Recently in running and fitness Category

Here are a few salient events from another interesting year:

• I won myself a trophy for third place in my 50-54 age/gender group in a half marathon in Monmouth County, NJ. This is remarkable because it was not long ago that the very idea was inconceivable. The trophy itself is hideously ugly, but I am glad to accept it nonetheless.
• I ran my third marathon, in Boston. In short, it was a successful and rewarding venture. See this report if you want the gory details.
• I won my age group in not one but two local 5K races -- small ones, but still... The second was noteworthy because I was actually disappointed in my performance, feeling sluggish and uncomfortable and posting a slower time than I thought I should. Winning my age group and still not satisfied -- have I lost my mind?
• My stepfather died at the age of 93, in March. He was an accomplished astronomer who led a long and productive life, and is remembered with great admiration and affection by hundreds of people.
• In May I crashed the shit out of my car, with two of my kids in the back seat. It wasn't good, but could have been far worse.
• My uncle died at the age of something like 88, in August. He too was a smart man who managed to get through his long life pretty much doing as he pleased, founding and running a successful aerial photography business.
• One of our cats, Master Lin-chi, used up a couple of his lives. First he disappeared for a full week, during the summer. He had us grieving and stapling flyers to trees all over the neighborhood. Then he walked into the house, skinny and filthy but very much alive. We have no idea where the hell he was.
  
  As if that wasn't enough, he then surpassed this performance by surviving an encounter with a car with nothing more than some bruises and abrasions. I took him to the vet (and what a splendid vet he is, Felix Escudero at the emergency clinic in Bloomfield, NJ) who pronounced him OK.
  
  I don't remember if it was before or after that incident that I called him to come home one evening, when he hadn't been seen for 24 hours. When he still didn't show up I called a little louder, and heard a faint whimper in the distance. Following the sound, I located him in the back yard two houses away, trapped in what's know as a "Have a Heart" trap -- a cage that automatically closes when an animal enters to get at some bait, stepping on a metal plate in the process. It seems that our neighbor had set it to to catch some other creature that had been giving him grief, and then saw fit to leave for the weekend. Thus Lin-chi sat with no food or water, next to a little pile of his own shit, until I rescued him. I got him out and otherwise left the trap as I found it, shit included.
  
  (You may say, obviously this cat should live entirely indoors, and I wouldn't disagree. But it's not an easy policy to enforce, and I am of two minds about the issue of letting cats go outdoors -- a topic for another day.)
• Like so many others on the planet,we endured extreme weather, including tough snowstorms, a brush with a hurricane in late August, and a seasonally inappropriate winter storm in October that left us without power for a full five days.
• Our four kids got a year bigger, all them thriving and developing and fascinating my wife and me.
• My lovely wife and I observed another wedding anniversary, and are still crazy about each other. It's a glorious thing.

when you awaken at some ungodly hour
ease your way around your dreaming spouse

to sneak through the house like a thief
and put on your running shoes

and even the cats look at you
as though you've lost your mind:

you will ask
why am I doing this?
because.

because when you begin to run
down the street
your footsteps will echo
off the sleeping houses.

running, running we run
our thousands of feet
follow the road
towards Boston.

somewhere along mile 25
I understand this moment
as no different from any other.

devoid of content,
this very moment
is exactly emptiness.

I rode Amtrak from Newark on Sunday and lodged at the Hilton in the Financial District. After putting down my gear I went to the expo where you get your number, and did not hang around long. Those big convention center affairs are oppressive and I wasn’t much interested in shopping. The marathon included a pasta buffet dinner, and having no other hot date lined up I decided I might as well. It was no better than satisfactory, which is OK for these purposes. After dinner I lay in a hot bath and managed to let the jitters subside to some extent. Got to bed reasonably early and woke up at 4:15, an hour ahead of the alarm and redundant wake-up call.

Even if you aren’t ADD-afflicted, It is good practice to arrange your countless little items the night before.

The buses to the start in Hopkinton were about a 12-minute walk from the hotel. Instead I spontaneously shared a short cab ride with two other runners, also strangers to each other. Everywhere I went I found good vibes and camaraderie. It’s easy to strike up a conversation with people with whom you have such an intense common interest. On the bus I sat next to a Canadian woman who had to be well over 60 and who knows what it is to train in truly cold weather and snow — not like us New Jersey wimps. Before the start the runners wait for a couple hours in an outdoor area known as Athlete’s Village, where armed guards, attack dogs and razor wire keep the athletes from escaping. Despite the forecast for textbook-perfect weather, it was cold, and the ground was wet. I wished I’d had as much foresight as the people who brought ground cloths and other appropriate equipment. I was shivering much of the time, my cotton layers insufficient against the wind.

For readers who are not familiar with the marathon game, a little context: the world record is just a little over two hours. From my perspective, anything under three hours is astounding. The entrance requirement for the prestigious Boston Marathon is to demonstrate your credibility by running an officially recognized marathon within a set time, adjusted for gender and age, in the 18 months prior to the race. The Boston qualifying standard for my age bracket is currently 3:35; all Boston qualifying times will become five minutes tougher as of 2013. Having qualified in New York in 2009, I was now here to crack 3:20:00 and needed to average a fraction over 7:37 per mile. It’s all relative, to be sure, but I think it fair to say that a sub-3:20 marathon, when you are six weeks short of 53 years old, is pretty damn good. It’s a BQ (Boston Qualifier) with 15 minutes to spare, 10 minutes by the 2013 standard.

My training had gone well, and I had plenty of sage advice from experienced, excellent Boston marathoners (e.g., a guy whom we will call Bill Haskins to protect his privacy), hence a pretty clear notion of what to do. Stick to your pace and no faster — as with any marathon. Beware of the early miles which are downhill, and can seduce you into going too fast and trashing your quads. If you’ve managed your pace intelligently, then after the last of the infamous Newton Hills around mile 21 you can pick up the pace and seal the deal.

At last we get moving, and the cold is an issue no more. There is no other sound like the patter of thousands of shoes trodding the asphalt.

These are my unofficial mile splits:

Mile 1: 7:57. Too congested. There was little I could do about that so I tell myself not to worry, in fact maybe this is good. Start out easy and make it up later.

Mile 2: 7:07. Oops. Didn’t mean to make it up all at once.

Mile 3: 7:11. Shit. Got to get this under control.

Mile 4: 7:26. Still too fast.

Mile 5: 7:40. Thank you.

Mile 6: 7:37. Brilliant.

Mile 7: 7:39. I’ll take it.

Mile 8: 7:34. A little overexuberant, but acceptable.

Mile 9: 7:32. Dude, come on.

Mile 10: 7:49. A little erratic now. Maybe compensating for the sins of the past couple of miles though I don’t remember for sure.

Mile 11: 7:27. Compensating for the preceding. Definitely too erratic now.

Mile 12: 7:57. I saw an open Porta-Potty and decided to go for it though my need was not urgent. It just looked like a good opportunity. But it took numerous seconds.

Mile 13: 7:15. Again, the mistake of trying to reclaim lost time in one shot.

Mile 14: 7:29. Trying to ease up.

Mile 15: 7:35. Not bad.

Mile 16: 7:19. Oops. Maybe getting a little too cocky about feeling strong at this stage.

Mile 17: 7:48 Again easing off. Soon hereafter I encounter my one-man support team among the onlookers, the incomparably charming — not to mention stupendous runner — John Parry, who gave me wonderful encouragement, running alongside me for maybe half a minute. I tell him my legs are a little beat but the engine is still strong. He says, keep running relaxed. I yell back “I love you, man!” as we part.

Mile 18: 7:50. The Newton Hills slow me down. I might also have lost a few seconds talking to John, but it was well worth it.

Mile 19: 7:26 Fighting back. Starting to fatigue.

Mile 20: 7:45. Nice to be here, realizing it will all be over before too long. Unless I melt down between here and the finish, that is.

Mile 21: 7:56. The dreaded Heartbreak Hill. It doesn’t quite break my heart but it slows me down.

Mile 22: 7:21. Again battling back.

Mile 23: 7:48. Getting smacked around. The margin of error is dwindling. Must step on the gas.

Mile 24: 7:35. I’m proud of that.

Mile 25: 8:04. Hurting. A few minutes later, rough calculation tells me I might make 3:20 but not by much. Got to pick it up.

From 25 to 26.2: An 8:00 pace. Definitely fading badly in the last two miles. Turning left on Boylston into the final stretch I give it my best effort to run like hell, my legs so thrashed it’s like a bad dream. But this final gambit gets me over the finish line at 3:19:55. Success.

I was fairly well tattered after the finish, light-headed, leg muscles locking up. But I drank plenty of fluids managed to limp onto the subway and back to the hotel, where I decided I deserved a pint of Guinness at the bar. This is Boston after all. Then, back to the bathtub to let it all sink in.

When it’s all over you get to ride the train back to New Jersey and take a picture of yourself displaying your medal.

The Boston Marathon is a class act. The volunteers were consistently great, the crowd tremendously supportive, and the organization seemed to me just about flawless. The atmosphere is uniquely exciting. It’s a kick to be among a great mob of runners who range from quite good to quite very damn good indeed. I had some fun along the way, the pain of the last 10K notwithstanding. I enjoyed chatting with a few runners during the first 12 or 13 miles, though I am of two minds about doing that. On one hand it gets you out of your head for a bit and provides a distraction, helping you to relax and enjoy the ride. On the other hand, it’s a distraction. You might inadvertently adjust your pace to the other person’s (or vice versa) instead of running your own race. I suppose that at a more advanced level there’s no wasted breath or concentration, but I think at my more modest level of performance it can’t hurt to socialize in moderation.

I would have loved to report an elegant and disciplined marathon with a strong, crisp finish rather than a tail of sloppily fluctuating all over the place and then barely hanging on to attain the goal. This performance suffered from my characteristic problem with self-control. It isn’t a willful disregard of pace management, or a consciously arrogant decision that today I am such a superb athlete that I can run faster than planned. I just have trouble gauging pace. This being my first Boston and just my third marathon, the lack of experience might have something to do with it. I could buy one of those GPS devices that tells you how fast you’re going, but I am stubbornly old-school, and frugal. I would rather learn to control myself with a $35 Timex and feedback at the rate of once per mile.

During the slow walk back to the hotel I began thinking I could do better if I tried it again. Ever obsessed with time, I looked at my watch to see about how long after the finish it took me to start thinking in those terms. Forty minutes.

we run before dawn
two pairs of feet trotting along
dark silent streets,
then up the mountain.

a few feet off the road
three deer
foraging in the woods

silhouetted in the dim cold
they look up for a moment
then ignore us

as we continue down the road
the horizon now swelling pink
through the bare trees.

I wrenched the holy fuck out of my lower back while getting into the car to drive my daughter to school last Friday morning. That simple act seems to have triggered it, but an accumulation of insults must have contributed. I had never had a back experience quite so bad in my 50-plus years. I could barely walk, and had to miss a couple days of work. I could not dress myself without assistance, and was only just able to maintain that essential, minimal autonomy and independence: lower myself onto the toilet to take a shit, and wipe my own ass.

The back is hard to ignore, being right in the center of the body, the hub of everything: arms, legs, head. For the first day or two or three, I tried to be tough. Pain? Fuck pain, I can deal with it. But after about four or five days of it, when you are stiffly shuffling around in your bathrobe, staring out the window at the rain falling from the quiet gray sky... then you understand how a person could get depressed.

I had planned to run a local 5K race Saturday morning, even indulging fantasies of winning my age group. Indeed, the guy who did win it is an acquaintance, and his pace was 2 seconds per mile slower than my last 5K, on August 14. There would have been a dramatic battle to the finish line! (I could have this, I would have that --- yeah, so go into a bar and brag about "could have" and see how many people you impress.) Instead, as runners were milling about the starting area, I was struggling just to get from bed to toilet, taking tiny baby steps, gasping and holding the walls for support.

Debilitating injury and pain get to us for any number of compelling reasons, but foremost among them is that such episodes are prefigurations of our eventual, inevitable death. Yeah you heard me: one of these days you are gonna go down and stay down, and your life will end. We should regard these illnesses and pains of our decaying bodies as opportunities to reflect on impermanence.

And yet there is a hilariously comical element mixed into this mess. A couple of times I burst out laughing at my predicament, stuck somewhere in the middle of a room, unable to stand still, unable to move forward. The vibrations from the laughter made my back hurt worse, of course, so I laughed all the harder -- erasing from my wife's mind any lingering doubt that I am crazy.

The short answer is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I was already generally aware of the atrocious ways of meat production in the United States: extreme cruelty to animals; adverse impacts on human health and on the environment. But the gory details were sufficient to compell me to decide not to participate any longer. There is no excuse for treating chickens, pigs, and cattle the way large industrial producers do, and I refuse to be complicit in a system of which I so strongly disapprove. Indeed, it would be hypocritical of me to do otherwise.

That doesn't mean I am a full-blown vegetarian. Homo sapiens is one of those animals that eat other animals in order to survive, and I have no problem with that in principle. If you can serve me a piece of pork that was once a pig who was raised and killed in as humane and environmentally sustainable a way as is reasonably possible, I will happily eat it, mindful of the pig's sacrifice. A roasted rabbit, who led a natural bunny life hopping around and eating and fucking until dispatched so skillfully that Mr/Ms Bunny never knew what hit her or him? Bring it! But getting that kind of meat requires substantially more expense and effort than does the supermarket kind, and as of yet I haven't made the effort, so I have gone without eating the flesh of cattle, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and so forth.

Fish is another matter. Figuring out which kinds are harvested in an environmentally responsible fashion also takes some homework, and they have faces, and they probably don't like suffocating any more than you or I would. But I am content to rationalize that a sardine does not have the cognitive functioning to realize how bad it's getting fucked before it ends up in a can. Maybe I will eventually change my position. For now, I need protein and don't want to depend solely on nuts and tofu. So I eat fish with some qualification.

One might say, let's see you kill and butcher that animal yourself, and then see how you feel -- as Michael Pollan did. I would certainly be willing to give it a try some day -- killing my own food sounds kind of cool, in fact. But for now I am a creature who lives in the suburbs, works in a city, and going hunting with my crossbow is not really a practical alternative. The idea is certainly not forever foreclosed, but for now I am content to allow someone else to kill my food animals for me.

Opting out of industrial meat has not required any difficult adjustments in my diet, because I was already eating a lot of vegetarian meals, rarely consuming red meat, and increasingly eating fresh and local food. I have had to renounce that Cambodian style noodle soup from a Cantonese place near my office, a delicious concoction made with sliced and ground pork as well as shrimp and egg noodles in broth probably made from ducks who undoubtedly fare no better than the pigs.

As for eggs, we generally buy the most environmentally correct ones available, and willingly pay a premium over the industrial kind (think of it as insurance against salmonella poisoning courtesy of a mass producer in Iowa who churns out millions of eggs a week -- you don't need to be a Slow Food connoisseur to see the problem inherent in production on that scale). But that's also a tricky game, since what you read on the carton -- "cage free," for example -- may be bullshit. But I eat salads from a deli near my workplace, sometimes containing a hard-boiled egg about whose origins I know nothing. I am not a purist; I compromise. When I eat my kids' left-over pepperoni pizza, I peel off the pepperoni and eat it, unconcerned about the pizza being tainted with pepperoni residue. And maybe -- maybe -- when Thanksgiving rolls around I will decide to go along with the program and partake of the turkey. We'll see.

The result of this modest dietary change is that I feel fine both ethically and physically. I like to burn a lot of calories running, and have kept on setting personal record times since quitting the meat. Over time, I suspect our family will be eating still more local and fresh, and adjusting our diet according to the seasons in New Jersey. The rest of the family might even phase out the industrial flesh consumption. For now, this is working well for me.

If you're a runner, then you've undoubtedly heard a great deal of hype about the barefoot/minimalist running movement. Like countless others, I read Born to Run and was intrigued. The prose style is so dreadful that I was tempted to quit, but forced myself to suck it up for the sake of the content.

For context, here's a quick running résumé. At 52 years of age, I have been running for about 23 years, but only casually for the first 20 -- about three times a week, four or five miles at an easy pace. In January 2008 I ran my first half marathon, and loved it so much that I ran a marathon in October 2008 and another in November 2009, the latter fast enough to qualify for Boston. At present I am not formally training for any event, and I run as much as I can in light of my substantial commute, work and family responsibilities -- about 120 miles per month.

After seeing some online discussions (at my local running club) about the Vibram FiveFingers miminalist foot-glove, I decided to order a pair. Scouring the web I found that my size was out of stock everywhere. It was clear that the VFF's Warholian 15 minutes are in full swing. Vibram can't make the damn things nearly fast enough to meet the demand, and one has to beware of scammers who have popped up selling counterfeit versions. I finally back-ordered some VFF Sprints from an outdoor gear place in Oregon, and they kept moving the shipping date back so that it took a full six months for mine to arrive at my door.

Under the influence of Born to Run, I had decided that rather than replacing my Mizuno Wave Elixir 4s, I would just continue to beat the cushioning out of them. They were pretty well-worn by the time I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon in May 2010 (in NY Marathon-qualifying time, thank you very much), and had over 500 miles by the time I put them aside.

Put them aside, because I ran out of patience while waiting on my VFFs and got what seemed to be the next best thing that was readily available: the Mizuno Universe 3 racing flat. The things are so light they might as well be made of paper. The soles and heels are scant enough to qualify this shoe as minimal. I took them out for a easy-pace ten-mile spin on day one, and felt only minor soreness in my calves the following day. I adopted these Mizunos as my full-time shoe and perhaps not coincidentally, started running faster. Have I changed my stride? I think so, but I don't know. I haven't consciously done anything radical.

At last, three days ago, the VFFs showed up. The first time I put them on it took some doing to get my toes into their individual -- whatever you call them, the counterparts of what we call fingers of a glove. But one learns quickly to become more toe-aware, and the VFF is a fascinating new sensation.

Now comes the potentially treacherous part. There are reports of a lot of people getting injured by transitioning too quickly into minimalist footwear, attempting too much too soon. Maybe I should have gone for a mile or two the first time out. But I like to run, so I went for five miles on a treadmill: the first three at an easy pace, the next couple moderately fast, the last .75 fast. It felt fine. I took the next day off, waiting to see if there were any ill effects. Experiencing none, I got on the treadmill again today for a 1-mile warmup followed by a 5-mile hill climb followed by a level half-mile to cool down, all at an easy pace. All good, and I was feeling strong the whole while. I plan on some more treadmill tomorrow, and will make my street debut the day after tomorrow for around 10 miles.

Thus it turns out that I have made a gradual transition into minimalism in three phases: (1) running in a conventional, fairly light shoe until it was beaten to hell; (2) running in racing flats full-time, then finally (3) running in the VFF. I should also mention that I am uncommonly fortunate and not prone to significant running injuries. But for me, this approach to VFF adoption seems to be working beautifully.