The Mood of Eternal Running

Can one run forever with Metallica concussing your tympani non-stop? I can’t.

Rather, running forever is a two-stranded braid of an eternal, unchanging, spatial tone and an insistent and subtly-changing fast rhythm. Inside, there is peace and depth. Outside, there is movement and dance.

The endurance run transcends perceived physical limits and expertly draws all the athletic potential out into the sunlight to play. The endurance meditation transcends the bounds of the real and creates new worlds. Between the two, the body unleashes endorphins and proprioceptive pleasures.

Over time, the body adapts to the insistent message that we are serious about running forever. New blood vessels perfuse the muscles. Slow twitching fibers increase in number. Red cells multiply. Support muscles grow. The heart pumps more and more blood with fewer and fewer beats per minute.

Am I running? Or is the Earth rotating under my feet? Have I crossed the Rocky Mountains? Am I reaching the Pacific Ocean? Are these big mysterious blocks appearing in front of me, paving the way to Hokkaido?

Music themes without end and insistent rhythms create the illusion of infinity, the ultimate goal of endurance running.

The "secrets" on how to generate a training plan

Total Heart Rate Training by Joe Friel was a revelation to me on where training programs come from (I experienced something similar when I learned babies do not grow in lettuces. Did you know they are not air-dropped via storks either?). Anyway, it gives you all the keys you need to structure a training program using heart rate zones. It assumes you know your current lactate threshold; let me know if you're interested in finding out yours - there is a qualitative, free! way to approach it, or I can point you to someone who does it with a portable device. Also, if lactate threshold doesn't mean anything to you, let me know and I'll post info on that too. If you get into this even deeper, you might look for Run Workouts for Runners and Triathletes by Bobby McGee, a catalog of specific workouts with which to populate a training plan.

The limits of a mechanical metaphor

The chronicles tell of Neil Armstrong's dim view of exercise; to paraphrase: "The heart is a pump designed with a limited number of cycles; why would I want to reach its design limit earlier by increasing its beating rate?" As much as I consider Neil Armstrong a role model in many areas of life, we know better than that today. The heart is a muscle, not a mechanical pump. Assuming healthy genes, the heart muscle lasts longer if we exercise it.

And, as it turns out, lots of other organs seem to follow a similar behavior. Recent study after recent study (see the news release about a couple of them in earlier posts) shows that more exercise is better than less - all the way to 50 miles a week, and including knees - that joint sedentarians use to torture us runners psychologically. The studies show that sedentarian knees actually degrade *faster* than running knees. Like the heart, knees benefit from useage.

So go out, run and enjoy yourselves!

Running slows aging and postpones disability, study finds

Running slows aging and postpones disability, study finds

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Who said you have to run to enjoy running?

The morning after Christmas, Boulder got a bit more snow - just to top off the postcard-like landscapes. Immediately after, the skies cleared up and the Sun shone brightly. What better excuse to go for an epic run? Out went Wendy and I - Wendy is running again! Her workout being shorter than mine that day, we parted ways after 30 minutes.

Undisturbed snow on trails provide an exhilarating experience - all the more so if it's in great terrain. So up Shadow Canyon I went, intimate, shady, covered with undisturbed snow, and steep.

A loud bird added a soundtrack to the run. As I approached the crest of the Flatirons, the view toward Golden was graced with layers of breaking clouds in the Sun. South Boulder Peak was its usual beautiful; the Continental Divide had a garland of clouds. To the North, Boulder sunbathed.

Fern Canyon turned out to be a new kind of "running" for me: too much snow, too much slope - half the time I was sliding on my glutei maximi (a new way to exercise them!) and half the time I was "skiing" on my feet, trying to maintain my center of gravity very slightly backward so as not to tip over face first into barely hidden rocks. I did get my foot caught into a fallen tree once and did tip over face first but was lucky to land on snow. It was so much fun!!!!

On the technical side, I am learning to increase fluid intake enough to compensate for sweat rates. I was "overly successful" and easily exceeded my target of 25oz/hr as I ran out of fluids after 2h20 and 70 ounces.

Running with the Tribe

A delightful morning it was when our tribe (Jennifer, Dawn, Wendy, Cindi, Marianne, Mountain Dave, and Dave) gathered at Heil Ranch with 20 rapidly rising degrees. Beautiful and varied surfaces, great views from the top, lots of conversation. Dave Harrison taking the picture - thank you Dave! And, Wendy is back on the trails! (Not that she ever left them; it's just that she is running again)

Cadence, it's all Cadence

Did I mention high cadence in a previous post? One of Coach Cindy's simplest and most intriguing requirements has been to run at 180rpm (so to speak). To me, that's ridiculously small steps! But oh boy do they increase efficiency. Today's 3 hour run through 4000 feet up and down and 16 miles was a walk in the park (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit - the other way) with the higher cadence - and that after five days of sustained training. Long live short strides!

After I wrote this post, I ran into research studies mentioned by the NYT - they conclude that a shorter stride decreases the probability of a tibia stress fracture - the decrease in load intensity is higher than the increase in load cycles.