Where's he been? No tellin'

Your unfaithful correspondent has been running a little, writing for money some, and generally neglecting this web log.

I won't try to catch up or recap, at least not now. For the moment, here's a snippet from Gretchen Reynolds, writing in Tara Parker-Pope's Well blog at New York Times online:

 "The interplay of exercise and music is fascinating and not fully understood, perhaps in part because, as a science, it edges into multiple disciplines, from physiology to biomechanics to neurology."

The article describes a study on the effects of listening to music on headphones while exercising, in which the same set of songs played at normal tempo (once) and at speeds of 10% faster and 10% slower than actual (without the subjects' being told).

As you might guess, the music had a positive effect on the performance parameters measured, but the effect was markedly different depending on the speed of the music.

The link:  

Phys Ed: Does Music Make You Exercise Harder?

More running than blogging -- not much of either

Hmm, there has been a tiny bit more running than blogging around here, but nothing to trumpet about. Weather, Theater, Work - I have let many things push their way to the front of the priority list. One of the messiest of these was a carbon Yeti-print of a day last weekend. Kid Kate needed to head back at the end of her 5-week winter break from college, which is a 12-hour drive from home. To keep her from having to tackle such a long trip alone, we drove together, leaving shortly after 5 am Sunday. We arrived at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport in Baltimore at just about 6 pm, where I boarded the 8:10 Southwest flight back to Nashville. Long day, and of course no run.

I did get out on 1/23 for 5 miles, 1/26 with QMH for 3 and 1/28 for 5.5, and today with snow and ice on the ground, a treadmill session of 6 miles.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of interesting blogs I have encountered, both by North Carolina runners: Runner Dude, from Greensboro, a guy who's very busy and connected with many other runners and running sites; and Charlotte-area (I think) Old-Runner, whom I admire for trimming 40 lbs as he got serious about running in his mid-50s. I am still battling my winter urge to overeat, and mostly losing this week.

Now must begin a month of dedication and discipline, or the Tom King will be an ordeal.

The Countdown to Tom King 1/2 Marathon March 13

Days until TK	Miles logged today	Comments
40	6	an hour on the treadmill

Mind your asphalt

This afternoon's return to outdoor running wasn't all that bad. The last time I was outdoors for 40-odd minutes of jogging was a few days after Christmas (12/27 to be exact, according to my log). There, it was quite cold, with here and there a patch of ice to avoid, but quite flat. There, I said it. I log my runs, among other exercises, on my fairly-smart Palm phone, using a free application called Athletix. So, tell me: do you keep a written, or digital, or online log of your training runs or races?

Here, in sunny, breezy 50-degree weather, we have some hills on the little home circuit. I stepped off with QMH, and we walked (as is her habit) the first 1/3 mile because it's uphill. We started our jogging pace as we turned downhill, and parted company a mile later at the first of several sustained climbs. That's when she decided to walk, and I decided to slog on. I managed to keep running with one 30-yard exception near the top of the last steep hill. QMH chided me a little for not rejoining her (we passed each other going opposite directions, but I was about finishing at my pace, at the moment). We've been running mostly together for around 30 years, but this spot can still be a tender one -- I have described in an earlier entry how she leads from the front or back. We'll be doing longer and longer runs together as we close in on Tom King day, but I expect to run at whatever pace QMH sets. More soon . . .

Back into the sunshine, back on the road

One treadmill run of 3 miles in the week since my last post, and the intervening days are just another chapter in my Six Word Memoir:

How Did I End Up Here?

Today, for the first time in 2010 that I can do anything with it, the sun has come out, and the temperature is a comparatively balmy (which is to say seasonable) 50.

So, in a short while, QMH and I will run in the fresh air, and we hope to clock 4 miles.

I'll report here on how that went, once it goes.

Eyes front, chin up, elbows in, headphones on

I missed a couple of days on the treadmill (don't plan to obsess over this, but I also don't intend to skip a lot of days), and it showed on the scale. All this at the time I should be adding miles in the train-up to the mid-March half marathon.

So, this afternoon I tried something a little different. I climbed on the treadmill, and set it for my typical three 10-minute miles with warmup and cool down. Then, as it started rolling, I covered the treadmill's readout, and took off my specs for extra measure, so I couldn't check progress. I put the mp3 player on shuffle and jogged away. I stopped counting songs after seven (that's when I peeked at the display and saw that the three miles was more than half gone). Then I just decided to run until the belt stopped, which it did at the end of 34 minutes, partway through Planeta Sukri by Sara Tavares. I cranked it up to speed again, to see how many more songs I had in me. After another mile (Ship of Fools by Grateful Dead, and part of Tu Recuerdo Y Yo by Lila Downs), I cranked the belt down for a two-minute cooling walk.

By looking straight ahead (mostly), and being mindful of my stride length, my arm motion and respiration rate, and most of all, listening closely to each song, I paid a lot less attention to fatigue and the countdown clock.

OK, so that's what I'll do on everyday runs whenever time permits: cover the odometer, go as far past 3 miles as time and temperament allow, then run an increasingly longer distance each weekend, according to our training calendar.

The Countdown to Tom King 1/2 Marathon March 13

Days until TK	Miles logged today	Comments
62	4	treadmill - with tunes!

Is Physical Therapy effective for recovering from injury?

I have been lucky over the years; I've almost entirely avoided running-related injury. Once, I had a spell of plantar fasciaitis, a painful inflammation of the big bundle of tendons on the sole of the foot. A few years later, a peroneal tendon got ouchy, but that's pretty much my inventory.

Our family feets doc, Dr. Gene, prescribed physical therapy for the peroneal thing, but I can't recall that it did very much to help. So, I was interested to read Gina Kolata's January 6 Personal Best column in the New York Times. She writes about a doctor friend was surprised both that his health insurance didn't cover PT for a torn hamstring, and that the PT didn't really seem to speed his recovery. Her insurance does cover PT, as does my own, but she observes, "When I’ve gone to physical therapy, the treatments I’ve had — ice and heat, massage, ultrasound — always seemed like a waste of time. I usually went once or twice before stopping."

In the course of learning whether therapy helps people recover from common injuries, she discovered that there isn't much evidence to support the use of physical therapy, partly because the studies are flawed. The article suggests that the best approach might be to go to a competent therapist for evaluation, and to take away appropriate stretching and strength routines to do on one's own at home or gym.

What's your experience with physical therapy for sports-related injuries? Is it helpful? Is it covered? Is time and rest the only really effective way to heal?

The Countdown to Tom King 1/2 Marathon March 13

Days until TK	Miles logged today	Comments
65	3	treadmill - it's icy outside!

What's the best time of day to run?

I've just finished three miles on the treadmill, but I didn't manage to begin until hours later than planned. I was up and dressed in running togs by 8:00 am, QMH and Kid Kate were stirring (two of us work at home and one is on winter break from college), and the run got shoved back, then back again.

Over the next month, I'll be trying to work the daily run back to the very top of my day, for at least two good reasons: one, it'll be finished before the demands of work and family begin impinging, and two, because an early dose of endorphins is a good, good thing.

At different stages of our running career, QMH and I have kept different regimens. When we first arrived in the Nashville area, 25 years back, she worked at a Music Row law office, and we ran after office hours, six miles every other day. More recently, when I was working in an office, I had my run well-cemented into the earliest hour of the day.

The training calendar for the Tom King calls for short weekday runs and weekend runs of increasing length. If I can get the weekday ones back to the crack of dawn, the weekend ones (which will be at whatever pace QMH desires) we can do later in the day without disruption.

What's your preferred time of day to run -- morning, noon or night? Whatever your intentions, NOW is a better time to run than NOT NOW, so

Lace up and go!

The Countdown to Tom King 1/2 Marathon March 13

Days until TK	Miles logged today	Comments
66	3	late morning - let's try it earlier tomorrow

Don't Worry - Be Healthy

I never made it to the treadmill today, although I did manage push-ups and situps, and a weigh-in. My usual mindset offers a choice of explanations here: either I am guilty of shirking, or guilty of something else.

So, it was encouraging to read yesterday's Well blog in the New York Times, in which Tara Parker-Pope discusses a new book by Dr. Susan M. Love entitled “Live a Little! Breaking the Rules Won’t Break Your Health.” The book is conceived as a counter to the ever-rising obsession with health, says Dr. Love, inspired by "women I kept meeting who were scared to death if they didn’t eat a cup of blueberries a day they would drop dead.”

Love and her co-author, Alice D. Domar, examined health advice on sleep, stress, prevention, nutrition, exercise and relationships. Tara Parker-Pope reports that in all six, the "biggest risks are on the extremes, and the middle ground is bigger than we think."

The piece winds up with this quotation from Dr. Love, “The point of this is to use your common sense, and if you feel good, then you’re fine,” she said. “The goal is not to get to heaven and say, ‘I’m perfect.’ It’s to use your body, have some fun and to live a little.”

Or, as QMH puts it so much more succinctly, "everything in moderation."

The Countdown to Tom King 1/2 Marathon March 13

Days until TK	Miles logged today	Comments
67	0	I'll be fine

Counting down . . .

Back in Tennessee, with frigid weather and snow in the weather predictions for the week, so it looks as if I'll be on the treadmill rather than the road for the next few days.

For this serious slow runner, the big annual milepost is the Tom King Classic 1/2 Marathon, which runs in Nashville on the second Saturday of March. My sort-of-daily casual jogging routine becomes a training regimen around Thanksgiving, which is to say that I get more or less serious around New Year's, and begin panicking around February.

Thus, The Countdown:

The Countdown to Tom King 1/2 Marathon March 13

Days until TK	Miles logged today	Comments
68	3	treadmill

I hope to offer a training, technique or motivational tip every time I post, beginning here.

Have you heard the saying that the hardest steps of any run are the ones from the couch to the front door? If, like me, you find it hard to get up and get going, take inspiration from the story of Jeff Clark, an over-the-road truck driver -- and runner -- as told in this article from the Runner's World site.

Now, lace up and go!

Good news for brains of a certain age

 It was very encouraging to read about the resiliency and the trainability of the middle-to-old aged brain in this article by New York Times health editor Barbara Strauch, entitled How to Train the Aging Brain. Strauch writes,

"Many longheld views, including the one that 40 percent of brain cells are lost, have been overturned. What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons."

Admittedly, this is a little off the core topic of Running Through the Middle Ages, but hey, as time marches on, my brain might carry me farther than my legs . . .

The Mammal in Winter

On a holiday visit with NJ family, we grab what time we can to run, but weather and holiday circumstance are always in the way. Today is the third very cold day in a row, and also the third without a run. It's been too icy, or too bitter cold and windy since Wednesday. QMH is down with a stomach ailment, and I'm losing the battle with my appetite.

For several years now, I have noticed my winter-time urge to eat more, especially more sweet and fatty foods. Peanut butter sandwich? Yes, please! Have some cookies? You bet! Why bother putting away that little bit of leftover spaghetti? It'll just be another dish to wash later!

I joke that, being a mammal, I must obey the biological imperative to add an extra layer of fat for the cold months. Kid Kate says it's just an excuse to indulge myself.

Dr. Michael Smolensky, who studies chronobiology at University of Texas Houston, says, “Adults typically consume 6 to 7 per cent more calories in the winter,”  in a London Times Online article headlined Are we hardwired to feel hungry in winter and put on weight?

A piece by Donna Watmough at Suite101.com discusses Why we eat more in Autumn and Winter and how not to, explaining that the appetite spike could be linked to a shorter-days deficiency in Vitamin D. The article goes on to suggest increasing exercise, eating smaller amounts more frequently, and getting more Vitamin D either from more sun exposure or dietary supplements.

I know I won't be able to get back to running before Monday, because tomorrow we drive back home, and I hope I can keep from overeating until then.

Do you find yourself packing in more food and packing on the pounds in colder weather? What do you do about it?

Leave a comment and let me know!

Crrranking up again

It's New Year's Day 2010. I've been a teensy bit better about my running discipline than about this blog, but it's Resolution Day, so here's to good intentions fulfilled.

This diary trailed off after the 2007 Tom King Half Marathon. Therefore today's entry offers a brief recap of that day, plus two years of running, and two more 13.1 milers.

For 2007, with QMH eating pain pills and using a walker to get around, and with Kid Kate leaving me in the dust at Mile 1, I was pretty much alone with my mp3 player. I ran my best time ever, at 2:10 and some ticks. I am a serious slow runner, as mentioned in previous posts, but I indulge in some pride at having finished 34th in my 55-59 age group, and 742nd in the race overall. Anyone who finishes a half marathon at any pace, ever, is in a small percentile of the population at large, and is entitled to remember that, especially when in fatigue or pain.

In 2008, QMH beat the odds and made it back to the race. Her back injury in January '07 had put her on the couch for 10 weeks, but between the passage of time and some very useful yoga, she has made a significant recovery. In the depth of that downtime, our doctor told me that QMH might have to forget about running any more. I'm glad Doctor Maggie was wrong on this one.

Just the same, 13.1 miles was a long, slow slog. The 2008 Tom King begain in a booming thunderstorm; really dangerous looking and sounding. Pre-race, many runners took shelter from the intense downpour beneath the stadium ramps. Only a few brave or foolish souls stepped up to the starting line, ourselves among them. For the first mile or two the lightning and thunder made the soggy runners flinch often. QMH's stamina was way down, but we persevered - the time was 2:56, if anyone must know - and got back to LP Field before they dismantled the finish line. More importantly, there was still some food at the buffet when we hobbled up there.

2009 was the coldest, wettest Tom King we have ever done. We had sacrificed some training time to a trip to the presidential inauguration, but that was way worth it. QMH was further under-trained, owing to theater and visits to Kid Kate's college. It was really ugly, weather-wise, which slowed us down, and tended to push up our focus on aches, pains, stiffening joints and muscles. But, done is done, in 2:28.

That'll do for now. In posts to come, I'll share some more recent training experiences, and chronicle my train-up to the 16th Annual Tom King Half Marathon, coming on March 13.

Feets don't fail us now!