Next year will be the 30th annual El Tour de Tucson. 10,000 riders are expected. I first rode in the 10th El Tour, way back in 1992 (and, for various reasons, didn't get back into road cycling for a long time). I've been looking back and looking forward; reflecting on what has changed, what has stayed the same, and figuring out that I need to continue training to finally get a sub-6-hour ("gold") time.
In '92 I got to the start way early, and stood around freezing my ass off, because the low that night was near freezing. In 2011, it was warm enough for just a short-sleeve jersey. Back then, my borrowed bike was all-aluminum, so it was fairly heavy, but more than that, *you* where the shock absorber--the pain in my hands didn't go away for days. Now, I'm riding on carbon forks, seat stays, and a seat post and it makes a huge difference.
In '92 the route was also 111 miles, but clockwise--we went west to the base of the Tucson Mountains before turning north. It was my first experience with the thrill and fear of riding in a pelaton, a mass of wheels almost touching, the hiss of brakes as near-misses occurred all around. And, of course, being passed by nearly everyone.
Nowadays the route goes southward first, and stays on city streets. The start is so slow that, in the middle of the pack where I line up, literally minutes go by between the starting gun and when it's time to start moving (and even then, better not clip both feet in!). The most important thing about El Tour, and one that thankfully hasn't changed, is that there's at least one police officer and each and every intersection on the entire route (dozens and dozens of intersections). So many kudos to the cops from Tucson and Pima County. They're there all day, giving high priority to every group of cyclists, lowest priority to all the motorists (many of which are noticeably irate)--it is a nice inversion of the normal order.
But back to the start. There are always large groups of Team In Training riders, tending to go a little slower, some of them already struggling to not be separated from their group. This year a number of them decorated their helmets with monkeys on top of empty beer cans (flying beer monkeys? anyways, it was kinda neat). I'm impatient at the start and spent the first hour passing people, or trying to avoid getting stuck behind other rides. Maybe because of the warmer weather, this year there weren't nearly as many dropped water bottles and other detritus. I passed Bill Walton--giant guy on a giant bike.
Another cool thing that hasn't changed is an El Tour tradition: a mariachi band serenading the cyclists at the first "river crossing" (about 50 or 60 yards on a dirt path across the Santa Cruz river--a century ago, it would have been flowing but alas, progress). It's great to see that. They don't have to be there, and it's maybe not all that fun--playing for what, hours? while getting all dusty and having endless streams of riders hussling past you, most of them not even acknowledging your presence? Kudos to them as well.
Further on, I witnessed a first: a pile-up. Riders were being attended to and disentangling their bikes. Everybody looked OK. This was around where we had gone east past the city dump and were paralleling the freeway on frontage roads. I was trying to stay in pace lines but, more often than not, either got dropped or rode away and had to bridge the gap to the next group.
It wasn't long before we turned north and headed into my home turf--the far eastside of Tucson. Another thing that has changed with El Tour is that there are many more spectators, particularly in these suburban areas (include the northwest side)--folks just out at the end of their driveways, or gathered on corners, to cheer riders on. One lady had a giant pot held up above her head, ringing it with a spoon or something! I think that could be more tiring than riding a bike.
Two hours in, we passed Saguaro National Park (east unit) and then the closest point to my house: 3 miles as we hit a nice long descent. Back when the course went the other way 'round, it was one of two long gradual ascents, which I definitely was not prepared for. Now I was sailing down it at 35, passing people on the way down. Then I hear the ding-ding of a bike bell and know a tandem is about to pass me--they descend like crazy. As we zag west a little on Speedway, I get behind a couple of other riders, one of whom was (after just now checking the number on the results page) the other celebrity in the race: home-run king Barry Bonds. But he slackened quite a bit as we turned north and began to climb for the first time, so I had to leave him behind. I followed behind an old dude up the rest of the hill, then passed him on the twisty-turny path down into Canyon Ranch and the 2nd "river crossing". By odd chance, there was a big gap ahead of us and when, we got off the bikes he said "thanks, I would have gotten lost on those turns" and I said "thank you, you pulled me up most of Kolb!"
I was grateful for the little break here and walked the bike through the dirt, but some people want to ride through and they're always pushy, like totally irritated (like "on your LEFT, damnit!") that they might lose a few seconds by having to go around you. But this year, I was a little faster, so it was just a few of these types, instead of the whole lead group from the 85-mile start).
The only steep grade of the event is a short hill coming out of canyon ranch. I thought about not dropping to the small chain-ring but then took stock of how drained my legs felt already (not quite halfway) and decided not to take that chance. I overheard someone say, "you guys are an hour behind the lead group."
Another fun part, after a couple more hills, is zooming through the foothills. Around three hours in I was at the halfway point. But the second half would be less even, have headwind, include the bumpiest roads, plus I'd be even weaker and slower. There was a strange pain in my right calf. I knew going in that I hadn't done enough long distance riding to be confident of that 6-hour time, and now here was the proof. So at that point it became more about just having a good ride, stopping at a few more aid stations than planned, then trying to get going fast again to hop behind a passing pace-line and stay with them! And that's the way it went.
In another reminder of years past, the final rest stop was again my favorite: excellent brownies, salty snacks, friendly volunteers. Kudos to those folks as well.
All told, by the time I finished, thirty minutes had been spent stopped somewhere and the rest, six hours and sixteen minutes, were riding. Looking forward to next year!
Monday, November 21, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Knees And The Damage Done
"You're gonna blow out your knees by the time you're 40" someone told me, when I took up running a number of years ago. Well... here I am almost 40 and, yes, I have had some significant knee problems recently.
All those miles on pavement I was told, would wear down my knee joints over time. My standard response was that having good form and not over-doing it would prevent this outcome. I still think that can be the case. After all, there are runners in their eighties doing major events like marathons and Ironman triathalons. When you're running right, you can feel the shock being transmitted through your body, safely past the knees. And, at a moderate pace like mine, the shock is not particularly large.
But what happened in the past few months is that I neglected to follow the common sense guidelines.
Dec 27th. In the evening after doing a PR < 23 min 5K, I banged my knee on the side of something and later felt a sharp pain on the side and middle of my right kneecap. I thought maybe it would go away and tried biking on it, and doing a short run in the next couple of days, but it hurt pretty badly. I was hobbling to work; going down stairs and even sitting were pretty painful.
After doing some research and eventually seeing a doctor it was clear that it was Patello-Femoral Pain Syndrome, sometimes called "Runner's Knee." It basically means that you've worn away some cartilage on the underside of the kneecap. This is usually due to bad form, where your patellar-femoral tendon is moving at too great of an angle relative to the knee. It's actually more common in women because they naturally have a higher "Q angle" here--more of a Y than a guy. Probably some asymmetry in my motion set up the condition for this to happen. One stupid thing I sometimes did was to pull my knees inward while cycling. Then I read that it basically has no aerodynamic advantage so, you know, don't be stupid. I'd also injured this knee years ago in a skiiing accident so that definitely could have contributed (my rehab for that, once the initial swelling was gone, was to do nothing, another thing that was also not smart).
But once I got serious about my right knee and started doing RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) it began to get better. On the advice of the doc I took maximum doses of Ibubrofen for a week (which was literally all I could stomach). After that week I was able to do a 10K again, not at my planned pace or anything, but without making things worse. Cycling still hurt, I think because the full flexions aggravated the condition. All told, it was about a month before I could run at the same intensity level and a few more weeks for cycling--and the bulk of that time no doubt has more to do with my failure to treat it immediately and appropriately.
Mar 1st. I went for a big trail run, taking on some long, steep sections. Not only was that new for me, but I had only allowed less than two days for recovery from an event that had left my quads really, really sore. What's more, I really hammered my knees on the rocky descent. Well, the next time I went out running, after about ten minutes, I noticed a pain developing on the side of my left knee. It got worse and pretty quickly, I was walking home.
At this point I was basically hoping it would go away. A few times over the next two weeks I'd go for a run and the same thing happened, within minutes my left knee felt so bad that it was clear that continuing was not wise. It wasn't a typical pain--pushing through it seemed possible--but I had to figure out what was going on. After seeing the doc and doing more research on the net, I found an exact match for my symptoms--Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome (funny enough it is sometimes also called "Runner's Knee") or ITBS.
It's bad news. It's nearly always caused by a spike in training--pushing yourself well beyond what your body is comfortable doing. It hides--you feel fine, you feel strong, you feel like running and so you do, but by the time you feel it again, you're doing more damage and are back to square zero. Furthermore, the more often you experience it, the more likely you are to encounter it again. It's not uncommon for people extreme cases of this condition to give up running.
It's not actually in the IT band itself, which is a tendon that extends from the hip to the knee on the side of your legs. Rather, it's an inflammation where part of the IT band attaches to the tibia, in particular where it crosses over the "lateral epicondyle", which is a bump on the side of your leg just below the knee. At about 20 degrees of knee flexion the pressure on the tissues between the lateral epicondyle and the IT band are the greatest. Inflammation builds progressively here and begins to interrupt your gait. A few minutes of rest can be all that is needed for the pain to go away. But--it's a weird thing--when you become accustomed to a certain level of capability, accepting any limitation of it is very frustrating.
I bought an e-book (free sample here) by Paul Ingraham who reviews what's known about this condition, what works to treat it, and what doesn't work. It's a fantastic investigation, a hard-nosed look at the evidence versus unsupported misinformation (of which there is quite a bit). He suffered from ITBS for a long time himself after surviving a grizzly bear encounter and running down a mountain, a treated patients with it as a massage therapist. I really appreciate his skeptical, evidence-based approach, going to primary sources as well as his own experience to determine what is actually known here and what actually works. His advice can be boiled down to rest and "megadoses of well-timed icing." (If you suffer from ITBS and want to know all your options, I highly recommend purchasing his book).
So I tried it. Another week with no running (or cycling) and some time spent applying ice to the side of me knee. Finally I went running again and the severity of the problem was reduced by maybe half. A significant improvement, but I was hoping it would be completely cured, so this was still pretty distressing. More aggressive treatment was required! So for three days straight I was icing the knee pretty much every waking hour. "ITBS may consist entirely of inflammation" is one of Mr. Ingraham's conclusions. My own interpretation of this is that it is not a muscular problem but a circulatory problem. Perhaps the leg uses the compression created by the interaction of the ITB and the lateral epicondyle as a pump to get blood up past the knee to counteract the forces in running that drive blood down to the feet? You can feel the swelling when ITBS is just starting, even if it is not visible, it feels to me like your muscles are starting to twist.
By this time I had become aware of subtle differences in the way my knees felt and had formed a goal of not running until the left as good as the right. After another three days of infrequent icing, I tried running again, and this time felt major improvement. That was five weeks after the initial symptoms, five weeks where I couldn't do a continuous run longer than a couple of miles.
That doesn't sound like a big loss (and again in this case, it probably could have been shorter--say two weeks--if I'd known exactly what I was dealing with up front and had been smart about it). But running gets to be an addiction to the point where, even faced with the need to stop it for a few weeks can seem like a major problem that you would do anything to overcome. Your plans for being at a certain level months ahead suddenly are in jeopardy. You may have to cancel events. Your friends will be posting their workouts and you'll burn with envy. You've lost, as I said, some of your core capabilities, with some threat that they are compromised for good.
Another week after the "comeback" run I completed a fairly challenging event (Sabino Canyon) at a pace slightly faster than my time last year (when I was majorly sore--at this point muscle soreness feels like sweet relief compared to knee pain). That was a week ago, and, if things continue to go well, in another month I'll be back at the level where I was last in December (and, briefly, in February).
Now I'm a zealous advocate of the "10% rule" (never increase your distance or your effort more than 10% per week). Lesson learned!
All those miles on pavement I was told, would wear down my knee joints over time. My standard response was that having good form and not over-doing it would prevent this outcome. I still think that can be the case. After all, there are runners in their eighties doing major events like marathons and Ironman triathalons. When you're running right, you can feel the shock being transmitted through your body, safely past the knees. And, at a moderate pace like mine, the shock is not particularly large.
But what happened in the past few months is that I neglected to follow the common sense guidelines.
Dec 27th. In the evening after doing a PR < 23 min 5K, I banged my knee on the side of something and later felt a sharp pain on the side and middle of my right kneecap. I thought maybe it would go away and tried biking on it, and doing a short run in the next couple of days, but it hurt pretty badly. I was hobbling to work; going down stairs and even sitting were pretty painful.
After doing some research and eventually seeing a doctor it was clear that it was Patello-Femoral Pain Syndrome, sometimes called "Runner's Knee." It basically means that you've worn away some cartilage on the underside of the kneecap. This is usually due to bad form, where your patellar-femoral tendon is moving at too great of an angle relative to the knee. It's actually more common in women because they naturally have a higher "Q angle" here--more of a Y than a guy. Probably some asymmetry in my motion set up the condition for this to happen. One stupid thing I sometimes did was to pull my knees inward while cycling. Then I read that it basically has no aerodynamic advantage so, you know, don't be stupid. I'd also injured this knee years ago in a skiiing accident so that definitely could have contributed (my rehab for that, once the initial swelling was gone, was to do nothing, another thing that was also not smart).
But once I got serious about my right knee and started doing RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) it began to get better. On the advice of the doc I took maximum doses of Ibubrofen for a week (which was literally all I could stomach). After that week I was able to do a 10K again, not at my planned pace or anything, but without making things worse. Cycling still hurt, I think because the full flexions aggravated the condition. All told, it was about a month before I could run at the same intensity level and a few more weeks for cycling--and the bulk of that time no doubt has more to do with my failure to treat it immediately and appropriately.
Mar 1st. I went for a big trail run, taking on some long, steep sections. Not only was that new for me, but I had only allowed less than two days for recovery from an event that had left my quads really, really sore. What's more, I really hammered my knees on the rocky descent. Well, the next time I went out running, after about ten minutes, I noticed a pain developing on the side of my left knee. It got worse and pretty quickly, I was walking home.
At this point I was basically hoping it would go away. A few times over the next two weeks I'd go for a run and the same thing happened, within minutes my left knee felt so bad that it was clear that continuing was not wise. It wasn't a typical pain--pushing through it seemed possible--but I had to figure out what was going on. After seeing the doc and doing more research on the net, I found an exact match for my symptoms--Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome (funny enough it is sometimes also called "Runner's Knee") or ITBS.
It's bad news. It's nearly always caused by a spike in training--pushing yourself well beyond what your body is comfortable doing. It hides--you feel fine, you feel strong, you feel like running and so you do, but by the time you feel it again, you're doing more damage and are back to square zero. Furthermore, the more often you experience it, the more likely you are to encounter it again. It's not uncommon for people extreme cases of this condition to give up running.
It's not actually in the IT band itself, which is a tendon that extends from the hip to the knee on the side of your legs. Rather, it's an inflammation where part of the IT band attaches to the tibia, in particular where it crosses over the "lateral epicondyle", which is a bump on the side of your leg just below the knee. At about 20 degrees of knee flexion the pressure on the tissues between the lateral epicondyle and the IT band are the greatest. Inflammation builds progressively here and begins to interrupt your gait. A few minutes of rest can be all that is needed for the pain to go away. But--it's a weird thing--when you become accustomed to a certain level of capability, accepting any limitation of it is very frustrating.
I bought an e-book (free sample here) by Paul Ingraham who reviews what's known about this condition, what works to treat it, and what doesn't work. It's a fantastic investigation, a hard-nosed look at the evidence versus unsupported misinformation (of which there is quite a bit). He suffered from ITBS for a long time himself after surviving a grizzly bear encounter and running down a mountain, a treated patients with it as a massage therapist. I really appreciate his skeptical, evidence-based approach, going to primary sources as well as his own experience to determine what is actually known here and what actually works. His advice can be boiled down to rest and "megadoses of well-timed icing." (If you suffer from ITBS and want to know all your options, I highly recommend purchasing his book).
So I tried it. Another week with no running (or cycling) and some time spent applying ice to the side of me knee. Finally I went running again and the severity of the problem was reduced by maybe half. A significant improvement, but I was hoping it would be completely cured, so this was still pretty distressing. More aggressive treatment was required! So for three days straight I was icing the knee pretty much every waking hour. "ITBS may consist entirely of inflammation" is one of Mr. Ingraham's conclusions. My own interpretation of this is that it is not a muscular problem but a circulatory problem. Perhaps the leg uses the compression created by the interaction of the ITB and the lateral epicondyle as a pump to get blood up past the knee to counteract the forces in running that drive blood down to the feet? You can feel the swelling when ITBS is just starting, even if it is not visible, it feels to me like your muscles are starting to twist.
By this time I had become aware of subtle differences in the way my knees felt and had formed a goal of not running until the left as good as the right. After another three days of infrequent icing, I tried running again, and this time felt major improvement. That was five weeks after the initial symptoms, five weeks where I couldn't do a continuous run longer than a couple of miles.
That doesn't sound like a big loss (and again in this case, it probably could have been shorter--say two weeks--if I'd known exactly what I was dealing with up front and had been smart about it). But running gets to be an addiction to the point where, even faced with the need to stop it for a few weeks can seem like a major problem that you would do anything to overcome. Your plans for being at a certain level months ahead suddenly are in jeopardy. You may have to cancel events. Your friends will be posting their workouts and you'll burn with envy. You've lost, as I said, some of your core capabilities, with some threat that they are compromised for good.
Another week after the "comeback" run I completed a fairly challenging event (Sabino Canyon) at a pace slightly faster than my time last year (when I was majorly sore--at this point muscle soreness feels like sweet relief compared to knee pain). That was a week ago, and, if things continue to go well, in another month I'll be back at the level where I was last in December (and, briefly, in February).
Now I'm a zealous advocate of the "10% rule" (never increase your distance or your effort more than 10% per week). Lesson learned!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Ragnar del Sol 2011
I can sum up Ragnar del Sol 2011 in one word: totallyfrigginawesome.
It was so much more fun than last year, I think for a variety of reasons:
In our vehicle there were six runners (Jamie, Casey, myself, Lori, Dave, and Kendra) and a driver (the aforementioned Maggie). Jamie had some tough legs to run, but stayed composed and made it through with flying colors. Casey had to deal with blisters and a super-tough last leg: 8.9 miles, with the last 3.5 in a long, tortuous uphill. That would have stopped many a lesser runner, but she didn't stop to walk and powered through it, walking all gimpy after it all. Lori just ran serenely and confidently every time, setting personal bests like nothing could slow her down. Dave was awesome, despite getting the least amount of sleep, he ran fast and solidly every time, also setting PR's and powering through a tough, 5-mile uphill final leg even with sore legs and fatigue. He also kept us all going with his fun, motivational energy. Kendra put in solid, fast runs every time. Finishing off the legs for us (team vehicle #1) she said more than once to not expect her to be fast, but she too found a way to put down a major effort and power up hills. And Maggie's support as a driver, comm person and "safety officer" was invaluable. Sporting crutches due to a recent injury, she also put in an immense effort with all the distance that had to be traveled out of the vehicle.
My first leg was a 7-miler on a straight, slight downslope in scrub desert southwest of Wickenburg. I probably ate a powerbar too close beforehand because my stomach was constantly cramping. Every time I tried to speed up it would hit me harder. I'd hoped to do like an 8.25 (minutes/mile) pace here but there was just no way. I had to accept the fact that most of the runners were passing me and I only passed one (a guy whose costume was like the short-shorts police officer from Reno 911! and whose sashaying speed-walk out of the exchange had everyone laughing). I finished in just under an hour, which is about my usual training pace now, so it wasn't too bad.
I wanted to do some pace running last year, inspired by the work that Joe P. put in to help everyone, and hoping that it would warm up muscles sore from a big initial effort. Rule changes meant that I could only pace at night, so it had to be for runner 2's 2nd leg, which was Casey. No doubt she would have been fine without it, but hopefully it helped. This was a 4.7-mile run through Sun City West late at night, cold again. I'm not sure of the time, but it felt like a 9.5 pace to me, and I was reminded of how incredible it feels to hold back a little, like tremendous reserves of speed and strength are just waiting for you. We made a number of turns as the course followed a series of darkened streets out there on the far edge of Phoenix.
And then we hit the exchange chute and it was time for me to continue through my 6.3 mile leg. I sped up, but not by too much, a little bit of fatigue setting in I guess, telling me not to burn out. There was a challenging trail section that started out with cobblestones and that really did not feel good. Then it plunged down into a wash with a steep descent, and I actually fell but threw out a hand and stopped from tumbling. Luckily the section was short and it was back to a mix of sidewalk and pavement. Quite a few runners were passing me again, so clearly the runner 3's in the other teams were fitter on average. I would not be counting "kills" this year. There was a hill that had me feeling worn-down; I actually stopped to walk for maybe a minute at the top (looking around to make sure nobody in the team would see). This was probably around the half-way point; this run seemed to drag on longer than my first leg. Finally the glow of the exchange presented itself in the dark and it was over in minutes.
I grabbed maybe 90 minutes of sleep that night and then we were back at it. My quads were as stiff and sore at this point as they have ever been, but a 7.7 mile leg awaited me. The saving grace was that it was almost entirely a steep downhill, so I just had to put Mr. Newton in the drivers seat and deal with the pain. I'd had some Tylenol after the night's run, Ibuprofen in the morning, rehydrated with a meal, Gatorade, water, EmergenC, applied this gel stuff called BioFreeze, stretched out, but nothing had really helped.
The leg started with an uphill and I was achingly slow out of the gate. Many runners passed me by the crest of the hill; I figured all I was good for in this leg was maybe a 10.0 pace. But I started to get into a rhythm as the downhill started and found that a medium-pace was sustainable. I passed a couple of the guys who had passed me earlier. It was 7 miles of continuous downhill coming out of Fountain Hills, losing 100 feet every mile, fun to run despite the pain in the background and the traffic whizzing close by (we were running against traffic on a narrow shoulder). There were two water stations but it was a cool, overcast morning so I kept at it. The "1-mile-to-go" sign appeared sooner than expected and I ran the last quarter mile really fast. Then quickly found that my quads were so tight that I couldn't walk evenly... which persisted for about another 24 hours!
So that was my Ragnar del Sol 2011, running close to a full marathon in three parts, and being able to stick to my estimated 8.5 average pace (I didn't accurately time the last two runs, but it was close). It was also a great relief that the knee I'd banged up a month earlier had no issues.
Our other team van with six runners and a driver did great as well. We met up and finished together, including Maggie on her crutches, Casey hobbling and me all stiff-legged.
There's so much more to be said about the experience--all positive--I encourage everyone who is a runner (and especially beginning runners who can do at least a 10K) to find or form a Ragnar relay team and try it for themselves!
It was so much more fun than last year, I think for a variety of reasons:
- first and foremost, knowing what to expect
- having a dedicated driver (thanks Maggie and Ryan!) and someone who handled all the communication between vehicles
- that all of our runners without exception did more than they knew they were capable of, everyone was so positive and pumped, myself included (last year I struggled to complete my final leg)
- that no one got hurt
- our fund-raising which paid for gas money and some food (we're raffling off the ~$150 heart rate monitoring sports watch received for registering early)
- using an SUV and a mini-van instead of rental vans saved another ton of money, though space was a little more cramped, it was not a problem at all
In our vehicle there were six runners (Jamie, Casey, myself, Lori, Dave, and Kendra) and a driver (the aforementioned Maggie). Jamie had some tough legs to run, but stayed composed and made it through with flying colors. Casey had to deal with blisters and a super-tough last leg: 8.9 miles, with the last 3.5 in a long, tortuous uphill. That would have stopped many a lesser runner, but she didn't stop to walk and powered through it, walking all gimpy after it all. Lori just ran serenely and confidently every time, setting personal bests like nothing could slow her down. Dave was awesome, despite getting the least amount of sleep, he ran fast and solidly every time, also setting PR's and powering through a tough, 5-mile uphill final leg even with sore legs and fatigue. He also kept us all going with his fun, motivational energy. Kendra put in solid, fast runs every time. Finishing off the legs for us (team vehicle #1) she said more than once to not expect her to be fast, but she too found a way to put down a major effort and power up hills. And Maggie's support as a driver, comm person and "safety officer" was invaluable. Sporting crutches due to a recent injury, she also put in an immense effort with all the distance that had to be traveled out of the vehicle.
My first leg was a 7-miler on a straight, slight downslope in scrub desert southwest of Wickenburg. I probably ate a powerbar too close beforehand because my stomach was constantly cramping. Every time I tried to speed up it would hit me harder. I'd hoped to do like an 8.25 (minutes/mile) pace here but there was just no way. I had to accept the fact that most of the runners were passing me and I only passed one (a guy whose costume was like the short-shorts police officer from Reno 911! and whose sashaying speed-walk out of the exchange had everyone laughing). I finished in just under an hour, which is about my usual training pace now, so it wasn't too bad.
I wanted to do some pace running last year, inspired by the work that Joe P. put in to help everyone, and hoping that it would warm up muscles sore from a big initial effort. Rule changes meant that I could only pace at night, so it had to be for runner 2's 2nd leg, which was Casey. No doubt she would have been fine without it, but hopefully it helped. This was a 4.7-mile run through Sun City West late at night, cold again. I'm not sure of the time, but it felt like a 9.5 pace to me, and I was reminded of how incredible it feels to hold back a little, like tremendous reserves of speed and strength are just waiting for you. We made a number of turns as the course followed a series of darkened streets out there on the far edge of Phoenix.
And then we hit the exchange chute and it was time for me to continue through my 6.3 mile leg. I sped up, but not by too much, a little bit of fatigue setting in I guess, telling me not to burn out. There was a challenging trail section that started out with cobblestones and that really did not feel good. Then it plunged down into a wash with a steep descent, and I actually fell but threw out a hand and stopped from tumbling. Luckily the section was short and it was back to a mix of sidewalk and pavement. Quite a few runners were passing me again, so clearly the runner 3's in the other teams were fitter on average. I would not be counting "kills" this year. There was a hill that had me feeling worn-down; I actually stopped to walk for maybe a minute at the top (looking around to make sure nobody in the team would see). This was probably around the half-way point; this run seemed to drag on longer than my first leg. Finally the glow of the exchange presented itself in the dark and it was over in minutes.
I grabbed maybe 90 minutes of sleep that night and then we were back at it. My quads were as stiff and sore at this point as they have ever been, but a 7.7 mile leg awaited me. The saving grace was that it was almost entirely a steep downhill, so I just had to put Mr. Newton in the drivers seat and deal with the pain. I'd had some Tylenol after the night's run, Ibuprofen in the morning, rehydrated with a meal, Gatorade, water, EmergenC, applied this gel stuff called BioFreeze, stretched out, but nothing had really helped.
The leg started with an uphill and I was achingly slow out of the gate. Many runners passed me by the crest of the hill; I figured all I was good for in this leg was maybe a 10.0 pace. But I started to get into a rhythm as the downhill started and found that a medium-pace was sustainable. I passed a couple of the guys who had passed me earlier. It was 7 miles of continuous downhill coming out of Fountain Hills, losing 100 feet every mile, fun to run despite the pain in the background and the traffic whizzing close by (we were running against traffic on a narrow shoulder). There were two water stations but it was a cool, overcast morning so I kept at it. The "1-mile-to-go" sign appeared sooner than expected and I ran the last quarter mile really fast. Then quickly found that my quads were so tight that I couldn't walk evenly... which persisted for about another 24 hours!
So that was my Ragnar del Sol 2011, running close to a full marathon in three parts, and being able to stick to my estimated 8.5 average pace (I didn't accurately time the last two runs, but it was close). It was also a great relief that the knee I'd banged up a month earlier had no issues.
Our other team van with six runners and a driver did great as well. We met up and finished together, including Maggie on her crutches, Casey hobbling and me all stiff-legged.
There's so much more to be said about the experience--all positive--I encourage everyone who is a runner (and especially beginning runners who can do at least a 10K) to find or form a Ragnar relay team and try it for themselves!
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
What's A Skeptic To Do?
One of my favorite maxims is "Be open to anything, but skeptical of everything." Joe Nickell, a skeptic and self-described paranormal investigator, talks about the difference between "debunking" and skepticism. A debunker has an agenda, a bias, something to prove, a closed mind. A skeptic, on the other hand, at least ideally, has an open mind and seeks nothing more than the truth. We are born skeptics, always asking "why?" If you have a child, or remember being one, then you know it doesn't take 20 questions (often far less) to go from the sphere of the known to the realm of the unknown. And, particularly in today's world, pretty much everyone it seems has developed a healthy skepticism as a counter-measure to all the opinions and advertisements we continually receive.
However, one forms opinions. One sees the evidence--or most often, the lack thereof--and cannot help but form an opinion. In fact, one eventually realizes that there are very few paths to knowledge. When it comes right down to it, humanity has discovered only one process that works in this regard: science.
Many people, I've found, have a very poor idea of how science works, especially if they're predisposed to think that truth is somehow subjective on a deep level, or to think that all systems of knowledge are somehow relative and are an artifact of culture. However, I think that we've always had science to one degree or another. We just didn't have a name for it. An aboriginal shaman, let's say, who could recommend what plant to eat to cure an upset stomach, has knowledge that probably was not arrived at via mystical means. Very probably, this type of knowledge was passed down, and continually tested each time it was put into practice. So we are talking about repeatable, verifiable, objectively testable nuggets of knowledge. In other words, science.
That's not to say that science is always correct. It is of course prone to bias and error. I just read a long, fascinating article on "the decline effect" or, as one researcher put it, the conclusion that most new results in science are, in fact, wrong, as a result of hidden bias, the effect of believing what we want to believe. I've been close enough to good science in my career to see that it is largely a process of trying your damnedest to disprove your results, to in effect try to debunk your own theories before they are published and meet with the withering skepticism of the scientific community.
For this reason, science has been described as a process that doesn't really so much as arrive at truth as it is a process that discards falsehoods. It's a way of separating false ideas from those that are either true or not yet proven false.
That is something deep to ponder, but the important point for the purposes of this essay is, that science works. Nothing else has built-in processes for removing bias and error. If it did, it would be science. Everything else is much more prone to all the ways we fool ourselves.
This all leads up to the conclusion that there's really not much we know, and very little of that about which we can be sure. In fact, we can't be absolutely sure of anything. Is the world round? Well, to a certain degree yes. There are various ways of seeing that for yourself. But it's only an approximation, one that continues to be refined (to an absurdly accurate level). And this is true of all our knowledge.
So, what is a skeptic to do, adrift in this sea of non-belief, armed only with a map of these crudely drawn islands of knowledge? Two things. First, explore. In other words, continue to learn. Knowledge that is provisional is not valueless. Recognize the lay of the land, and you'll discern ways to determine the likelihood that something is true. Second, wonder. For just as science is our best path to knowledge, it is also our only known fully renewable source of wonder.
However, one forms opinions. One sees the evidence--or most often, the lack thereof--and cannot help but form an opinion. In fact, one eventually realizes that there are very few paths to knowledge. When it comes right down to it, humanity has discovered only one process that works in this regard: science.
Many people, I've found, have a very poor idea of how science works, especially if they're predisposed to think that truth is somehow subjective on a deep level, or to think that all systems of knowledge are somehow relative and are an artifact of culture. However, I think that we've always had science to one degree or another. We just didn't have a name for it. An aboriginal shaman, let's say, who could recommend what plant to eat to cure an upset stomach, has knowledge that probably was not arrived at via mystical means. Very probably, this type of knowledge was passed down, and continually tested each time it was put into practice. So we are talking about repeatable, verifiable, objectively testable nuggets of knowledge. In other words, science.
That's not to say that science is always correct. It is of course prone to bias and error. I just read a long, fascinating article on "the decline effect" or, as one researcher put it, the conclusion that most new results in science are, in fact, wrong, as a result of hidden bias, the effect of believing what we want to believe. I've been close enough to good science in my career to see that it is largely a process of trying your damnedest to disprove your results, to in effect try to debunk your own theories before they are published and meet with the withering skepticism of the scientific community.
For this reason, science has been described as a process that doesn't really so much as arrive at truth as it is a process that discards falsehoods. It's a way of separating false ideas from those that are either true or not yet proven false.
That is something deep to ponder, but the important point for the purposes of this essay is, that science works. Nothing else has built-in processes for removing bias and error. If it did, it would be science. Everything else is much more prone to all the ways we fool ourselves.
This all leads up to the conclusion that there's really not much we know, and very little of that about which we can be sure. In fact, we can't be absolutely sure of anything. Is the world round? Well, to a certain degree yes. There are various ways of seeing that for yourself. But it's only an approximation, one that continues to be refined (to an absurdly accurate level). And this is true of all our knowledge.
So, what is a skeptic to do, adrift in this sea of non-belief, armed only with a map of these crudely drawn islands of knowledge? Two things. First, explore. In other words, continue to learn. Knowledge that is provisional is not valueless. Recognize the lay of the land, and you'll discern ways to determine the likelihood that something is true. Second, wonder. For just as science is our best path to knowledge, it is also our only known fully renewable source of wonder.
Switching To Google
I figured it was far past time to switch over to Google for my web-hosting needs. The advantages are that it's free, you automatically get new features and, best of all, you don't need to maintain anything.
Plus, it's a massive injection of newness, which cannot be understimated. I had been using a web-blogging platform called serendipity (AKA s9y) for many years. This is a PHP-based software package which in many respects is similar to (and somewhat compatible with) WordPress. It is not for any faults in s9y that I switched; my blog ran flawlessly on it for many years: it's stable, secure (never needed to do a security upgrade, somethat that definitely cannot be said for WP) and smartly written (also cannot say that about WP). I just needed something new and to get off of paid hosting.
So I switched over to Google Apps for domain services (I use domainmanager.com for DNS), the personal addition. One of the limitations here is that you can only manage a single primary domain, though a domain can have multiple aliases, and up to 50 users (these restrictions are removed in the non-profit/education edition and in the business edition of course). But you can setup multiple accounts in Google Apps. So the trick is, how do you manage logging in and logging out of multiple Google accounts? Simple, just install Mozilla's Prism, and create a new instance for each project that you want to manage through Google Apps. Works great!
Plus, it's a massive injection of newness, which cannot be understimated. I had been using a web-blogging platform called serendipity (AKA s9y) for many years. This is a PHP-based software package which in many respects is similar to (and somewhat compatible with) WordPress. It is not for any faults in s9y that I switched; my blog ran flawlessly on it for many years: it's stable, secure (never needed to do a security upgrade, somethat that definitely cannot be said for WP) and smartly written (also cannot say that about WP). I just needed something new and to get off of paid hosting.
So I switched over to Google Apps for domain services (I use domainmanager.com for DNS), the personal addition. One of the limitations here is that you can only manage a single primary domain, though a domain can have multiple aliases, and up to 50 users (these restrictions are removed in the non-profit/education edition and in the business edition of course). But you can setup multiple accounts in Google Apps. So the trick is, how do you manage logging in and logging out of multiple Google accounts? Simple, just install Mozilla's Prism, and create a new instance for each project that you want to manage through Google Apps. Works great!
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