"Thinking About It" Is All I'll Do!

At $188,185.59, the closest I'll get to owning one of these is as a random thought while I'm running! But, if you want the most exclusive (25.5 carats of diamonds and 22 ct gold), you can purchase it from Stuart Hughes:

Run well, y'all -- and dream on,
Bob

Compliment or Insult?

I'm not sure whether to feel complimented or insulted by this invitation that I received via e-mail :-D

run like a girl Richmond, VA

Dear Bob,

Spread the word... it's the last chance to register!

If you've registered but have friends, co-workers or family members that are procrastinating there are only about 200 spots left for the 3rd Annual Women's only running event: run like a girl.

Ah, the joys of e-mail mass advertising!

Run well, y'all,
Bob

NRR: Google Cool

OK, this has nothing to do with running but it is random:



Run well, y'all,
Bob

Back on the Roads (Again)

At the risk of being repetitive and someone(s) saying, "Sure", I want to say I'm back on the roads again. Since Thanksgiving, I've been dealing with an odd joint issue that put a huge crimp in my running and then finally got me off the roads for 7 straight weeks, from 23-Jan to 15-Mar. (A bad side effect of that hiatus was that though my activity level dropped, my appetite did not. Let me just say that it was a waist-full 7 weeks.) I was at the point where every 2-3 weeks, I had so much pain for 24-36 hours in the pelvic area when moving that I could just barely shuffle-walk and even that was almost unbearable. Then, the pain would leave almost as quickly as it came and I would be fine until the next episode.

The orthopedist finally said he thought it was symphisitis. Runner's World had an article on syphysitis here. He said he had no clue what caused it or if I would get over it. The only treatment he suggested was to take 100mg of Voltaren once daily for 5 days if the pain reoccured. When I asked him when I could start running, he said start, build gradually, and if it hurts, rest.< Both sites linked above indicate that symphisitis is an overuse injury. Not sure about that, either, as (1) I had actually reduced my running mileage prior to the onset of the problem and (2) there seemed to be absolutely no correlation between running and the onset of the pain -- even during the 7 weeks when I didn't run a step, I still dealt with the pain 2 or 3 times. At any rate, while I don't have complete confidence in the diagnosis of the doc or in the articles, I have used the doc's advice to, at worst, manage the pain. Whenever I feel the discomfort that I knew indicated the problem was reoccurring, I took 50mg of diclofenac (an NSAID). It's now been almost 2 months since I've had the debilitating pain and I'm gradually building my mileage back.

Yesterday, I ran 5.69 miles, the farthest I've run since 19-Nov-09. I say ran, though I did take 3 brief walk breaks. This morning, I ran (all the way) another 4.5 hilly miles with no side effects.

These runs were at relatively low altitude (about 1000'). I've lost a lot of the speed that I had. For instance, 8 months ago, I regularly ran at 8:00-8:20 mpm with occasional training runs between 7:30 and 7:45. Today, my run was at 9:14 -- at altitude (5700') in Nairobi, I've been running 9:30-10:00 mpm. Pre-injury, my weekly mileage was 30-35 miles; I'm back up, now, to about 14 miles per week and anticipate running 16-17 miles this week. But, as I build back up, I anticipate (hope) that my speed will continue to drop and my endurance will increase. Let me tell you, it's a whole lot tougher to get back in shape at 56 years old than it was in earlier years.

I've been at my parents' house in Greenville, SC for the last 3 days. Though I've run here a lot, I ran a different route today. I knew it would be a challenge with some uphills. What I didn't count on, though, was a 1.4 mile stretch that was a steady climb of about 180'!! The elevation map from gMaps-Pedometer was interesting, so I thought I'd post it -- the thick lines represent intersections/turns. The actual route is here.

OK, this may interest no one but me but, hey...it's my blog. (grin)

Have you come back from an injury?

Run well, y'all,
Bob

East African Runners

During my hiatus from running (week 6, now), I can't exactly have random thoughts while running. Ideas for this blog haven't just popped up. However, today, I read another blog that I wanted to share.

One of the enduring mysteries of distance running is Why do middle and long distance runners from East Africa completely dominate these events? Davie, from Scotland, addressed this question in a blog post in September, Glasglow Running Seminar 2009, Part 1. He followed that post with 2 more on the rest of the seminar. His report makes for interesting reading -- he gives a good summary of the information presented on East African runners. His style is informal and non-technical, making it easy to read.

Summarizing the conclusions of one of the presenters, Dr Yannis Pitsiladis, FACSM: Research Scientist based in Glasgow who acts as Scientific Adviser to Global Sport Communications, regarding the domination of East African distance runners, Davie said:

• Solid base - 60% of E African elite runners report running to school as children
• High Altitude camps
• Non scientific approach - natural instinct
• Aerobic training
• Interval training (known to them as bone-breakers)
• Altitude training different from western approach; (E.African athletes live at varying heights from 2,400m to 3,000m, but when they leave home to run they start by climbing even higher. They do drop down to do speedwork but generally the rule is "Live high, train higher) as opposed to our athlete's rule of "live high train low")
• Cross country training
• African diet (86% vegetable, 14% animal and 77% carbohydrate. Much of the diet is maize, 64%, eaten in the traditional form of Ugali. Staple drink is tea.)
• Non scientific approach to training (no drugs, supplements or technology) only high tech apparatus is a stopwatch - no Garmins!!!
• Superior fatigue resistance
• Low body weight (average Kenyan runner's weight is almost 10kg less -- 22 pounds -- than the average US runner)

The most important conclusion, though, seems to be mental -- East African runners have the attitude that they can run long and fast. Davie covered this in more detail in Part 3. In Part 2, he summarized information on hydration and heat build up in the body.*

Seems to me that there are lessons in this for those of us who are (much) less than elite runners.  My summary: Eat right and simply, train hard and simply, train your mind. Frankly, I think I run better when I take a more simplified approach to training versus a more regimented approach. What about you?

Run well, y'all,
Bob

*Unlike the presenters in the seminar, I can't and don't attribute the running abilities of humans to evolution. This is a complicated subject, so what I say here will be overly simplified -- a sound bite -- but, while evolution seems logical as an overall theory, the devil's in the details. When I read explanations like the first part of Davie's Part 2, I find it just makes more sense that humans were created this way, not that we "developed" these abilities. But, that doesn't change the validity of the explanations for the dominance of East Africans in distance running.

Haile Gebrselassie Revealed

These are about 2 years old, but still good. CNN did a 3-part series on Haile Gebrselassie's quest for the marathon world record in the Berlin Marathon.

• Haile Gebrselassie Revealed, Part 1 
• Haile Gebrselassie Revealed, Part 2  
• Haile Gebrselassie Revealed, Part 3 

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Planned Break From Blogging and Running

Not a long break from any blogging but I'm heading out of town for a week of meetings. Doubt there will be time to blog.

Running, though -- this is my 5th week off. So far, no pain in 2 solid weeks, even after moving. That's a good sign. Still, I should get the doc's OK before I start running again.

Run well, y'all,
Bob

How Do You Train?

I'm at the end of my 4th week of no running -- nada. The doc is not sure, yet, if my problem is tendonitis or osteitis. Hopefully x-ray and bone scan will show what's going on. While the symptoms don't seem to be directly correlated to running, he advised me not to run until we find out what's going on. Boy, I do miss being on the road!

In the meantime, I'm giving some thought to how I might change what I do and how I run. I would really like to set a new PR for a 10K (current: 46:19) and break 1:50:00 again on a half marathon (current PR: 1:48:and change) I'm fascinated by the recent reports of new research on the impact of footstrikes (pun fully intended). While I cannot imagine running barefoot on the streets of Nairobi, I can focus on ensuring that I hit more midfoot. Even toying with getting a pair of Vibram Five-Fingers to try.

In the process of reading about these impact studies, I discovered Steve Magness' blog, On and Off the Track. Excellent technical blog about running. I also follow Steve on Twitter (you can also follow me on Twitter). Steve's post last night on Twitter, is very interesting: How do Norway's top XC skiers train? 700hrs/yr 76% easy, 6% medium, 5% high, 4% speed dvlpment, 9% strength training. Hmmm. I wonder if that formula would work with running.

Check out Steve's blog for some really interesting running discussions.

I'd have to do some calculations to determine my running mix. I haven't done much strength training at all and I do plan to change that. What kind of mix do you use when you're training?

Run well, y'all,
Bob

How to Run More Slowly

Over the last few years, there have been many warnings about stretching prior to warming up one's muscles. Much of what I have read suggests that stretching prior to a run is at best neutral -- it produces no benefit. Worse, it might actually damage muscles. However, this article reports on a study of the effect of static stretching on endurance performance. The study concluded that static stretching prior to a run reduced running efficiency and endurance: Sweat Science >> Stretching is bad for power… and endurance running

It seems the best strategy, if you're going to stretch at all, is to stretch after your run when your muscles are well warmed up. Of course, there are a number of people who believe that there is no benefit to stretching at any time.

Well, for me, I'll continue to stretch after my run as I have done for the past almost 7 years.

Do you have a stretching routine? Do you stretch before or after your run -- or, perhaps, after a short warmup?

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Interesting Milestone

I like interesting number sequences. For instance, my in-laws' phone number has always been easy to remember because it goes down sequentially and then goes back up. I find it mildly entertaining when the odometer on my vehicle hits a sequential number (54321) or a repeated number (55555) or a number with interesting relationships (41612 -- 4-squared=16; 16-4=12). And, yes, though I don't understand the math, I do like the show Numb3rs.

Well, ClustrMaps tickled my interest in numbers today with the stats on my blog -- they do the world map hit-counter in the sidebar. It reported a gross total of visitors to my blog, since I added a ClustrMap on 9-Oct-2006, as being 7777 as of 5:16AM today.

Out of curiosity, I checked my wife's cooking-from-scratch blog, Yummy Y'all, and they had registered 888 visitors to her blog since 27-Oct-2006.

Numberwise, I'm satisfied today. And, no, it doesn't take much to entertain me. ROTFLOL!

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Is Running a 'Waste of Time'?

If you believe an article (4-Feb-10) in the Telegraph, then yes: Millions of people 'waste their time by jogging'.

But, according to Runner's World, this is an example of overblown, misleading media spin by the British newspaper. The Telegraph was reporting on a new paper published recently in the Journal of Applied Physiology. RW quotes a report by LiveScience/MSNBC on the same study:

The researchers stress that exercise has benefits, regardless of whether or not a person can improve aerobic capacity. You can still lose weight, and other health factors such as cholesterol levels could benefit.

Dr. Claude Bouchard,Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Tulane LA, also told RW:

Running and other forms of exercise are always the right thing to do, because they can improve your health even if they don't increase your vo2 max.

What to do? OK, maybe I'm one of the 20% of the population who, whether I run 25 miles per week or 100 miles per week, won't see a huge difference in my vo2Max. I also know that regular running is no guarantee that I will avoid heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc. But I also know that regular exercise carries many benefits -- it improves the odds that I will be more healthy for more years, it helps me control my weight (burning 100+ calories per mile is huge), it helps me feel better. What difference does it really make that I can never be an elite runner? I think I'll keep running -- it's not a waste of my time.

See RW's full report here: Peak Performance: Feb. 4: "Running Is a Waste of Time": Grabby Headline, Bad Reporting

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Stay Bundled Up

For some of my running friends in Richmond, this is awful news, but there are a few who are glad that warm weather will be postponed a bit:



Run well, y'all -- and run carefully,
Bob

Ode to Forgetfulness

Do you ever find that you've misplaced something that you never misplace? Or, forgotten your children's names? Or wondered why you went to the kitchen? If so, then this video is for you:



Just don't forget to run and when you run, don't forget how to get home.

Run well, y'all,
Bob

What Do Running Shoes Actually Do?

In his blog post, Looking at Pronation, Cushioning, Motion Control and Barefoot Running, Steve Magness challenges some strongly-rooted assumptions about the benefits of running shoes and puts forth his opinion that the current categories used for running shoes -- cushioning, neutral, stability, and motion control -- should be rethought and replaced based on what really happens in a runner's stride.

Magness surveys several research studies that tried to look at the real relationship between impact forces, shoe correction, and injuries. The thing that struck me the most was Magness' contention that shoes, or at least the wrong shoes, interfere with the body's natural adaptation to forces.

The human body is an incredible organism. Judaism and Christianity have long acknowledged that fact. The writer of Psalms said: ...I am fearfully and wonderfully made... (Psalm 139:14, NIV)

Science agrees and Magness affirms that viewpoint:

we underestimate the human body! It’s an amazing thing, and we never give it the credit it deserves. The body adapts to the surface that it’s going to strike, if you give it a chance. The body adapts to both shoe and surface adjusting impact forces via changes joint stiffness, the way the foot strikes, and a concept called muscle tuning.

My take-away from the article? For now, at least, I have no intention of giving up my running shoes. Though I love going barefoot*, I've worn shoes while walking and running for 55+ years and suspect that my feet have adapted, for better or for worse. Besides, they are definitely not tough enough for Nairobi roads. However, I think I'll work on mimicking the style of running that the body seems to naturally use when running barefoot -- attempting to ensure footstrike beneath my body's center of gravity rather than out in front, shortening my stride length, and increasing my turnover rate.

Provocative article. What do you think? Would a change in your stride or you shoes make a difference in your running?

Run well, y'all,
Bob

*...barefoot... -- I like the dress code for my current office. Since I office in my house, I can and do go barefoot a lot. It's great. TCK's (third culture kids) in Africa are notorious for going barefoot whenever and wherever possible -- I'm not one but in that respect, I'd make a great TCK! :-D

Opportunity knocks…but not always at the front door

Have you ever been waiting for an opportunity but found you were waiting at the wrong door? Great story and lesson here:

Opportunity knocks…but not always at the front door

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Everyday Life in Kenya

A good friend, Bert Yates, has posted, on Facebook, pictures of some common, colourful scenes in Kenya. Not sure if you can access them unless you're either a FB friend of Bert or myself.

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Getting Back on Track

Well, if I run in the morning, I will have run about as much this week as in all of December. And, based on the last 4-5 years of running, this week has been a short mileage week.

The runs have been relatively short and slow, but I've been out there and building back my mileage:

Monday: 2.9 miles Pace: 9.43 mpm
Thurs: 4.1 miles Pace: 9.37 mpm
Friday: 3.3 miles Pace: 9.28 mpm
Saturday: Planning on 4 miles

I'm glad to be back on the road.

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Look, Ma -- No Wires!

This has nothing to do with running but it's fascinating stuff.

My wife and I have said, many times, how much we wish someone would come up with a way to recharge stuff without having to have wires running everywhere. It's moved from Sci-Fi to real life. I had seen the PowerMat charging system for cell phones, etc, but the technology is moving ahead very quickly. The following was in a report of the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) from TidBITS (#1009, 11-Jan-10)

Finally, we come to the blender. It was a perfectly ordinary blender, sitting on a black box. It whirred like all blenders do. Then I noticed that there were no wires attached to the blender. It ran, like the toaster that sat next to it, on inductive power. There have been inductive power pads around for a while for charging low-power devices like cell phones, but blenders and toasters are orders of magnitude more thirsty for electricity.

The magic in the black box comes courtesy of Fulton Innovation's eCoupled technology, which uses magnetic induction to create a current in receiving devices. eCoupled electronics communicate with the black box to tell it how much power it needs. Electronic devices within range of the box which do not communicate with it are somehow left out of the induction field. When I expressed concern that other devices would burst into flames while the wireless power was active, the presenter turned on the blender, put his cell phone down next to it, and offered to let me make a call.

I can't say that I have an engineer's understanding of electricity, but I was under the impression that magnetic induction is an all-or-nothing sort of thing. Fulton has apparently managed to create a power supply which can feed kilowatts to intelligent devices, without affecting other electronics within range. I think he probably could have cloned a cat, á la Nikola Tesla in "The Prestige," and I wouldn't have been any more surprised by the demo.

Common implementation of ubiquitous wireless power would completely change our relationship with technology. Picture a laptop with a battery that never runs down, because it's constantly being charged. There isn't a single electrical device that couldn't benefit from this technology, and many would be transformed by it.

I can't say whether Fulton will be the company that succeeds in bringing inductive charging to the mass market, but it was immediately clear to me that this technology is the future.

Here are some web links to additional information. The Wikipedia article on inductive charging talks about the development of proximity transmission of electricity (versus the device having to actually be in contact with the power source as is the case with the Powermat and the above blender):

eCoupled Wireless Housing
Powermat
Wikipedia Article on Inductive (wireless) Charging
Wikipedia Article on Wireless Energy Transfer

The techie/gadget-loving/geeky side of me sort of wishes I had gotten the Powermat. :-D This is really cool.

Run well, y'all,

Bob

Clawing My Way Back

One of my reoccurring dreams has to do with running. I wish it was about running with some of the great East African runners and feeling good. But, it's usually an exhausting dream where I'm trying to run up a long, steep hill that's usually deep sand. Instead of running, I'm barely moving forward, digging my hands into the sand and pulling myself uphill.

Well, I think that's how my running is going to feel for the next couple of months. Due to a variety of reasons (travel, an odd injury, boredom with my routes, a cold), I've only run 6 times since 21 November with this morning's run being the first in 3 weeks. I'm not completely starting over but at 55 years old, I think I lose fitness more quickly than ever and it will take me longer to get it back. But, I'm committed to getting it back.

My goals:
• Get back to 100+ miles per month
• Run a half marathon in Nairobi in October
• Lose 20 pounds

There I've said it -- here goes. This morning's run was only 2.94 miles at a pace of 9:42 mpm -- SSD (short, slow distance). I'll bump up my mileage slowly and see what happens.

Have you ever come back from a running slump? Any advice?

BTW, if you want to listen to a running podcast by a regular guy, check out Ashland (VA) Dave's Running in the Center of the Universe

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Cost of Running: Shoes

the Ringmaster, who blogs at Mile by Mile, posted an interesting blog the other day. She talked about the shoes she had used during 2009 and had figured out her cost per mile for shoes. As much as I like numbers, that is one calculation I hadn't done.

So, I went back and ran the numbers for all the shoes for which I've tracked miles over the last 3+ years. Interesting. In that time I've run in and retired 6 pair of running shoes. I currently have 2 active pair. My average cost per mile was $0.134 per mile. Some other stats that caught my attention:

Most expensive: Brooks Adrenaline GTS7 (2007)

$99.75, 454 miles - $0.22/mi

Least expensive: Etonic Jepara SC 1 (2008)

$72.00, 714.4 miles - $0.10/mi

Longest lasting: Etonic Jepara SC 2 (2008)

$93.00, 817.7 miles - $0.11/mi

During 2009, I used 4 pair of running shoes. One pair, Brooks Adrenaline ASR, was a pair that I bought at the end of 2005 for cold, wet runs. When Richmond, VA had 9+ inches of snow in March 2009, I dug out these shoes for 2 or 3 runs to keep my feet as warm and dry as possible. I would not have wanted to run on dry pavement or for very far with those shoes as they were worn out -- but, they kept me drier than other shoes would have done.

I wore out a pair of Etonic Jepara SC 2's that I had started wearing at the end of Oct 2008. I used those until June 2009 and had 817.7 miles on them. Then I started using a pair of Etonic Jepara SC 1's. When the rainy season started in Kenya in October, the SC 1's became my mud-run shoes and I added in a pair of Etonic Jepara SC 2's for drier runs. The SC 1's now have 504.6 miles and the SC 2's have a measly 62 miles.

Enough stats for now.

Run well, y'all,
Bob