workout than I would have liked. I started to whine to myself the old 'I s*ck and it's hot and I'll never get back into the shape I was before I broke my arm a year ago and my achilles hurts and so on and so on and on and on...' mantra. Yeah, the kind of stuff I usually hate to hear from the folks I train. I hate it even more when I'm the one doing the whining, because it's more difficult to place a silver lining on your own dark cloud.

However, since the achilles was sore, it was probably a good thing I took the afternoon off. It wasn't like I did absolutely nothing but lay around and drink beer. I did wrestle with a boatload of pharmacy school notes, books, multimedia, entertainment center items, tables, washer/dryer, etc., belonging to Jason and Laura. It was hot. It took three hours to shove it all into a U-Haul. And it definitely s*cked to be Jason; the dude had to drive the stuff back to Tennessee in a day. I definitely felt for him much more than I did for me. I offered him the opportunity to shower and change into some dry clothes before he took off; I was completely soaked and miserable, so I knew he had to be close to that point. Days like yesterday are good every once in a while. It makes you think long and hard about the silliness of moving all your household belongings in the middle of summer. It reminded me just how good it is to have a couple of college degrees and some ostensibly-marketable skills. It reminded me how good it is to have a choice to work in a location where air conditioning works fifty percent of the time (the main office in Norfolk has worse a/c problems than we do). And it reminded me just how good it is to be able to do this as part of my (nearly) everyday routine. Chuckie "V" had this to say this morning:

I propose that if we were all born without worries of survival (financial and emotional stability and such) and all we had to do all day---indeed, wanted to do all day---was train, only then might we start to reach our athletic potential. Potential is impossible to measure, of course. When I lived at the Olympic Training Center, the physiologists tried to measure it through a nonstop series of tests: VO2 max, muscle biopsies, and the like. But yet we know that such tests don't really do the trick. No numbers can. Heart-rate monitors cannot measure heart. Power meters cannot measure will power. Potential is what you make of it. You're close when you believe you are.

Chuckie was inspired by something Kevin wrote, and in turn has inspired me. So I'm going to steal from Chuckie's blog today, in the hope of inspiring you. This isn't plagiarism, even though we shamelessly borrow from each other. It's research...or when you shamelessly borrow from multiple persons rather than just one. At least that's what they used to tell me in college. While we all rejoice and curse the same sun, Solomon reminds me - whether he wrote it or had someone do it for him; the demands of a hundred wives can take away what little time you might have to write profound thoughts - there is nothing new under the sun.

So no number, or means by which we people can measure things will provide the true measure of a person's greatness or of their potential. Maybe that's why all parents think their child will grow up to be president. There's more inside us than viscera, Vicodin, Valium...and in many cases Viagra...that makes us what we are.

See you at the track. Bring your potential with you.