Literary Legs

The Best Time to Run

Last week in her Fitness and Nutrition column, Gina Kolata in the New York Times had an interesting discussion about the best time of the day to exercise.  She became curious when she realized her heart rate was always lower when she exercised in the morning as opposed to the late afternoon or early evening.  She first thought this might mean that since her heart rate was lower for the same workout, she was a more efficient exerciser in the morning.

Instead, after talking to exercise researchers, Kolata discovered the following:

• Speed, power, and strength are the worst in the morning
• The same workout, in terms of perceived exertion, actually appears harder in the morning
• Everything--heart, lungs, and muscles--is more efficient later in the day. 

Of course, this flies in the face of almost every road race start time, since most begin around 8am.  But it appears that the best time for your workout is late afternoon or early evening.

I was just thinking about this the other day.  I like to exercise early in the day because there are no excuses at 6:30am.  There is no place I have to be.  And I can get it done without having to fit it in later in the day.  But there are two drawbacks.  One, I have never been able to just roll out of bed, lace up my shoes, and head out the door.  Instead, I need at least 30 minutes of awake time.  And two, these runs always require more effort; they always seem to be more laborious.

On the other hand, the last thing I want to do after work is run.  I am tired, I want to relax, and I want to eat dinner.  I know myself well enough to realize that the likelihood of my going out for a run decreases with each passing hour; by the time 7pm rolls around, I can produce a whole litany of excuses for staying home.  Yet a funny thing happens when I do run in the evening: it is effortless. I can run longer at a faster pace.  I make a mockery of hills. I breeze down long straightaways. I feel more efficient, and my form (at least to me) feels perfect. Everything feels good. 

So the evening run is paradoxical to me: I dread starting it, yet I also know that it is easy once I get started.  The morning run is easier to start, but not as easy to power through.

Hopping on a Run

I do a fair amount of running here in downtown DC near my office.  Until I get to the open stretches along the Potomac River, I must contend with traffic lights around the Mall and the Washington Monument.  I have never been the type of person who jogs in place waiting for a "Walk" sign--one, I feel foolish; and two, I don't gain any aerobic benefit running in place.  And since I run by time and not distance, I don't want to stop and start my watch every block.  Once I get going, I hate stopping.

This is why the number countdown on the walk signs, telling me how many more seconds I have to cross, is a wonderful tool for runners like me who hate to stop running during a, well, run.  If I come to an intersection where I have the "Don't Walk" sign, I look at the perpendicular crosswalk to see how much time they have left to walk. Knowing how many seconds I have until I get a "Walk" sign lets me adjust my pace accordingly, or turn around and run in the opposite direction before turning back and heading across the street, where by that time I will be able to cross with the "Walk" signal.  Either way, I don't have to jog in place or stop.  

But last week one runner told me that she hops up and down when she waits at intersections for the signal to walk.  At first, this seemed silly--jumping up and down like a pogo stick?  Finally, at her urging, I tried it.

As someone who has been running since I was 12, I am pretty set in my ways.  But I must admit: I am sold. The hop is surprisingly aerobically challenging, as long as you jump high.  And it's a great calf workout if you jump off of your toes.  If you don't think this is true, run at a good pace for 40 minutes, then during the last 5 minutes of your run, alternate one minute of running with 40 seconds of hopping of your toes.  It's really not that much different than jumping rope, which we know is a good aerobic activity.  This makes me wonder--why not just bring a jump rope on my next run?

Now CNN Says Exercise Makes You Fat

I thought that we could put to rest for good the silliness of Time magazine's cover story last month on how exercise can make you fat.  I offered a thorough rebuttal of the piece, as did many other experts around the world, including the American College of Sports Medicine here.

But CNN, upset that it was late to the party, posted a link to the Time article as its lead headline today, a month after Time's piece appeared (see CNN screen shot here).  I am a bit surprised by CNN's decision to link to the piece given how thoroughly it has been dismissed by reliable experts.  But since the Latest News section at the top of its home page contains such critically relevant stories as "Bride says 'I do' to laughing bout," I should not be surprised that CNN would publish such sensationalism.

One of the points that the Time article makes is that exercise makes you hungry, so after your run you pig out and negate the calories that you just burned during your workout.  From a physiological perspective, I am not in the position to dispute the assertion that exercise makes you hungry.  The last thing I feel like doing after a run is eating; if I did, I'd be headed straight to the bathroom within minutes.  My stomach can't handle food for at least 30 minutes after aerobic exercise, and because of this I'll never be able to understand how people can head straight from the finish line to the buffet line at a road race. 

But the Time article misses a golden opportunity to discuss one important reason why people who exercise might gain weight or at least might not lose weight as quickly as they hope.  It's not that people eat after exercise because they are hungry; instead, they eat because they think that working out has given them a bottomless calorie deficit. If you want to lose weight, you can't down the Big Mac value meal at McDonalds and follow it off with a Blizzard from Dairy Queen.  I exaggerate slightly, of course, but some people think that exercise gives them free reign to eat whatever they want, that the 30 minute treadmill session will gobble up calories from the six pack of Budweiser and chicken wings that they'll eat while watching college football.  Studies have shown that we tend to grossly underestimate both the calories and the portion sizes we ingest, and it would not surprise me if a fair number of people also overestimate the calories they burn while exercising.  If you belong to both of these cohorts, you might belong to the "I exercise but still gain weight" category. 

More on the Barefoot Running Craze

The New York Times a couple of days ago published a story on the barefoot running craze (more on barefoot running here). Proponents of barefoot running say that running shoes have had no measurable impact on reducing injuries. In fact, some say they have led to more knee and Achilles' tendon injuries. Running shoe supporters, including many orthopedists and--unsurprisingly--shoe manufacturers, say that running barefoot is a sure road (pun intended) to injury.

Running barefoot, the proponents say, is merely an extension of what our ancestors did.  They ran barefoot through the plains while chasing prey, so why can't we? (I must admit, this argument gives me pause.  Humans have changed a tad since our prehistoric days; just because our mammoth-chasing ancestors ran barefoot isn't convincing enough for me.)  Shoe proponents say that barefoot running works for the small percentage of people who are biomechanically perfect, or close to it.  For everyone else--and this includes most people--shoes can correct biomechanical errors.  If you pronate or supinate, for example, shoes can align your ankles with your feet and reduce the chance of injuries.  From the Times article:

"Things changed in the early 1970s, when Bill Bowerman, a track coach turned entrepreneur, created a cushioned running shoe that allowed runners to take longer strides and land on their heels, rather than a more natural mid- or forefoot strike. Mr. Bowerman and his business partner, Phil Knight, marketed the new shoes under the Nike brand, and the rest is history."

Of course, as I posted a few weeks ago, that heel strike can lead to overstriding. 

Some companies, capitalizing on the craze, have developed gloves for the feet.  Vibram, for example, has its Five Fingers line:

For those of us who live in suburban or urban environments, running barefoot is impossible.  I can't think of any surface free of objects that might puncture my feet.  But these shoes seem to have a fair amount of protection in the soles.  Still, the advantage of running shoes is that they offer protection from anything underfoot; when I go out for a run, I can go over grass, trails, rocks, roads, sidewalks, you name it, without worrying about what I'm stepping on.  The joy of the run is in the relief of stress and in freeing my mind to think creatively, not in wondering what my next step will feel like. But would I try these?  Absolutely. 

The 2009 Senior Games 5K Recap

At the 2009 Senior Games on the campus of Stanford University, the first thing I noticed at the 5k road race was the cheering. When we were children, our parents always cheered for us on the field of competition.  Now it was time to pay them back. Crowds lined the homestretch of the race—where every runner needs encouragement—with cheers of “Go Mom!” and “Way to go Dad!”  Yet even more spirited were the cheers of the young grandchildren shouting words of encouragement to their grandparents (and probably great grandparents).  Entire families came to cheer on this 50 and over crowd, and they were decked out in custom made family team shirts, their name proudly emblazoned on their backs.   

 

The Senior Games are equal parts competition and family reunion.  I came to coach my mother in the 60-64 age group (she finished fifth), but it turns out I was only one of several children coaching their parents.  Some sons and daughters did me one better, running with their parents.  But lest I make this race look like a leisurely family outing, these were not your grandfather’s grandparents.  No, these seniors were fast.  Not fast for their age group, but fast, period: the 60 year old female overall winner (besting women 10 years younger), ran a 19:55, and the overall male winner ran a 17:25.

 

This group was not out for a jog around Stanford’s campus.  They were finely-tuned athletes who had trained months for this race, and they wanted a pre-race routine free of distractions.  Take, for example, the long line before the race to pick up the numbers.  For a race this important, many grumbled, why couldn’t we have done this yesterday?  This is cutting into my warm up time. And no computer chips, no way to accurately measure our finish time? How will I know my real time?  The grumblings got louder. 

 

And from a spectator’s perspective, the games were an instant support mechanism for anyone in the middle of a midsummer running funk.  I watched this race in the middle of my own funk, but this race energized me.  Make no mistake: these were racers, not runners.  Dispel any notion in your head of senior citizens shuffling towards the finish line. (As an aside, is a 50 year old really a senior?) All the way to the 90 year olds in the race, they were competitors.  This was not the “I’ll just be happy to finish crowd.” No—this was the “I’ll be mad I don’t PR” crowd.     

 

What I hope these athletes recognize is the example that have set for their grandchildren.  If we want our kids to be physically fit, is there no better way than to see grandpa or grandma (or great grandpa or grandpa) running a race?  And forget those controlled scientific studies that link exercise with improved cognition and a slowing of the aging process.  The Senior Games are the only lab you need.  This was a crowd—in their body types and energy level—that could have held its own in DC’s hottest clubs.   Need evidence that exercise energizes everyone, regardless of age?  Many were running the 10k the following day. 

 

After my mother finished, I sat along the rail about twenty meters from the finish line.  The crowds thinned a bit along the rail as the family members of those watching crossed the finish line, but I was determined to remain until the last finisher—especially until the last finisher—crossed.  How many more times, I thought, will a 90 year old woman get to hear a crowd applaud in her honor?  Predictably, the runners got older as the minutes passed.  Joints seemed a little tighter, and knees weren’t lifting quite as high off the ground. I used to look at Mick Jagger and marvel at how his moved his body on stage, lithe and limber well into his 60s.  I sure would love to move like that at my age, I used to think.  But Mick Jagger, move over: my new role model is 91 year old Albert Davis from Arkansas, who finished in 51:46.

 

But my enduring image of the race is this.  As I watched from the rail, I could see one of the last competitors begin to struggle.  With about 150 meters to go, he pitched forward, his form breaking down.  As a crowd, we collectively winced, willing him on to finish the race.

 

Just then a young boy, probably 13 years old and in the midst of his own awkward, pubescent gait, appeared alongside the man and began running with him.  “Go grandpa, go!” he prodded, pacing alongside. No course marshal would dare stop him—anyone who tried would have been tackled.  Suddenly, grandpa picked up those knees, pushed his head up, and began swinging arms that only a minute before had been dead weight.  Together the two of them ran to the finish, the boy peeling off just before the finish line, repaying his grandfather for all that he had done. 

 

Note: The complete results for the 2009 Senior Games—there were 25 sports—can be found at http://www.2009seniorgames.org/.

 

 

There's a Limit to the "Creativity in Nature" Idea

Last week I was in Salt Lake City on business.  I  went on my usual run with a colleague, Lee, who just happens to be an Ironman Triathlete.   I wrote about our last run a few months ago in the Washington Post (see here).  We run high above the city on a trail in the mountains near the University of Utah. The view (see here and here and here for the trail) is truly spectacular--but I am usually too exhausted to notice it.  For one, we are probably 6,000 feet up, and the high altitude ensures that my lungs are in a constant state of oxygen debt, since I come from DC.  And this time, Lee brought someone else on the run--not an amateur Ironman triathlete like him, but a professional Ironman triathlete. Fantastic!

My goal whenever I run here is to go as long as possible without stopping. Given the altitude and the incline, it's almost impossible for me to run our usual 70 minute course nonstop.  Since we start heading uphill almost immediately, only a few minutes into the run my legs are filled to the top with lactic acid.  And these are not normal hills, my friends.  To imagine how steep these are, go outside.  Then try to run up the exterior walls of your house.  Easily the steepest incline I have ever encountered, but our goal was to get to the top of the ridge.  Add to this mix the prospect of keeping up with two people whose idea of a race is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, then a marathon.  And because it had rained that day, my shoes were caked in heavy mud as I tried to keep my footing on a slippery trail. 

But fear has a way of conquering lactic acid. Lee had some words of advice before we started.  Stay on the trail and don't run in the grass to avoid the mud.  Why, I asked. Snakes, he said.  Rattlesnakes.  Try not to make too much noise, he said, because you'll need to listen for their rattle.  Oh, and watch for mountain lions.  A couple of years ago a guy was mauled to death up here.  We'll run past the spot where he died. 

We?

An hour ago I was eating breakfast, and now I may be eaten for lunch.

So I had some incentive to stay with the group.  During our 70 minute run, I walked twice for three minutes when we came to steep hills that shut down my quads. We did not see any rattlesnakes, but we did see the unmistakable tracks of a mountain lion on our path, freshly pressed into the mud.  And a few minutes later, the blanched carcass of a small animal.

So let me add a caveat to the study I referenced in a previous post about how natural environments are better for creativity than urban environments.  The study, you may recall, found that natural environments let the executive attention center of your brain take a break so that it can return to work refreshed and ready to go.  In nature, you marvel at the beauty of the colorful fall leaves, but this doesn't take any directed attention. In urban environments, however, your executive attention center must work overtime to ensure that you are not hit by a bus. 

This study, of course, assumes exercise in a soothing, pastoral environment.  It does not consider the person who is listening for rattlesnakes and watching for mountain lions.  So I don't think I returned to work that day bursting with creativity. 

William Wordsworth is not Impressed With Your Exercise Routine

As I've mentioned in other posts, I have been reading Adam Sisman's book The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge.  It's a fascinating look at not just the friendship but the collaboration between these two men, the two titans of the Romantic literary movement.  And even though my PhD is in English Language and Literature with a specialty in 20th century American dramatic literature, I know good poetry when I see it. 

But what first drew me to the book was the talk about how much William Wordsworth walked. It is estimated that he walked 186,000 miles in his life, and walks of 30 or more miles a day were common with him.  Combine that with the richness of his poetry, and his life makes him a natural fit for this blog with the role that exercise played in his writing. 

As I mentioned earlier, Wordsworth usually composed when he was walking.  Not impressed?  Well, he often composed entire poems while walking, and would not write them down until he had completed them in his head on one of his 30 mile janunts.  Still not impressed? Then read "Tintern Abbey," a Wordsworth poem that is firmly entrenched in the literary canon.  And try to compose something like this--a 159 line poem--in your head while walking. Revise it while outside, and don't even think about coming ins and committing it to paper until it's ready to be published.  According to Sisman, "The whole poem was carried in his mind; not a word of it was written down before they reached Bristol, and not a line altered afterwards" (250). Read this for more on Wordsworth's legendary poem. 

But for Wordsworth's creative juices to really flow, not just any walk would do.  He needed even ground.  According to Sisman, "Coleridge liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse me with no collateral interruption" (244). 

Assuming you do some thinking when you exercise, what environment elicits your most creative thinking or productive ideas?  Is there a certain route you cover?  I have been in the San Francisco and Palo Alto area all week on business, and as I type this I am at a hotel across from the beautiful campus of Stanford University.  Whenever I come here, I look forward to a long run on campus.  It's flat, serene, and beautiful, an effortless run that gives me a great opportunity to think. 

The Long Road (Race) Back

A few months ago I started running road races (5k and 10k) again after about a 13 year layoff.  I am 39 now, and in my mid 20s I ran them all the time.  For a guy who ran the 400m in college, making the transition to longer distances was not too bad.  Regardless of the distance, oxygen debt and lactic acid always feel the same.

I have always been competitive, so I ran every road race to finish as high in the standings as I could. I cannot run a road race just for fun.  My times were competitive--a 17:20 5k and 36:20 10k from what I remember--and they were usually good enough to place me pretty high.  I stopped because I was in graduate school and it became expensive to enter all those races, and also because I was single and in my mid 20s, when social outings took occasional precedent over training.

So about six months ago I decided to start training for races again because I missed the thrill of competition (I have always been a runner during this hiatus).  I joined the Montgomery County Road Runners Club to get motivated.  But in my first race back, I ran the Bethesda-Chevy Chase YMCA Turkey Chase 10k in 41:37 and was completely deflated.  It was five minutes slower than my PR.  Of course, I was a little bit older and had done no speed training, but that made no difference.  Heck, I should have been happy because I finished 6th out of 220 in my age group.  I decided to start doing speedwork once a week, with intervals ranging from 400m to 1200m.  

I ran no other races until March 1, a 5k through a county park on winding paved trails.  Winding trails are horrible for road races because you never get a straight enough stretch of path to hit a good stride. The temp was in the 30s, and the trail was wet and even slushy in some places.  I ran a 20:11 and again was angry (I finished 13th of of 94, and admittedly no one really ran fast given the conditions).  If these were the times I was going to hit, what was the point?  I was not doing this for the t-shirt and bananas at the end of the race.  I was doing it to race well, be competitive, and be fast. 

Yesterday I ran my first race since March 1 (and yes, I know I need to race more), the Potomac Valley Track Club Easter Classic 5k.  It was at Hains Point in downtown DC.  The course is a runner's dream: wide street, completely flat, and surrounded by water and cherry blossoms.  Unfortunately, the day was not a runner's dream: very windy, mid 40s, and a driving rain.  Not the ideal conditions for racing. 

I felt great throughout the whole race and crossed the finish line at 19:13, almost a minute better than my last race.  I was 7th out of 234. My splits were almost perfectly even.  Still, it is frustrating to be running times that are nowhere near what I should be running. 

I look at the sentence above: I felt great. And therein lies the paradox of racing.  You have to maintain the ideal homeostasis while racing: you can't feel too good, else you are probably not running at your maximum level.  But if you feel like crap because you are running beyond your means (like if you went out too fast), then you'll run like crap.  So while I was running yesterday and thinking to myself I feel good, I then began to wonder if I was feeling too good. If I cross the finish line and think about how easy the race was, I probably should have been running harder. 

The best advice I can give here is that to maximize your effort while racing, you have to walk a precarious line, one between deep-breathing comfort and out-of-breath misery. One slight push in either direction, and you won't be at peak performance, but if you ride that precarious line throughout the race, you can PR.  During my 400m racing days, and I don't think I ever felt good running that race, but the 400m is short enough that you can feel like crap and still survive because it's over in less than a minute. 

So I finished the race and recovered quickly--a sign that I could have gone harder.  But in knowing I could have gone harder, I knew this also meant that I still have a lot of room for improvement. 

Who Are You Calling a Wimpering [sic] Metrosexual?

In today's Washington Post, Doug Feaver, former executive editor of washingtonpost.com, writes a piece in the op-ed section entitled "Listening to the Dot-Commenters."  In it he defends the right of anonymous commenters on news sites like the Post.  Anyone who reads these comments at the end of an online article knows that they can be filled with hate and vitriol, often in the form of racism or mysogynism.  Even articles that have nothing to do with race or gender have comments that seem to descend into the pit of ignorance after a certain tipping point in the comment thread.  Feaver argues that not only do people have the right to say what they want, but that it's important to see that this hatred still exists.  Besides, anonymous comments are a good way to gauge the public's pulse on an issue.  Feaver, it should be noted, advocated for moderated comments when he was first editor of washingtonpost.com, but he has since changed his stance.

Anonymous comments do bring out the worst in people.  The anonymity lets people say in a public forum things that they would never dream of saying in a forum where they had to identify themselves. (If Freud were alive, he'd be proud.)  On a much lesser level, I had a similar experience in one of my recent Washington Post pieces entield Two Aging Athletes Confront the Ultimate Opponent: Time. The essay is about how, after a quarter century of running, I finally was not able to finish a run.  It was a brutal run in the mountains of Utah, in an elevation far different from good ol' Kensington, Maryland.  I discuss how it was my first time quitting EVER and how quitting made me feel awful and like a failure, even though I had already run 40+ minutes on a mountain.  I vowed never to quit again, and I talk about how I still stay motivated.  Nowhere in the article did I talk about how I had quit running for good.  Nowhere.  But apparently a fair amount of people read the first three lines of the essay and decided that they had read the whole thing. 

The comments started off pretty inocuously, but then someone called me a "wimpering [sic] metrosexual."

Whoa.  Sitting at my office that morning, I felt my face flush.  I began to take the gloves off. 

My first instinct was to defend myself, telling the commenter that it might be nice if he actually read the piece and that I am hardly a whimpering mextrosexual, a comment that gave many of my friends a good laugh.  Besides, as a 400m runner in high school and college, I endured workouts that he probably could only dream of doing.  So I emailed a friend of mine who is the associate editor at one of the top political magazines, and I asked her if I should respond.  Her response was swift.  No, she said. We call that "feeding the trolls."   So I let it go.

A few people had thoughtful responses to the piece, but then others started giving me advice: do yoga, try pilates, weight train (funny, considering I have been a serious weightlifter since I was 13), cross train, walk, taper, start slow, do squats, play basketball, you name it.  Others mocked me for complaining.  Complaining?  Really?  Did these people even bother to read the piece?  The entire piece was about how I love to run, how I will never give up running, and how I still find the motivation to do it.  Those people offering advice on starting other activities, while good-intentioned, probably read this part:

The same fear keeps me running on days when my feet feel glued the ground. I had this feeling on a recent run around my neighborhood. After the first three minutes, I knew it would be a struggle. My upper body was tight, my knees had no lift and my lungs were unwilling to let in oxygen. Several times my pace slowed, and I started to ease up. Oh man, I thought, wouldn't a nice cup of hot chocolate feel good right about now? Each time I slowed, though, I had the same sense of failure that overtook me in Salt Lake City. I knew that if I stopped, I could be headed down one long slope full of ready-made excuses in the future.

And assumed that I had to stop running because of pain, when instead I was just talking about the fact that we all have days when, regardless of our fitness level, we have a crappy run.

Anyway, after cooling down, I finally responded to the commenters (my user name is bopipari if you look) just to clarify what I was writing about for those people who had misunderstood the piece. In the end, it was too frustrating to see the comments pile up and not be able to give a response. 

The Rules of the Sidewalk

In a recent post, I discussed how much I love running here in Washington DC when the cherry blossoms are out, under the pink canvas on Ohio Drive.  One thing I forgot: seeing the cherry blossoms is something that a lot of other people like to do as well.

Spring Break week is the unofficial start to the tourist season here in DC, when families begin jam the sidewalks downtown.  I have nothing against tourists, but if you come to DC to sightsee, remember this: you are not the only person on the sidewalk.  So when you are walking three or four abreast, hogging the entire sidewalk so that I cannot get by as I run, and you see me coming the opposite way, please move out of the freakin' way! Don't make eye contact with me and continue blocking my path. I deserve space as much as you do on that sidewalk. 

About a month ago I was running near our house, and three women were walking towards me talking.  I had no room to go by, and they clearly saw me. They made no effort to move, and leaving the sidewalk to avoid them would have meant an unfortunate meeting with a fast moving truck going in the opposite direction (though I suppose it doesn't matter in which direction the truck was traveling).  So with no place to go, we kind of collided. Neither of us fell, and she let out a surprised shriek, though I cannot fathom how she could have been surprised.