Fitness Myth Busting

The ever insightful New York Times is running a series of fitness myth-busting articles this summer, and they're worth a look.

First is this one about warming up before exercising. In short, sports science says endurance athletes don't need nearly as much warm-up time as they think. This explains why I like Bobby McGee's approach: walk 5 minutes, do some dynamic warm ups (like easy stretching but with continuous movement), build into the workout.

Second is this article about endurance sport's 10% rule. I've always thought the rule of thumb -- don't increase your training load more than 10% a week -- was really conservative. It turns out the rule might not have any basis besides tradition.

This article busts no myth: it says that your best middle-aged mile run time is a reliable indicator of your risk of heart disease late in life. "The exercise you do in your 40s is highly relevant to your heart disease risk in your 80s." Cool! Now that's a payoff I can really appreciate.

Even modest exercise keeps you sane and sharp instead of nutty and senile, according to this recap of a new study.

Those silly looking "toning" shoes? They don't do a thing.

The Cucumber Martini: 5 Simple Steps to Enjoying an Ice-Cold Glass of Fresh Air

I have many favorite summer drinks: Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stella Artois, iced tea with lemonade, iced chocolate milk, a yogurt smoothie with frozen berries and salt. Some weekends require a drink with more muscle, but that doesn't mean giving up summery flavors. One of my favorites is the Cucumber Martini, which when properly made is like drinking an ice-cold glass of fresh air.

Step 1: Grow a cucumber.

Step 2: Slice off 5-7 disks. Drop one in a glass with ice.

Step 3: Stack the disks and slice into them.

Step 4: Add disks, ice, and 2 shots gin and shake, shake, shake.
My favorite gin for this drink is Hayman's Old Tom for its aromatic flavor and sweetness.

Step 5: Pour, keeping the cuke bits out of your glass. Enjoy!

Facebook Is Designing an iPad/Kindle Tablet Device

I'm speculating wildly here, but play along.


Push Pop Press makes interactive ebooks. Their ebooks are more app or self-contained website than ebook, really, but it seems that this sort of convergence of web and book is one possible direction for the written word and its various formats.

The About page for the site has announced that Facebook has acquired Push Pop Press.

This can only mean that Facebook plans to join Apple, Amazon, Google, BarnesandNoble.com, Kobo, Sony, Motorola, and the rest of the technologized world in offering some device that lets you read ebooks!

If this seems like a leap, just think about what that device might look like: it would be a walled garden device designed to funnel all your Facebook-enable social network channels into one device. It would play Facebook video, have a built-in web browser (FaceFox?), and have a store where users could buy licensed music, movies, and ebooks through Facebook's App Store... or FTunes? Fbookstore?

Brand it how you will, Facebook's IPO will launch it into the socially enabled content retail business.

Valmont Bike Park Is Ole-Fashioned, Grinnin' Fun

I have just two things to say about the newly opened Valmont Bike Park because you should really experience it yourself.

1. It's got something for everyone.
2. I was grinning the entire time I was there. 

Ride it yourself! http://bouldermountainbike.org/valmontbikepark

I almost bit it on this stupid little thing. Man, am I rusty!

Run Well. Not Too Much. Enjoy It.

Running seems pretty clear cut: put one foot in front of the other, lean forward, switch feet, swing your arms to stay balanced, repeat quickly.

Just a few years ago, few runners questioned their habits. Runners wore cotton socks and the latest Nikes. The stretched before every run. They figured running injuries were bad luck. Orthotics were thought to cure all running pains. They drank a lot of water during races. Their feet hit the ground heel first.

In the past year or so, catalyzed by Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run, academics, coaches, and the running media have begun asking fundamental questions that seem to have begun a revolution in the sport. The well-read runner of today is dizzy with differences of opinion on footwear, stretching, nutrition, training, and running form. Nearly every aspect of running is under attack:

• Should runners wear big shoes, traditional running shoes, low-drop shoes, minimalist shoes, or run barefoot?
• Should runners stretch? Does stretching shock muscles into weakness and contribute to injury? Will stretching hurt performance by reducing the body's built-in springiness?
• Why are 37-50% of runners hurt each year? Is it their shoes, their technique, the surfaces they run on, muscle tightness or weakness/imbalance, too much sitting?
• Should runners lift weights?
• Are orthotics harmful or helpful?
• How much water is safe to drink during exercise?
• How should my feet hit the ground? Forefoot first? Midfoot? Heel strike?

The sport has fractured into factions, with coaches, manufacturers, and academics all devoted to the sport yet unsure how to run. Runners are caught in the middle. Navigating running's new forks in the road is easier when you understand the sport's roadmap of ulterior motives.

Big name coaches spend years building careers by differentiating their approach from other coaches. When science finds a flaw in an approach, its adherents point to their years of athlete improvement. Nevermind that any coaching is probably better than none, that leading coaches attract the most inherently talented runners, that athletes might have run even better under a better training method. Coaches stick to their entrenched views.

Manufacturers are slaves to their customers. They will make what customers will buy. Successful products will become the basis for new products. Without some outside interference, manufacturers have little incentive to innovate when producing more of the same thing is more profitable than trying something new. Born to Run convinced enough runners that the "big shoe" status quo might not be ideal and soon after, minimalist shoes began to appear in stores.

Fortunately, there seems to be a common middle ground of accepted running truths, most of which have some scientific backing. Just as Michael Pollan offers food rules, here are three simple guidelines for confused runners: Run well. Not too much. Enjoy it.

RUN WELL

All the major run techniques - CHI running, Good Form Running, POSE Method, Natural Running, etc. - share a similar running posture that reduces the physical stresses of running on the body. Academic research shows that these techniques mimic many aspects of the way humans run without shoes. The technique is this:

1. Land each footfall roughly under your hips. Running like this requires a short, quick stride rate. This shorter stride will reduce or eliminate heel striking -- when your heel hits the ground before the rest of your foot. Academics and coaches seem to agree that heel striking is the genesis of many running form problems and injuries. 
2. Lean forward a bit, not from your neck or hips, but from your ankles. This sounds kind of impossible, but the idea is to avoid running with an upright posture that causes overstriding and heel striking.
3. Run with your arms hanging lightly and loosely from your shoulder. Your arms should swing freely. It's okay for your shoulders to move front and back with each stride. It's not okay for them to bounce up and down. When your arm comes forward with each stride, your hand should not cross the center line of your chest.
4. Look ahead, not down.

NOT TOO MUCH

Coaches say that the best predictor of running performance is the number of miles a runner runs. Those same coaches also say that the best predictor of the incidence of running injuries is the number of miles a runner runs. More miles means faster runners who are injured more often. Why? Practiced runners develop more efficient technique and they are simply more fit from more training. Yet runners who often run tired allow sloppy running technique to creep into their training. When the physical damage from too much bad running overcomes the body's ability to heal itself, runners break.

Runners should spend some time crosstraining and building strength. Cross training and strength training help runners avoid overusing those parts of the body required for running and helps strengthen and balance muscles so they can maintain good running technique longer during runs.

Don't run more than your body can handle. How will you know when you're running too much? See Rule #3.

ENJOY IT

Running writer Matt Fitzgerald has spent a lot of time thinking about how the brain interacts with the body. His books Brain Training for Runners and the more recent and more thoroughly developed book RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel explore how enjoyment of a run is the brain's way of saying that the run was physically beneficial to the body. If you're having to drag yourself out the door because you've run yourself ragged, that's a sign that you're running too much. Back off until running is fun again.

Enjoyment offers some insight into the footwear debate, too. What little research has been done on footwear and running injuries has found that more comfortable shoes cause fewer injuries. That's not to say that we should run with pillows strapped to our feet, but that runners should probably buy new shoes based on comfort. Fitzgerald and others guess that our perception of one pair of shoes as being more comfortable than another is our body's way of indicating that the more comfortable shoes are more beneficial to the body. This isn't a foolproof method, though, because the comfort studies mostly compared pronation control against neutral shoes without considering minimalist or low-drop shoes or barefoot running. I like my low-drop Newton shoes because of the low drop; the heel is barely higher than the toe. I think this shoe design has helped to reduce my heel strike quite a bit -- it is certainly easier to land on the midfoot in my Newtons than in my high-drop Mizunos. And yes, I find the Newtons more comfortable.

Running in pain is obviously an indication that something is wrong. Danny Abshire's book Natural Running explains that pain and injury are symptoms of bad technique or overuse. Running should feel good, and if something hurts, that's a signal you shouldn't ignore. If muscles feel uncomfortably tight, stretch them gently until they are comfortable again. If your knee kills, run less until it feels better and then figure out a way to run that doesn't hurt. This will likely be one of the techniques I mentioned above in RUN WELL.

Physical and emotional enjoyment of running are the entire point of running, right? If you enjoy your running, you are doing it right. That seems like a clear-cut answer to any running debate.

The Unbelievable Niceness of Elites

Dear diary,

Today was a big day. I got to go for a run with two-time Olympian Alan Culpepper, and I met Scott Jurek, America's leading ultrarunner.

During the run with Alan and while talking with Scott, I was impressed by four things:

1. When Olympians run, their feet make no sound. Amazing. Try it sometime. Impossible.
2. Scott Jurek is a very tall man, surprisingly tall for a guy who regularly runs 100 miles at once.
3. People who run a lot, and I mean a lot, run with extremely consistent pacing.
4. Alan Culpepper's slowest workout pace is my 5K race pace.

Alan is now a coworker in the Boulder office of Competitor Group. Scott moved to Boulder to train for the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, a ridiculously hard ultramarathon, and he'd stopped by the office for a quick photo shoot. Over the past several years, I'd corresponded over email with both men, asking for their endorsement of several of our running and nutrition books. Fortunately, they liked all the books I sent them and both were gracious and generous with their support.

After today's run and run-in, it struck me that elite athletes tend to be really... nice! Sure, some athletes will blow you off, but most of the elites I've met in person (Alan, Scott, Chris Carmichael, Erin Mirabella, Tim Johnson, Joe Parkin, Karl Menzies, Bob Mionske, Michael Barry, Mark Plaatjes, Craig Alexander) have really been quite nice. Like nicer than the average person you might meet at a friend's dinner party. The athletes I've met have been nicer even than non-athlete sports professionals, though most I've met have been quite cordial as well.

How is that that such driven, singularly focused people are so nice? They're on top of the world, paid to do what they love, adored by fans. Athletes come and go, and they have to make the best of their 15 minutes. The pond of endurance sports is not a big one, so athletes rely on their sponsors, their popularity with fans, and on their performances. Sure, anyone can keep up a cordial act for the few minutes it takes to meet someone. Sure, I meet athletes under pretty good circumstances.

Yet not all of them have been nice. I think I know why: all the elites I've found rude have been removed from the height of their greatness, either by time or performance. Even after paying them large sums of money to appear at events, I was barely acknowledged by two cyclists who haven't ridden professionally in 30 years. A decade after the height of his career, I was ignored by one of the world's best ski racers despite holding a copy of the first American edition of his biography in my hand. Some former elite cyclists in Boulder have asked me rather brusquely for donations to their causes, despite any real connection to them.

These rude elites are not washed-up has-beens. All have found some way to spin their athletic success into comfortable careers. So why the rudeness?

Elite sports are the domain of the young. Having found success at a young age, untempered by the wisdom gained in failure, elites flame out of their sports before they are prepared to leave. As Joe Parkin has said, most cyclists don't retire. Most don't even know which race will be their last. Beaten and exhausted, they just quit. Most of us need to work for decades to find success. To have that pyramid turned upside down, to find success early and lose it so soon, to become a usual person after having been special, that must be a rude awakening.

What does it take to retire with civility intact? 

The Most Effective Email Ever Sent by a Social Network

Subject: Dave, 51 of your connections changed jobs in 2010.

What We Feel When We Run: a Review of Haruki Murakami's Book

What was I thinking?

This morning I finished reading Haruki Murakami's book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. For a few years, it had seemed to me that the book was mentioned in the running media with the same reverence normally reserved for books like Lore of Running and Once a Runner. We're publishing our own running memoir this year, and having seen What I Talk About laying around the office, I thought I should read it. I expected it to be taut, maybe a bit mystical. I think I thought it would be for running what Tim Krabbe's The Rider is for cycling.

Just two chapters in, I was thinking about putting it down. At first, it felt like Murakami was rambling and spending too much time qualifying that this book was simply about what running was like for him. After 50 pages, I realized I was reacting to Murakami's complete lack of pretense. There is no artifice between writer and reader. Murakami writes plainly. When Murakami runs, you run. When he tires, you tire. It's not because Murakami's descriptions are lively. They aren't. He describes passing roadkill during a run from Athens to Marathon with as much pragmatism as those whose job it is to remove roadkill. The reader knows Murakami's experience as a runner because the reader is also a runner. The genius of What I Talk About is not the creation of an experience for the reader, but its evocation of experiences the reader has already had. There is no need for Murakami to describe the act of running because we fill it in for him. Instead, he describes the feelings his running brings out in him, and we feel them in our own way. This common experience of running becomes a conversation with Murakami. He says: here is how running makes me feel. Naturally, I thought about how running feels different to me. I thought about how running is the same for me a Murakami and how we are different in our running. Did Murakami plan on this being my reaction? Murakami made me realize that, though everyone runs by alternating the left and right feet, running is a different experience for each runner. The act of running evokes a unique response in each of us, and Murakami's book asks us to think about how running is for us.

Murakami's book is thought of by longtime runners as being particularly quotable, but I don't think this is particularly true. Parts of his book leave strong impressions, but the words themselves are not succinct. When searching for the book's title, Google auto-suggests adding the word "quotes" after it. Clicking on the top result brings you to a blog that quotes literature. The three What I Talk About quotes are over 3,500 words. Murakami writes in impressions. Yet he quotes someone early in the book, "In the act of shaving lies a philosophy." He explains that he feels any act repeated often comes to reflect the person repeating it. For Murakami, running and writing are deeply personal rituals, in part because he has run and written so much.

What I Talk About is really an improvised run. Murakami is an impulsive man, and he felt it time to write this book, so he did. I imagine him sitting at his sun-bathed desk in his open-air office in Hawaii and completing a sentence. He looks up and his eyes focus. Something has stirred in him and broken his stream of thoughts. There will be no more writing now. I think of him rising out of his chair, stepping tightly to his running shoes, which lie neatly next to the door, facing outward. He lifts off his shirt, stretching upward, breathing a deep breath and tingling in anticipation. He opens the door and, head down, begins his run. Murakami has no route in mind, no thoughts, just an urge to move. He must run until he is spent. As his body warms and his legs unspool, he is able to lift his eyes from their clouded writer's haze to see the ocean-side, the trees, the signposts easing past. He tells us what this feels like to him and we feel what it would feel like to us.

For Murakami, running is a moving experience, pardon the pun, and his experience has moved me. What I Talk About has made me think differently about running. I feel sad for those who run blankly or not enough to feel some hint of the depth Murakami draws from running. In the end What I Talk About is more than a description of what we feel when we run, more than a conversation among runners. Murakami describes how this act of running, repeated often, has come to reflect the person he is. He describes how running has challenged him to become better. In making me more aware of this process, Murakami and I will run together for a long time.