Well, I'm not exactly that kid from The Sixth Sense, but I'm constantly amazed to see the vast numbers of unhealthy looking people who belong to my age group. If you go to Facebook and look at the pictures of people from your high school it's not unusual to see people 50, 60 pounds heavier than they were back in the day. Funny thing, they're not a foot taller, and as a rule they haven't become professional weight lifters, body builders or football players (or Sumo wrestlers). From the pictures you can tell that they are just dragging around what amounts to a third grader, packed around their middles, every step they take and everywhere they go.
About twelve years ago I was playing in a local tennis tournament and one of these barrel shaped guys was in the draw. Fifteen minutes into the tourney I heard the sharp crack of a tennis racquet hitting the ground and turned quickly enough to see him falling backwards, stiff legged like a tree being logged, and he hit the ground with full force on the back of his skull--a second hard crack that was the figurative second shoe to fall. He was dead of a heart attack
There is no animal on the planet who lives in such physical unhealth as homo sapiens sapiens. If a deer or elk were to get even 3 or 4 percent over optimum body fat (I'm not talking about fattening up to make it through the winter--I'm talking about mid summer watching TV reruns fat) it soon is no longer a forest ruminant, it becomes a cougar meal.
So, I have one good rule for people to adopt: you should look at your weight when you were a senior in high school, and if you were a normal weight, then THAT should be your target weight for life, plus or minus ten pounds. AND, you should generally look to the minus side since if you're like me, you're no longer carrying the nice looking youthful muscles of the late teen years.
How do you do this? Well, first, take back your mindshare from the food manufacturers and grocery stores. What they're selling, especially in the shelves dominated by big name processors and soft drink manufacturers, isn't really food, in the sense of being fuel. It's taste entertainment and, over time, toxic to a healthy manimalistic life. Shop and eat from the periphery of the grocery store: vegetables, fruits, dairy, meat.
Second, and I'll post more about this later, it is crucial to find an authentic and robust activity at which you wish to excel, and then pursue the kind of training that will get you there--to that level of fitness. Authentic means that it is something that YOU identify strongly with (and not just something that might be "good" for you, or that will impress other people). For an activity to be robust it must, well, be robust. There's nothing wrong with reading a book or going to a concert, or watching TV or surfing the net. But they are not robust activities. I guess for an activity to be robust it pretty much has to get your heart rate up to an elevated level and have you working out at at least an aerobic level.
This is what a manimal does, he looks to exist as a physical and mental creature at the same time. If it's volleyball, then it's volleyball; if it's tennis then it's tennis. Both should require cardio training (bicycling, running) and resistance training, as well as skill training. You don't have to run an ultramarathon, in fact, if you do so and it's not authentic to you, then no matter how robust it is (and it's pretty robust), then it's not manimalistic. It is almost worthless to have as a goal a waist size or a dress size--not only worthless but shallow and vain as well. You are a human being, you have the responsibility of achieving a goal, and as a manimal you have the obligation to become fit. Fit for a purpose.
What's more, choosing an active goal to pursue liberates you from the vanity of asking how one looks. A few years ago I decided that I would train myself so I could accomplish an Olympic triathlon, swim 1500 meters, bike 24 miles, run 6 miles in that sequence. It was tremendously liberating. No longer did I have to discipline myself to get to the gym twice a week, wonder whether or not I was doing the right workout. Everything actually fell into place. I did more biking, more running and more swimming and less of everything else. Everything I did engaged my cardiovascular system in a good way, and all three activities have elements of resistance training, particularly since I like to bike and run in fairly rugged hills. An added bonus is that I really didn't need to do much on the diet/calorie side--that more or less took care of itself.
But my goal was not to become a world class age group triathlete (no doubt beyond my swimming skills, and perhaps all my skills, and to me not much of a goal)--it was to be able to take a few hours on a Saturday morning and, starting at the pool, traverse 31 miles.
One added benefit to doing triathlon training is, working on 3 or 4 hour "events" I now think of a workout that lasts 3 or 4 hours (trail running 15 to 20 miles, or doing a bike-run combination, or doing a bike-swim-run-tennis-bike combination) as being anything other than normal, par for at least one weekend day.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Dougwise and the McKenzie River Ultra
It was about 10:00 am on September 11, last Saturday, when I thought of Samwise Gamgee. Over an hour before I passed Aid Station Number Two at almost the 13 mile mark, and realized to my delight that I was working at just about at a five mile per hour pace. What's more, on the McKenzie River 50K, the first 15 miles are the hardest, or so I gleaned from the map. Now almost an hour later, how far might I be?
I thought of Samwise Gamgee in the Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and he are embarking on their epic journey. He halts on a farmer's trail and says, " If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Well, at that moment, 17 miles into the 31 miles of the ultra, I realized that I had already run farther than I had ever run before, in an event or in training. Each step was a new personal record.
The woods were glorious that morning and the temperature perfect. I was running comfortably behind two ladies from Oakridge, happy just to follow someone else's pace. I knew from mountain climbing and from shorter runs that you wanted to get to within a few miles of the end and then really start running. Until then you were pacing yourself, running within yourself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I probably recalled that I had registered for this run without really training for it, but the idea that I might have to slow down was far away. I was only doing this long trail run because someone had twisted my arm into volunteering at an Aid Station for twice as long Where's Waldo trail ultra, 100 kilometers and 15,000 feet of elevation gain that, for some reason, appealed to me. So, with just two weeks to learn how to manage a trail run, and no time to train, here I was, thinking about Frodo and Sam.
It was around this time that the lady running in front started to scream. And sprint. The second lady began to sprint too and I heard the words no trail runner wants to hear, screamed in terror:
"Yellow jackets are biting me."
Yellow jackets are like NBA referees, they rarely punish the first foul, and always punish the later one. As third in our group, that would be me. So I sprinted as fast as I could over rock and root maybe 300 yards. No pain. I kept sprinting (it was amazing how fast the Oakridge ladies were going) another few hundred yards. Nothing, no sting. The woman in front registered five or six stings and the two followers got nothing. I guess the yellow jackets had not gotten the memo.
Maybe that was what began to slow me down in the next 30 minutes or so, that half mile adrenaline sprint. Or perhaps it was what happened at the beginning of the run. You see, my race (early start) was scheduled to leave Ice Cap Campground at 6:30 am. My wife and I drove up, ate at the local restaurant, then found a wide spot in the campground and slept in the car. Fitful rest, as you might imagine, but dark and cool night. I rose at about 5:30 to discover that we had forgotten to bring anything to boil water for tea in, so it was going to be a cold breakfast. I had counted on hot tea to help me swallow the scrambled eggs and sausage I had cooked up the evening before. Now I ate them cold and a tad greasy, I might say, and washed them down with cold water. Anyway, I kept looking for people to congregate near the official start of the race, which I knew would be under an awning I had seen the evening before. At 6:20 by my watch I still saw no one (well, these West Coast people must surely be laid back) and when I finally located another awning about a quarter mile away and got to it, my watch said 6:25. Whew.
"I'm here for the start."
"Which start?"
"Early start."
"That was just about four minutes ago. They already left." He pointed to a white line drawn across the road and said, "Follow the signs." The trail started on a gravel road, turned quickly onto a piled berm of dirt (with a white arrow straight over it) and then curved away from the course I anticipated into the trees. Great, I was going to get lost in the first ten minutes. Should I just wait for the regular start? Fortunately the trail turned and I was back on course, heading northeast.
Okay, so maybe I took the first 45 minutes of the run at a slightly faster pace than I should have, trying to catch up with the rest of the group (which I eventually did). Maybe that extra exertion was kicking in now, four hours into the run, exacting its toll. I don't know.
What I do know is that sometime within the fifth hour I began to slow down, no matter how many cups of flat cola and liquid gels I consumed, and about this time my right knee and ankle began to stiffen up. My ankle? I knew why that was happening--I had rolled it slightly while circling Clear Lake in the first hour. My knee? I don't know when I torqued it. Possibly I did it on one of the ten or twelve profanity-laced stumbles I took between hour 2 and hour 5. Interesting thing about those stumbles. First of all, I tried very hard not to swear, at the end as a kind of experiment. Impossible. And, at a certain level of fatigue, you kick a root, lose your balance, fall forward and--right before you catch yourself and right your ship and avoid opening up a capillary or two, and just when you begin to let fly the worst word you know--you have the distinct pleasure of feeling both of your legs cramp up. Nice. Fortunately it's only temporary, a split second or so, and then it returns to normal.
In all events, I ended up going slower and slower the last 10 miles. It was no trouble to jog the flats and the undulations, but I was walking the uphills and it became more and more of an effort to stay jumping and moving on the downhills. Also I had the most prolonged conversation with my body, one that went something like this:
"Hey, you've done great, but I really think we can stop now."
"Body, be quiet and keep going."
"Seriously, Doug, you've proved your point. We're hurting all over, we're really tired. We could probably find that road and hitch an easy ride to the finish. We've run, what, 25 miles now--that's practically a marathon. On the trails, through the woods for crying out loud. We even outran some yellow jackets."
"Body, just keep moving. And keep quiet."
"Dude, I am not kidding. I am just about all in, here, nothing left in the gas tank, nada, zilch. Next time, I swear, we'll get all trained and ready and we'll run the entire 50K. Heck, let's just go 100K next time. But for now, I get it, I understand, but there's just nothing left."
And so it went for the longest time. I've had these conversations before, at 11,000 or 12,000 feet on a glacier, but never one that lasted such a long time.
Anyway, I did make it to the end, when I walked I walked fast and swung my arms like a kindergartener, and when I jogged I really just jogged. Not pretty.
But I finished in plenty of time to get a shower and some lunch, and drive a couple hours back to town. And I had a profound sense of joy. Yes, I would be back next year, I thought, and yes I would actually train for it.
I thought of Samwise Gamgee in the Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and he are embarking on their epic journey. He halts on a farmer's trail and says, " If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Well, at that moment, 17 miles into the 31 miles of the ultra, I realized that I had already run farther than I had ever run before, in an event or in training. Each step was a new personal record.
The woods were glorious that morning and the temperature perfect. I was running comfortably behind two ladies from Oakridge, happy just to follow someone else's pace. I knew from mountain climbing and from shorter runs that you wanted to get to within a few miles of the end and then really start running. Until then you were pacing yourself, running within yourself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I probably recalled that I had registered for this run without really training for it, but the idea that I might have to slow down was far away. I was only doing this long trail run because someone had twisted my arm into volunteering at an Aid Station for twice as long Where's Waldo trail ultra, 100 kilometers and 15,000 feet of elevation gain that, for some reason, appealed to me. So, with just two weeks to learn how to manage a trail run, and no time to train, here I was, thinking about Frodo and Sam.
It was around this time that the lady running in front started to scream. And sprint. The second lady began to sprint too and I heard the words no trail runner wants to hear, screamed in terror:
"Yellow jackets are biting me."
Yellow jackets are like NBA referees, they rarely punish the first foul, and always punish the later one. As third in our group, that would be me. So I sprinted as fast as I could over rock and root maybe 300 yards. No pain. I kept sprinting (it was amazing how fast the Oakridge ladies were going) another few hundred yards. Nothing, no sting. The woman in front registered five or six stings and the two followers got nothing. I guess the yellow jackets had not gotten the memo.
Maybe that was what began to slow me down in the next 30 minutes or so, that half mile adrenaline sprint. Or perhaps it was what happened at the beginning of the run. You see, my race (early start) was scheduled to leave Ice Cap Campground at 6:30 am. My wife and I drove up, ate at the local restaurant, then found a wide spot in the campground and slept in the car. Fitful rest, as you might imagine, but dark and cool night. I rose at about 5:30 to discover that we had forgotten to bring anything to boil water for tea in, so it was going to be a cold breakfast. I had counted on hot tea to help me swallow the scrambled eggs and sausage I had cooked up the evening before. Now I ate them cold and a tad greasy, I might say, and washed them down with cold water. Anyway, I kept looking for people to congregate near the official start of the race, which I knew would be under an awning I had seen the evening before. At 6:20 by my watch I still saw no one (well, these West Coast people must surely be laid back) and when I finally located another awning about a quarter mile away and got to it, my watch said 6:25. Whew.
"I'm here for the start."
"Which start?"
"Early start."
"That was just about four minutes ago. They already left." He pointed to a white line drawn across the road and said, "Follow the signs." The trail started on a gravel road, turned quickly onto a piled berm of dirt (with a white arrow straight over it) and then curved away from the course I anticipated into the trees. Great, I was going to get lost in the first ten minutes. Should I just wait for the regular start? Fortunately the trail turned and I was back on course, heading northeast.
Okay, so maybe I took the first 45 minutes of the run at a slightly faster pace than I should have, trying to catch up with the rest of the group (which I eventually did). Maybe that extra exertion was kicking in now, four hours into the run, exacting its toll. I don't know.
What I do know is that sometime within the fifth hour I began to slow down, no matter how many cups of flat cola and liquid gels I consumed, and about this time my right knee and ankle began to stiffen up. My ankle? I knew why that was happening--I had rolled it slightly while circling Clear Lake in the first hour. My knee? I don't know when I torqued it. Possibly I did it on one of the ten or twelve profanity-laced stumbles I took between hour 2 and hour 5. Interesting thing about those stumbles. First of all, I tried very hard not to swear, at the end as a kind of experiment. Impossible. And, at a certain level of fatigue, you kick a root, lose your balance, fall forward and--right before you catch yourself and right your ship and avoid opening up a capillary or two, and just when you begin to let fly the worst word you know--you have the distinct pleasure of feeling both of your legs cramp up. Nice. Fortunately it's only temporary, a split second or so, and then it returns to normal.
In all events, I ended up going slower and slower the last 10 miles. It was no trouble to jog the flats and the undulations, but I was walking the uphills and it became more and more of an effort to stay jumping and moving on the downhills. Also I had the most prolonged conversation with my body, one that went something like this:
"Hey, you've done great, but I really think we can stop now."
"Body, be quiet and keep going."
"Seriously, Doug, you've proved your point. We're hurting all over, we're really tired. We could probably find that road and hitch an easy ride to the finish. We've run, what, 25 miles now--that's practically a marathon. On the trails, through the woods for crying out loud. We even outran some yellow jackets."
"Body, just keep moving. And keep quiet."
"Dude, I am not kidding. I am just about all in, here, nothing left in the gas tank, nada, zilch. Next time, I swear, we'll get all trained and ready and we'll run the entire 50K. Heck, let's just go 100K next time. But for now, I get it, I understand, but there's just nothing left."
And so it went for the longest time. I've had these conversations before, at 11,000 or 12,000 feet on a glacier, but never one that lasted such a long time.
Anyway, I did make it to the end, when I walked I walked fast and swung my arms like a kindergartener, and when I jogged I really just jogged. Not pretty.
But I finished in plenty of time to get a shower and some lunch, and drive a couple hours back to town. And I had a profound sense of joy. Yes, I would be back next year, I thought, and yes I would actually train for it.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Birth of the Manimal
Today is September 10, 2010, and tomorrow is my very first ultramarathon, the McKenzie River Trail 32 mile run. Why am I running this? I hope to explore this and other questions in this blog, and look into certain topics of interest to potential Manimals.
What is a Manimal, by the way? It's more a feeling than anything else, it's how you feel after a 50-mile road bike ride through some challenging (read: granny gear) hills, or a two hour run through the woods, or an expedition climb into the alpine ranges. I am such a manimal! is how you feel. I also get it when I do something relatively har-har, like an all day backcountry ski, or when I try to do a challenging run at the local ski resorts. It's something primordial, the psychological equivalent of putting on war paint and partaking in an ancient ceremony, although I'd be the last person to put on makeup. It's a feeling of connecting your mind with your body through movement. In my case that means forward movement, by running, biking, swimming, hiking and skiing (and perhaps some other locomotive methods that don't come to mind quite yet).
Who should be a Manimal? Well, in a word, everyone. If you are not connected with your physical self in some basic way, then you are missing out on half (or more) of all it means to be human. I hope to go into this more later, but for the moment let's be perfectly clear. If you are missing out on half (or more) of what it means to be human, then you are settling for sub-human.
What is a Manimal, by the way? It's more a feeling than anything else, it's how you feel after a 50-mile road bike ride through some challenging (read: granny gear) hills, or a two hour run through the woods, or an expedition climb into the alpine ranges. I am such a manimal! is how you feel. I also get it when I do something relatively har-har, like an all day backcountry ski, or when I try to do a challenging run at the local ski resorts. It's something primordial, the psychological equivalent of putting on war paint and partaking in an ancient ceremony, although I'd be the last person to put on makeup. It's a feeling of connecting your mind with your body through movement. In my case that means forward movement, by running, biking, swimming, hiking and skiing (and perhaps some other locomotive methods that don't come to mind quite yet).
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