Smooth Criminal

Humidity, friend or foe?

My hope at the beginning of each summer in the south is that I can make it until October. This year my fitness was going pretty well before the heat and humidity started. In prior years I have tried to get in shape during the spring and summer. It is torture. It seemed no matter how slow I ran, it got worse. I slogged along. This year while helping others to get in shape and learn to run, I have relearned a technique that helps. I run along at a normal 8 min pace until I cannot go any longer, then I take a 1 or 2 minute walk to recover. This way I am running at a comfortable pace but, can still handle the heat. It would seem easier to run a 10 minute per mile pace or so but, that is too slow to be comfortable or of any benefit. The walking recoveries help lower the heart rate, dissipate some heat and rehydrate while on the run. It is crucial to hydrate towards the end of the run as this helps the recovery process. Have fun with the warm weather and use the longer daylight hours to get in shape.

A little inspiration

Heart Rate Maximum

One of the bits of information people get from running magazines and such, are workouts based on your heart rate. They give you a complicated formula that involves the estimated human max of 220 beats per minute, minus your age and then multiplied at a percentage for light, moderate and hard workouts. Yeah, you can get your pulse when you stop by holding your finger to your neck and then count for a time period and then multiply for a Heart Rate. Without a basic Heart Rate Monitor, you will never be able to get the info you need to make the workouts mean anything. Your heart rate varies with fitness, age, genetics and stress. My heart rate range on the low end is about 40 and around 200 on the high end. This comes from years of exercise but, my heart rate is about 10 beats higher per minute than most charts indicate it should be. The good or bad thing about being out of shape is that you can reach your target heart rate range without much effort. It take about 6 weeks before you can see a change. When you are fit, your heart is more efficient at pumping blood.
The most important function of the Heart Rate Monitor is to SLOW you down. Most people run harder than they need to, they don't give their bodies time to adapt. I try to keep my heart rate in the 70% range for cardio conditioning and fat burning. An 80 % workout take a couple of days to recover from, a 90% workout should only be once a week. Running with a monitor and just keeping track of the time is a much better way than counting the miles. Minutes add up faster than miles :) If you are so inclined, Polar has good monitors and they are compatible with most fitness equipment that is in health clubs. Go out and have a good workout!!

Working the kinks out

So, the week at the beach was nice. Lots of sunning, swimming and reading. All that inactivity did a number on my chronically sore left hip. The bed I slept in was hard and seemed to make me sore everyday. That and the humidity lowered my motivation to Zero. Note to self: take my bike next beach trip. Riding a bike when it is hot and humid is far easier than running. Now that I am refreshed, the summers goals lay out before me.

No fast food or soft drinks.

Run with Heart Rate Monitor

Do leg strength exercises every day

Pray for October.

Have fun and enjoy the heat. The pic is of my client named Merritt. She is a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Sweet dog.

Heading to the beach

Tomorrow morning I head to the beach for a week. Just a small group of us are going down to Emerald Isle. I hope to engage in some outdoor activities such as boogie boarding, body surfing, and intensive bird watching. Oh yeah, I have a bird life list I need to add to. Does suntanning count as a sport? I love being at the beach, it is the only place I truly relax. That and a few beers or a bloody mary help ;) I plan to walk, run and do some crossfit. Nothing too intense. I am ready to take some pics to share. See you guys soon.

Running is doing

We seem to live in a world disconnected from our actual work. We know our car needs oil so, we take it in to be serviced. We hire people to do the tasks which we cannot or will not do. We can be separated by the act of learning, the tactile sense that we need by doing. During the course of our day, our "doing" consists of the inactive moving of data from place to place. We miss the act. The world is one big GUI (Graphic User Interface). That is why the act of moving ones body is so necessary and so hard. We learn through the doing, not the reading or thinking of the act. We learn about our body through using it. This can be hard if we know so little about it. We go to a doctor for every injury and illness, much in the same way we go to a mechanic. The mechanic knows the inner workings of things. We have to learn or relearn how our body works by the act of doing. Get out and there and enjoy the pains and successes and failures. They are teaching us something about our bodies that we can only get through doing.

Shoe Fetish

Over the course of running for 30 years, probably a couple of hundred pairs of shoes have come into my possession. This pales in comparison to my friend Scott's shoe fetish. I am the lucky benefactor of many of his cast- offs. His donations even come with mileage per pair of shoes! Here is my current stable of shoes. I think most people need about 3 types of shoes. One for road running, one for trail running and one for faster running.

Santos trails are for wusses!

My friend Roger moved back to Ocala Florida and is doing a lot of mountain biking. He says the trails are tough. Look easy to me.

Runs with Friends

Over the years I have had a few good running friends. The first runner I really clicked with was a guy named Sam Lewis in Charlotte. He was faster, older and cooler than me. I learned a lot about racing and life. The next was a group of guys that I met in 1996 or so after I moved to Durham. I met Ralph Tuttle first at Jordan HS track. Ralph is a lovable old curmudgeon, with a knack for ultrarunning. He introduced me to Scott Schoedler during a Duke/Godiva Sunday run. Soctt has a knack for calculating running paces and distances during a fast run, no easy feat. I have run more miles with Scott than anyone else during my career of 30 years and he can still bear my company! Stephen Fraser and Chris Shields are the guys I met next at Godiva. Chris was a college runner with quite possibly the most bizzare sense of humor of anyone I have met. He is tough and gives nothing away. Stephen came to marathoning late in life(meaning late 20's).Our runs turn into a long running conversation on various topics. I rail, he insults, I get pissed, say something stupid and reinforce his superior intellect. He started his own business and is running less but, I still enjoy his company. His marathon PR is 14 seconds faster than mine! Steve Wright and Roger Sutton are 2 other guys I have run with semi-regularly. Steve is the quiet ghost on runs that is impossible to drop. I have fallen out of contact with him and feel bad about that. Good guy. Roger is the guy that is my running kindred spirit. He has that same attitude of "Let's Hammer" and "I am gonna drop you sucka" that make runs with him torture and great. All these guys have given me joy in the effort and have made this running life a good one.

Mohican Mountain Biking

Fun Video from Vultures Knob near Akron

Violet should enjoy this one. People fall off their bikes :)