Moments of Zen

Both Frazz and Caulfield hit this nail on the head.  I defrag using both methods.

Travel this week threw any semblance of a training regiment out the window.  Managed to miss our flight out by 5 minutes, thanks to an extremely full parking area that forced us to park somewhere in Minnesota in order to catch our flight in Nashville.  By the time we got into the hotel in SC, it was 1230am.  Typically I’d get up at 430am to run, but that wasn’t going to happen since I had to be in a meeting at 7am.

Worked all day, had dinner with friends that I hadn’t seen in many years, then it was off to bed before getting up early to head to the airport.  And the whole time I was glad I wasn’t flying American.

Sipping coffee this morning, looking out the window and wondering why there were barricades up along the road behind our house.  Then the bikes started flying by.  It was a youth triathlon, based out of the indoor pool down the block.  So Goddess and I got out there to cheer the little ones on.  Age groups were broken up into 6-7, 8-9, 10-11 and 12-13.

The 6-7 AG, especially the women, was the best.  Flying on a schweet pink Schwinn, complete with matching pink corduroys, pink down jacket (it was cool and windy) and pink helmet, the lanterne rouge of the event did it in style.  She’ll be rockin’ the course for years to come.  Watch out Amanda!

School work and a long run is all that’s in store for this weekend.  Well, that and washing and repacking, since I’ll be traveling again this week.  Meh.

Why not just put a target on your back?

Wouldn’t that be like wearing an OU jersey while biking through Texas?   You’d just be begging to get smashed.

Betcha if the moonwalking bear was wearing it, y’all would’ve spied it the first time around. 

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Found in the latest Performance Bike catalog to grace my mailbox.

Why, oh why, do they tempt me so?

Not with those jerseys, but with all of the other goodies inside.

Kinda pointless, since I’m not getting many bike miles in this year.

Tokyo marathon runner solves mystery of sore nipples

With a title like that, how can you not read the “news” story?

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Tokyo marathon runner solves mystery of sore nipples

By Alastair Himmer

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Choking pollution and sapping heat will be the major concerns for the world’s elite marathon runners at this year’s Beijing Olympics.

But for millions of other marathon men and women, concerns are of an altogether more painful nature.

After his first assault at a marathon last year banker Brian Jones was shocked to discover the sharp pain in his chest was not cardiovascular, but bleeding nipples.

“When I took my shirt off at the end it was white — apart from two particular parts of it,” he told Reuters in an interview after completing his second Tokyo Marathon at the weekend.

“It looked like I had been shot by a sniper. This year I bought some Vaseline. It worked, although I had nasty chafing elsewhere.”

Such dark thoughts are unlikely to have troubled Sunday’s winner, Switzerland’s Viktor Roethlin, who powered to victory in two hours, seven minutes and 23 seconds.

But for around 30,000 fun runners who took part in Tokyo, issues such as chafing can trigger deep despair.

“I struggled to find a comfortable pair of underwear this morning,” said Jones, who clocked 4:37:46, beating his 2007 time by 11 minutes.

“I walked two kilometers this year, between 34 and 36km, because my leg seized up. The last 20-K was freezing. The wind was absolutely brutal.”

Jones credited the Japanese crowds lining the roads for helping him get to the finish.

“It was amazing,” smiled the 33-year-old bank employee. “Random people on the side of the street just appear with muscle sprays and start graffitiying the back of your leg.”

“AGONY”

Jones admitted to having had second thoughts about running again after a traumatic first attempt last year when he suffered an early knee injury.

“I was in agony last year,” said the Londoner. “My feet were all blistered and bleeding. My knee blew up. I could barely walk. Yesterday morning I was terrified.

“You read stories of runners who are fit and who train properly and they end up with serious problems, respiratory problems or someone had a heart attack.”

Worse even than the fear of sudden death, however, was the humiliation of being overtaken by pensioners at the 20km mark.

“I thought I was doing quite well and then there’s some 70-year-old granny I’m just catching up to,” Jones said with a sheepish grin.

With Tokyo’s elderly destroying his morale, and one runner further unbalancing him by trotting backwards down a hill, Jones had to trick his brain into staying focused.

“There was one woman dressed as a nurse, or a maid. I followed her for a bit,” he said.

“You think about anything to take your mind off the pain.”

Even during the most tortuous moments of Sunday’s race, quitting was never an option for Jones.

“I never thought I wouldn’t finish,” he said. “When it was really bad, when I got to about the 33km mark, it wasn’t a mental thing. It was just that my legs couldn’t move.

“I had cramp in my thighs, the back of my hamstrings, my calf and my shins — if that’s possible.”

Despite the pain, however, would he do it all again?

“Even though it hurts like hell it is fun, oddly,” said Jones. “Last year finishing at all was a miracle. When I finished I was close to breaking down.

“But I remember instantly thinking ‘I’m going to do that again.’ Yesterday I didn’t have that same feeling, although I was a little more philosophical this morning…”

(Editing by Sophie Hardach)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSSYD6114520080219?sp=true

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And that’s why I now wear compression underwear, top and bottom, when I run.

Gluteus Minimus FTW

Well, it seems the trigger point that I “discovered” last weekend did the trick.  I’m not 100%, but I was able to make it the whole 26.2 without any pain.  A fair bit of discomfort in that area, but no pain.

Bottom line:  I finished.  5:57:14 on a flat course (!!!!).  There was some good, not much bad and a whole lotta ugly.

Race report to follow once we get back home later this week.

Too Cold to Exercise? Try Another Excuse

Passing on a good article. Mainly because I hear this at work too often from our “trained killers” when it’s 35 degrees outside:

Too Cold to Exercise? Try Another Excuse

GINA KOLATA

JULIA HENSLEY, a 41-year-old artist, got a taste of bitter cold a decade ago when she spent a winter living on a glacier near Seward, Alaska. Typical winter temperatures were 10 to 15 degrees below.
“The first time it got really cold, I was scared of it,” Ms. Hensley said. “My instinct was to get a stack of books and curl up beside the wood stove.”
But a boyfriend persuaded her to go out anyway, to cross-country ski or snowshoe for hours in deep snow. He taught her, she said, that as long as she kept moving, she would be fine.
It was a conclusion — that extreme cold can be safe for exercisers — that runs contrary to conventional wisdom. But in fact, said John W. Castellani, an exercise physiologist at the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, it turns out that even though cold can be frightening, more people are injured exercising in the heat than exercising in the cold.
Dr. Castellani was lead author of a 2006 position paper from the American College of Sports Medicine on exercising in the cold.
“The big question was, ‘Is it ever too cold?’” Dr. Castellani said. “The answer is no. People go to the poles, people are out there when it’s minus-50 degrees, people do incredible things, and safely. There really isn’t a point where you can tell people it is not safe anymore.”
Dr. Timothy Noakes, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who was a reviewer of that position paper, even supervised a swimmer, Lewis Gordon Pugh, who swam a mile in just under 19 minutes at the North Pole last July, in water that was between 29 and 32 degrees.
The problem with exercising in the cold, exercise physiologists say, is that people may be hobbled by myths that lead them to overdress or to stop moving, risky things to do.
Some worry that cold air will injure their lungs or elicit asthma symptoms. Or they are convinced that they are more susceptible to injury when it is cold and that they have to move more slowly — forget about sprinting or running at a fast clip.
But lungs are not damaged by cold, said Kenneth W. Rundell, the director of respiratory research and the human physiology laboratory at Marywood University in Scranton, Pa. No matter how cold the air is, by the time it reaches your lungs, it is body temperature, he explained.
Some people complain that they get exercise-induced asthma from the cold. But that sort of irritation of the respiratory tract is caused by dryness, not cold, Dr. Rundell said. “Cold air just happens not to hold much water and is quite dry,” he said. You’d have the same effect exercising in air that was equally dry but warm.
Dr. Rundell and Tina Evans, a Ph.D. candidate, showed this a few years ago in a study designed to dispel what Dr. Rundell called the myth that cold air can induce asthma. Volunteers with exercise-induced asthma, whose airways tended to narrow after exercise in the cold, breathed cold air or room temperature air that was equally dry. Their airways narrowed in response to the dryness of the air, not its temperature, Dr. Rundell said.
People with this problem should see a respiratory specialist and take medication when they exercise in dry air, Dr. Rundell said. And, he added, “you might want to use a balaclava,” so your exhaled breath can moisten the air you breathe.
Another myth is that you have to acclimatize to cold, just as you do to heat. It’s true that peoples’ bodies adapt to hot weather and that adaptation makes people feel better when they exercise in the heat. It also improves performance. With heat adaptation, you sweat more profusely, your sweat is less salty and your blood volume increases.
But exercise physiologists find only modest adaptation to cold. The body’s main responses to cold — constricting blood vessels near the skin, shunting blood to the body’s core and shivering — do not improve if you spend more time in the cold. Nor are the physically fit any better at adaptation than the sedentary.
“Right now, we’re not sure if there is any degree of habituation,” said Robert Kenefick, a research physiologist at the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine.
Of course there are hazards like frostbite and hypothermia, which occurs when the body’s core temperature drops too low.
Dr. Noakes said that during Mr. Pugh’s North Pole swim, hypothermia was a real concern. Hypothermia can happen suddenly in icy water, with the swimmer’s core temperature plummeting, and the fear was that Mr. Pugh might pass out and sink before he could be rescued. Mr. Pugh, an experienced cold-water swimmer, was wearing a device to monitor his temperature, but nonetheless, Dr. Noakes was “petrified,” he said.
The biggest risk of hypothermia comes with a combination of wet and cold. That is because water transfers heat from the body 70 times more efficiently than air.
Hypothermia begins to set in when the body’s core temperature falls to 95 degrees. That elicits shivering and a rise in blood pressure. But if your temperature drops to 85, you lose consciousness, and if it goes much lower, you can die. The trick to avoiding hypothermia is to keep moving, Dr. Noakes said. “As long as you keep moving you are not going to die because you generate so much heat.”
One mistake winter exercisers make is wearing too much clothing. You don’t want to sweat profusely because you overdressed.
“You should feel cool before you start exercising,” Dr. Castellani said. “You should not feel comfortable.”
That means, Dr. Noakes said, that even in temperatures as low as 10 to minus-20 degrees, a runner probably needs to wear no more than a track suit, mittens or gloves and a hat.
The other major concern, frostbite, can come on fast, as my running partner Jennifer Davis, 37, discovered about a decade ago. It starts when the skin’s temperature drops to 82 degrees and you feel an area of skin is becoming really cold. At a skin temperature of 68 degrees, the skin starts to hurt. It may tingle or burn or ache or you may feel a sharp pain. When the skin’s temperature falls to 50 degrees, it feels numb. And when the skin’s temperature reaches 27 degrees, the skin freezes. The result is frostbite.
Ms. Davis got frostbite when she went out for a run early in the morning on a cold, windy day with temperatures in the teens. She ran for about an hour wearing a baseball cap. Her ears hurt for a while, then the pain went away.
She took off a glove to touch her ears so she could find out just how cold they were. To her shock, one of her ears cracked. “It was sort of like semi-frozen meat,” she recalled.
When she got home, she was horrified by her red and swollen ear. An ear, nose and throat specialist diagnosed frostbite and told her that her ear would be sensitive to the cold for the rest of her life.
He was wrong, though. The ear was red and stuck out for weeks, but it healed. Now, Ms. Davis said, she can’t even remember whether it was her right or left ear. But ever since, she has worn a hat that covers her ears when she runs in the cold.
As for Ms. Hensley, the woman who lived in Alaska one winter, she now lives in Seattle and rides her bike in the winter rain, charging up hills.
“I just remember the lesson I learned that winter,” she said. “You don’t have to stand inside and say, ‘Oh, it’s a yucky day.’ You can go out in anything. You just have to do it.”

Here’s the original article: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080117/ZNYT04/801170874/1006/SPORTS

April 19, 2008

Whoo hoo. Look for me.

Way over on the sidelines.

Holding a beer.

Click on the image for details.

It’s only 4 hours down the road. And since I won’t be deep into a training cycle, methinks I’ll have to convince Goddess to take a trip down and watch.

Gotta find me a cowbell…

2008

Goddess, please don’t read this one.

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Well, I watch with jealousy as everyone starts populating their blogs/websites with triathlons that they’ve either registered for or plan to race in 2008.

There will be no triathlons for me in 2008.

Instead, I get an all-expense paid trip to Baghdad, Iraq during the tri-season. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be a slug.

Fresh off the “joy” that was the Flying Monkey, I’m starting to ramp up for a 1/2 marathon right after the first of the year and a full marathon in February. After that remains anyone’s guess, since I’ll have only March and April here in the states before I go. And my goal is to be at the starting line for the 2008 Flying Monkey.

On January 5th will be the inaugural Mississippi Blues Marathon/Half Marathon. I’ll be doing the half-marathon and then some sightseeing around Jackson, MS. If anyone’s got any suggestions for sights, please let me know.

Then in February, I’ll be doing the 26.2 with Donna, a full-marathon in Jacksonville, FL. Unlike the Monkey, this one’s flat! Plus, the bonus is that I’ll be able to visit with family. A destination vacation and visit rolled into one. Gotta love it. Plus, my sister’s name is Donna, so how could I resist? I’ve egged her on enough that she’s started training to walk the 1/2 marathon. I’m proud of her, since she’s had many health issues and hasn’t been very active for quite a few years.  Plus, Goddess is planning on walking it with her for company and motivation.

Another great reason for me to run this race is that it’s a fundraiser to fight Breast Cancer, with the funds going to the Mayo Clinic and women living with breast cancer. It’s something near and dear to my heart, since my mother is a survivor. I look forward to hugging her after I cross that finish line.

If you are interested, please consider clicking over here and donating a few dollars. Your donation will go straight to the fund. Thank you!

Everyone, keep bragging about your races. I look forward to each and every countdown and race report.

PSA

For those of you hitting the malls hard tomorrow, set a bit of money aside. IronMin clued me in to a great deal going on right now, as long as you’ve been eyeing the Garmin Forerunner 305.

Garmin’s pushing a rebate for a cool $50 off the 305 that expires at the end of November.

Coupled with Amazon’s excellent price of $205.99, after rebate it’s only $155.99. Not too shabby, eh?

I pulled the trigger.

Yeah, I’ve got a Suunto T6 also. One that I bought in January. But it’s been futzing up on me (won’t detect HR, even when I can feel my heart jumping out of my chest). So it’s going back to the factory for some work.

But this is a different toy (erm, I mean tool), right?

Goddess loves me!

Or at least she tolerates me, holding out for the insurance money. 

Some quotes from the past few days…

…heard ’round the Anders’ household since Sunday:

1. Me - (typically said whenever I climb out of a chair): “OW. Quit it. OW, OW. Quit it.”

2. Goddess - “And why exactly do you do this to yourself?”

3. Son - “Dad, when are you going to quit doing this to yourself?”

4. Me - “Hey, check these out. Mississippi Blues and Seaside. They both sound good to me.”

That’s it, I’m taking up chess…

OMFG that hurt. No, seriously, that F’ing hurt!

No, seriously.

But that’s what lets us know that we’re alive, right?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look at the elevation profile for the marathon here.

Total time - 5:25:54. Not too shabby, especially when you look at the course. That and the fact that it’s my first marathon. Ever. 1/2 Marathon time - 2:15:30. How’s that for a positive split? I’ll let you do the math.

To make a long story even longer, it started on the drive this morning. We timed it well to get to site 15 minutes before the start. The fog was pretty dense in spots on the drive into Nashville, which slowed us down a bit. Then about 1 mile from the start, a beautiful 8-point buck decided he needed to be on the other side of the road, which put him right in front of us. How do I know he was 8-points? I can still see him in mid-flight right off the nose of the car. I don’t remember anything else, but Goddess tells me I gave a quick tap on the brakes, which was apparently just enough to let him slip by.

The starting speech was quite comical. With a name like the Flying Monkey Marathon, what else can it be? With instructions on how to deal with the flying monkeys and an admonition to not rush, since the keg wouldn’t be tapped until noon, which meant we should all shoot for a 4:59 finish to get there just in time.

Started off slow and easy. Maintained a 9:30 pace through the first few miles. Not surprising, considering my lack of running over the past two weeks, miles 3-5 were pretty miserable. My legs were not waking up. The 150 foot climb and the 200 foot descent in the first 3 miles didn’t help them feel any better. I got into my groove by about mile 7 and cruised through the next 10 miles, hitting the 1/2 mark at 2:15:30, which averaged 10:20 over the distance. I wasn’t out here to break any records, just hang on to the finish.

Mile 17 was the start of some ugly times. As you can see on the profile, that mile was a 200 foot drop, which led up to the ugliest hill of the course through miles 18-20, which saw 300 feet of climbing. This put the hurt on. Up until now, the only time I walked was through the aid stations (I’m quite pleased with that). Throughout this climb, I adopted a racewalk strategy, which worked out to be faster than I was able to run up that hill.

By the time I hit 20.1 miles, it was all downhill from there (except for the uphills). The elevation drop was 215 feet over the next six miles, with some short but not-so-sweet uphills. Problem was, the legs were deep in the hurt-locker even going downhill. So it was a walk-run strategy for a while. But I got it done. Average pace for the last 13.1 miles - 14:34. Average pace for the whole 26.2 - 12:26.

Man, I’ve got to try a flat race.

The Yazoo beer served at the finish line was loverly! Huge props to Trent, the race director (who also ran in the race) for working a deal with them. The scenery was gorgeous the entire time. Luckily, the severe thunderstorms that blew through on Wednesday didn’t strip all of the trees. With my slower second half, I saw a thousand and one photos I would have loved to have taken.

A friend of mine flew in from D.C. to run this race. It was his eleventh this year, including Antarctica and The Lewis and Clark Bozeman marathons. After driving him over the course yesterday, he was hoping for a 4:30 finish. He ran his fifth fastest marathon ever, coming in right at 3:30! Now he’s curious what he would have done had it been a flat course.

Times aren’t up on the website yet, but I thinkthe first place guy finished in the 2:45 range. He blew past me heading back in just as I was approaching the 10-mile point. He was already 6 miles ahead of me. Quite humbling.

If you’re looking for a late-season marathon, I absolutely cannot endorse the Flying Monkey enough. Small, low-key and not to be taken seriously (except for the course). Today was only its second running, but already had folks fly in from Alberta, Seattle, D.C. and even Italy! It’s an extremely well-run event, with some schweet swag (including a personalized long-sleeve Patagonia technical running shirt - in addition to the standard cotton race T-shirt!) and some good times with your fellow runners.

I hope to be there next year.

But first, I gotta relearn chess.