Beware the low-hanging fruit!

In the academic world, low-hanging fruit is a metaphor for the easiest targets to grab.  Whether it's for grants, sturyding, or residencies, the low-hanging fruit is the stuff that we grab first before settling in for the longer tasks that are going to take more time.  So, for example, when I grade papers, I will pick those that are the quickest to grade, so I can get feel like I've accomplished something. 

Yesterday, I found out about the dangers of low-hanging fruit... literally.

It wasn't raining when I got home from work, and there was nobody home:  no wifey, no kids, no dogs.  I decided to go out for a run.  Since it is now dark at 5:00 PM, I was going to wear something that could be seen by cars.  I put on a black long-sleeved top.  Okay, so not the best color choice, but I also put on a reflective belt, Nightlife gloves, and a headlamp.  I used to think that the more reflective and bright clothing I wore, the more I was lighting myself up as a target for cars to aim at.  But, since I was wearing a black shirt, I figured I needed a lot to be seen.  My run was pretty uneventful for the first half.  I saw a buck out on the road, and I think he was trying to decide if he needed to get out of the way for me.  Whether it was me or the car that was approaching from the other direction, the buck decided to high-tail it for the other side of the road and safety beyond. 

As I headed up Union for home, I decided to stay on the sidewalk.  Now, if you are familiar with Steilacoom at all, there are places on Union where the sidewalk takes abrupt left and right jogs at seemingly random locations (although it probably has to do with trees in the planting strip).  And, I haven't yet memorized those locations.  So, one second I was running along the middle of the sidewalk, happily trotting along (it was a pretty good run), and the next second I was in the middle of the planting strip as the sidewalk had jogged left.  And then... WHAM!  Smacked right on the nose by an apple (the low-hanging fruit).  Although it didn't hurt, the suddenness of getting whacked on the bridge of the nose by a solid, wet object in the dark was a bit startling.  And since my headlamp beam is pointed at the ground so I can be on the lookout for things that I can step in or get tripped by, the apple was totally unexpected. 

Since nothing was hurt, and all was well, it was good for a chuckle, though.  And I realized that there was yet another danger to running in the dark!

Don't get old if you can help it

It's Hell getting old.  Maybe I should say "older," since, compared to most of my patients, I'm not really old.  Some days, though, I definitely feel older than others.  Take yesterday, for example.  Following my plan of running less, but running faster, I headed out on the track for a ladder of 400, 600, 800, 1200, 800, 600, 400 all with a 400 RI.  Because I was a bit busy in the morning, I didn't do this at Noon as I had planned, but ended up on the Steilacoom HS track at 5:00 PM in the dark.  Which was okay.  There were some benches and barriers on the track, but nothing that I would be running into, I hoped, even if it was pretty dark.  It was nearly a full moon, but since the clouds were hiding it, there wasn't much light, except for the spotlight on the flag at the far end of the field.  That, actually, looked pretty cool. 

So, off I went on a 2 mile w/u.  I was wearing my Newtons; I had thought about using racing flats, but hoped that I could still make the intervals easily wearing training flats.  At the 1.5 mile mark, I did some 100 m strides, and didn't feel too bad.  However, I did notice my left hip (more correctly, groin) was acting a bit unhappy.  I had tweaked it during the Turkey Trot (see previous entry for the details), but it hadn't been too bothersome until now.  Still, I didn't think it would be a problem. 

As soon as I started the 400, I knew that my groin was a bigger problem than I expected.  It got progressively more painful after the first 100.  By the time I came around to the start/finish, I wondered if I would be able to continue the workout.  I was having problems planting and pushing off and I definitely couldn't stride out on my left.  To make things even more problematic, my watch was all messed up.  So, while I think I made the interval (should have been 1:29), I couldn't tell.  During my 400 recovery jog, I thought about my predicament.  I decided to run the 600 and see what happened.  I also thought that I fixed the problem with my watch.  I hit the button to start the 600 and took off.  Immediately, I realized that my leg was not going to let me finish the workout (at least at the intervals I wanted).  I chopped my stride, ran the rest of the lap fairly gingerly and stopped at the 400.  And it was over.  To add insult to injury, when I looked at my watch to see what my first 400 time was, I couldn't get it to recall. 

I guess I'm not running for a little while.  I missed my target of 100K for the month, but that's not a huge deal; it was just a motivator.   I'm going to see if I can still ride and swim.  Right now, I'm walking kind of like I just got off a horse.  Seems that things like this never used to happen to me 20 years ago, when I was younger and faster.

Not having a clue

I ran a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot the other day.  The weather was as good as it gets for late November in the Pacific Northwest:  cool, dry, and kind of sunny.  Basically, I looked at the weather forecast, and when rain wasn't listed, I signed up the boys and me.  While a 5K doesn't burn all that many calories, it helped to justify the binge eating that I was going to do later in the day.  And besides, what else am I going to do on a holiday morning, right?

We made the trek to NE Tacoma for the Norpoint Turkey Trot.  After picking up our shirts and numbers ($35 for a short sleeved one color white t-shirt for Ryan?  Really?), we headed over with the McMonigal family.  I warmed up briefly with David and JJ and took my place at the start, several rows behind the front, figuring all of the high schoolers in front of me were going to be going a lot faster than I was.  My plan was to ease my way through the first mile, and pick it up.  The gun went off (it was an actual cannon!) without a countdown, so we were all a bit surprised.  As I got started, within the first 100 yards, some bozo went sprinting by me and cut me off, tripping me.  I struggled to remain upright for about 20 yards, before finally losing my balance and falling, scraping my knee and elbow.  I think somebody else went down behind me as well.  I rolled over, got up and sprinted up to yell at the bozo who tripped me.  As I caught and passed him, I yelled... well, let's just say that it wasn't "Have a nice day."  So much for taking it easy.  I ran the rest of the way without looking down at my knee, because I didn't want to see how badly it was scraped up.  I did look at my elbow, and my long-sleeve top wasn't torn, so that was a good sign.  I decided not to look at my watch for my splits; turns out my splits were pretty reasonable, given the topography of the course:  6:25, 6:17, 7:00.  I probably seeded myself too far back, as I was only passed by two people and passed a bunch, finishing 18th overall and 2nd in my AG (40-49).  Total time:  20:32. 

I went back to find the boys, and David was moving right along, and finished in 24:xx.  Ryan wasn't too far back at 30:xx.  David was 4th in his AG and Ryan was 9th.  Altogether, not too shabby a performance for the Ling family.  As we were walking back home, my left hip started tightening up, and I realized that I probably tweaked it a bit during the fall.  And yes, there was blood and some abrasions on my knee and some abrasions on my elbow, and there is a hole in the palm of one of my gloves. 

So... since we're chip-timed, what was the point of the bozo sprinting ahead and tripping me?  No idea, since he ended up finishing around 25-26 minutes.  I guess I've never understood that.  Why is it that people believe they're going to set a PR for their race by sprinting for the first 200 yards of a race and then dying and moving backwards through the field?  Especially in a little po-dunk race, what's the point of it?  It's not like they're going to be on TV.  It's not like it will matter when they cross the start line, since everything is chip-timed now.  Ah well, maybe the bozo that tripped me will have learned a lesson about seeding himself and starting more reasonably in the future.  Or maybe I just need to get closer to the front...

I don't need a GPS; I need a sun dial

Well, there have been some interesting workouts lately that have me questioning the utility of all my high-tech gee whiz gadgets.  First, I had to swim a 200 IM for time.  Yep, that would be 3 out of 4 strokes that I don't do very well.  I only got lapped once by a 13 year old.  And David didn't really laugh at me when I finished... much.  My second workout was my 5K time trial to establish my baseline workout times.  This goes back to the Run Less, Run Faster protocol that I'm trying to follow.  And it also goes to the Endurance Nation Outseason workouts.  Both want 5K, although RLRF says that I can use 3 x 1600 with 1 minute rest (on the track).  While I would have much preferred the 3 x 1600, I decided to time trial as I thought  it would be a more accurate gauge.  So last Saturday afternoon, I sucked it up and headed out.  It was cool but sunny.  I chose the flattest 5K out of a run to Fort Steilacoom park and back.  This included nearly 1 mile of flat, paved, almost completely straight bike path that I ran out and back as well as some flat sidewalk before and after.  I didn't even look at my Garmin, because I didn't want to know.  When I got home and downloaded it, the truth was ugly.  21:13 for 5K, which comes out to 6:50/mile.  If you would have told me even 5 years ago that I'd be working so hard to run so slow, I would have never believed you.  And if you would have told me 20 years ago that I would ever be this slow, well...

I guess I have nowhere to go but up.  Because I can't get any slower... can I?!

Just an 800

I had a fun swim yesterday.  I'm swimming with David's swim team, and the coach creatively designs an individual workout for me.  I'm still convinced that my swim coaches, past and present, set up IM and butterfly sets for me just for their amusement.  I don't do butterfly... it's more of a bumblebee (if a bumblebee is not supposed to be able to fly due to its aerodynamics...).  Anyway, after a 10 x 100 IM set, I had to sprint kick 25's.  Now, the term "sprint kick" is an oxymoron in my world.  And I was going to ask if I could use fins, but decided against it, since I knew the answer would be laughter and a "No."  But I was actually excited that I was able to sprint kick a 25 between 22-25 seconds.  Before any of you belittle that time, you have to understand that I was barely able to get forward propulsion when I first started kicking back when I was just starting to swim for triathlons. 

So after doing a set of 25's my legs were a bit thrashed.  And then the last part?  Ashley said, "One last thing before you get out of the pool:  swim an 800."  Excuse me?  I repeated that as a question.  And yup, that was the answer.  And so back and forth I went.  And you know what?  It didn't kill me; the lifeguards didn't have to save me; and I got it done.  As I was finishing the last few laps, I thought that something like that is really good for me.  Considering that a sprint tri is usually a 1/2 mile swim, it made me realize that I SHOULD be swimming faster during a race.  After all, if I can swim an 800 at the end of a workout, swimming hard during a triathlon should be reasonable. 

The funniest part of this was when I told my family about my workout while we were eating dinner.  I guess some of David's teammates were complaining about having to finish their workout with 4 x 100.  His response:  "Would you rather do this or would you rather do what my Dad is doing?  He has to swim an 800."  I guess I might have earned a little bit of respect from his team yesterday. 

Something about Newtons

Today is a double-header.  Actually the entry just before this was written yesterday.  I wasn't sure whether I was going to keep it or delete it, and then I figured that this was my blog and I can do whatever I want.

Today's thoughts are less esoteric and more along the lines of what this blog was intended for:  running and triathlons.  I ran yesterday in my Newtons.  It has been a few weeks since I ran in them, since I'm still trying to like the K-Swiss Kwicky's that I got last year.  Because of this, I've been running primarily in them; the other admission is that I haven't been running much at all in the past few weeks.  Truth be told, I haven't been enjoying running recently.  Coincidentally (or maybe not), most if not all of my runs have been with the Kwickys.  My feet have hurt a bit more, my legs have not felt as "snappy," and my body has ached a bit more the following day.  Since the weather has been wet recently, I decided to use my Newton Momentums, which were more likely to keep my feet drier.  The Kwickys have drain holes in the sole, which not only let water out, but also let water in, so not the best choice when there are puddles around.

But... the weather was cool and dry, the roads were dry, and the trails were mostly dry.  I ran from the hospital after work because I had a meeting until 5:00.  As I started on my run, my legs felt pretty good, better than they've felt in a few weeks.  And my entire run felt good and, while not effortless, seemed less of a slog than it has been.  It again had me wondering:  what is it about Newtons that seems to fit my running style so well?  Most of the time that I run in them, I feel better than when running in other shoes.  At first, I thought it was a placebo effect, but it has been pretty repeatable.  I have switched off shoes since the early 80's when I worked in a running shoe store.  And I have always used two different kinds (and usually brands) of shoes.  The first reason is that this is supposed to increase shoe life; of course, that's more the case if you are running every day.  The second reason (and the reason I use different models/brands) is to keep from developing a repetitive stress injury.  Changing the models/brands causes you to run slightly differently, and, theoretically, decreases risk of injury. 

Anyway, by doing this, along with justifying the inner Imelda Marcos in me, I do learn which shoes work better for me.  What I've found over the past several years is that Newtons work for me.  Obviously, they're not for everyone, but I like them.  I'll probably keep alternating shoes, but I think the idea that the Newtons make it easier for me to enjoy running is real.  And I may retire the Kwickys early.

(I am not sponsored by, nor do I have any affiliation with Newton Running... not yet at least!)

Random thoughts

"Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss."  This is the line from "Wall Street" that Hal Holbrook's character says to Charlie Sheen just before Sheen is arrested, and was likely paraphrased from Friedrich Nietzsche.  And it seems fitting to apply to Tyler Hamilton, based upon his book that I just read.  What does that have to do with me?  The choices that professional athletes make are hard ones.  They are being paid to perform, and, if they don't perform, they don't get paid.  While that doesn't justify the cheating that goes on, it does help to explain it to some extent. 

I am an amateur MOP-triathlete.  I enjoy my avocation, and can look upon it with a purity that a pro has long since lost.  Why?  I don't have the talent to be come close to a pro, but, thankfully, my ability to put a roof over my family's head or food on the table is not dependent on my athletic ability.  Rather, it is dependent on my intellect, which, I assume since I've been doing my job for 20+ years, IS reasonably good.  So, I can enjoy my athletic endeavors, and the only pressure to perform is that which I put on myself.  It doesn't mean that I try any less hard.  It just means that I can try (tri?) my hardest, and if I get beat by someone, it's because they were better than me on that day, and I can live with that.  I can also look myself in the eye and be satisfied that I have not done anything that I would be ashamed of admitting. 

Our culture deifies those that have the talent to do things that we cannot ourselves do.  That's why we pay our performers (actors, musicians, athletes) enormous amounts of money to entertain us.  And yet, I'm much happier being an anonymous member of society who does things, which, while being compensated not nearly as well as a performer, are just as important for the health and well-being of society.