Fitness – Page 2 – Serenity Through Sweat

70.3

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. last weekend I raced in the Ironman Gulf Coast 70.3 event and wanted to share my experience.

I have been in the sport of triathlon for over a decade now. With the exception of the full Ironman race I completed in 2013, I have mostly trained intuitively. That is, without a coach or a training plan.

I have a rough idea of what I need to do in order to be prepared. Benchmarks to hit along the way. How to set a reasonable goal that will be achievable but still lofty enough to keep me motivated.

With all the other demands in my life I want to put out a performance that I can be proud of, and I want to find the minimum effective dose of training that will help me achieve that.

With those parameters as the goal posts, this race was a huge success. It was my fifth time racing the 70.3 distance and I set a PR (personal record) by a pretty wide margin.

I did so, with less training volume than all of my previous attempts. To be fair, I have better equipment, more base fitness, and more time and knowledge in the sport than those previous races. No two races are alike. Each one presents their own unique story that unfolds on race day.

Trixie, all cleaned up and making friends

I think I swam maybe 4 times in the build up for this race. Not exactly ideal, but I like to tell people, you can lose the race on the swim, but very few people win the race there. Minimum effective dosage indeed.

The swim start was, like most all open water ocean swim starts are, abrupt and violent. You charge, full of adrenaline, down the sand and into a body of water that is actively opposing you. There was a strong quartering onshore wind from the left resulting in choppy conditions with a significant drift. The buoys were very difficult to sight. The jellyfish were up early and were active.

Knowing you have close to five hours of work Infront of you, the last thing you want to do is let your breathing and heart rate get out of control in the first ten minutes. Everything about the first ten minutes of the swim leads to exactly that. The waves and wind disrupting your stroke and your breathing. Constant contact with other swimmers. The anxiety of the amount of work still ahead. Jellyfish stings. I am a strong swimmer from years of surfing and countless hours in the pool. The hardest part of every triathlon swim for me is calming down and finding rhythm. The quicker I can do that the better I can perform.

I know I swam pretty wide of the buoy line after the second turn of the rectangular course. The wind and the waves made the buoys hard to see and the current was now pushing away from the course line. Despite the self inflicted extra swim distance I was on track for my overall goal getting out of the water and getting on my bike.

It was a beautiful day for a bike ride. I bought a new bike (Trixie) back in November and did all of my training except maybe 4 or 5 rides inside on a smart trainer. One of the more recent joys of racing for me, has been riding outside with the added comfort of some traffic protection. I have almost entirely given up on riding a road bike outside anymore because the dangers of being hit outweigh the value and pleasure it brings.

Trixie was fast. I knew she was fast but I was delighted with how the bike segment went. From a training perspective, I spent more time in this buildup working with power zones and my FTP (functional threshold power). FTP is the most amount of power you can sustain for a one hour all out effort. That number can then be scaled and adjusted for various intervals, race distances, and training sessions to optimize performance. It’s not perfect but it is a much more targeted approach than I’ve utilized in the past.

Power training and racing is also extremely reliable and relocatable. Your heart rate or pace might be different day to day, and course to course, but 200 watts is always 200 watts. I wanted to average 200 watts for the 56 mile bike ride. I estimated that would put me at about 22mph and set me up in striking distance for a sub five hour finish.

My bike segment went about as flawlessly as I could have hoped. I averaged just over 200 watts of normalized power and just over 22mph. My hydration and nutrition plan left me feeling fresh when it was time to dismount and lace up the running shoes.

The run was hot. There is no way around it. Running in full sun, in Florida, in mid May, is a recipe for cramps, dehydration, and a rough afternoon, if you find yourself prepared or unequal to the task at hand.

Thankfully, my nutrition and hydration on the bike set me up for success for the three loop course in the sweltering heat. I was targeting a 7:30/mile pace. While I fell a bit short of that, I had built enough wiggle room into my goal finishing pace that I felt comfortable my goal was still very much achievable.

I could feel my feet start to blister somewhere around mile 5. I knew that they weren’t going to get any better with 8 more miles to go. The mixture of sand residue, layers of dried sweat and the fresh water I was dousing myself with at every aid station were only making the blisters worse.

My shoes squished and squeaked noisily with every step. This new pair of racing shoes is significantly different than the minimalist trainers I tend to prefer. With a huge foam platform and a carbon plate meant to act as a sort of spring, these felt more like moon shoes. Still, I tried to keep my feet moving and focused on a high cadence. Repeating a mantra I had read about the most successful ultra runners. “Be a prancy pony”. Keep those feet moving, high and fast.

The aid stations would shimmer in the distance like a desert oasis. Volunteers crowding around to help weary travelers. I doused myself with water and dumped cups of ice down my back at every one. Small moments of relief. Short lived as the sun continued to beat down.

I’m very proud of my race performance. Like I wrote about in my last post, I was able to stay present for the experience. These are my burning legs. These are my aching lungs. No far off caves and power animals. I was able to remain calm in low points, and have overwhelmingly positive self talk throughout. I finished in 4:58 just under my goal of 5 hours.

Every race is different. What you take away from from every race is different. Those 70.3 miles, more than anything else, gave me gratitude. Gratitude that I was able to perform and push myself, especially with my “minimum effective dose” training. Gratitude that I was able to race safely on a beautiful course and a beautiful day. Gratitude for a weekend together with an old friend. Gratitude that I was able to race at all. Not everyone is so physically blessed and lucky. Not everyone can afford to indulge it what is a very selfish, time consuming, and expensive activity. And, that my wife indulged my selfish habit, taking care of our boys and the house while I play exercise as sport.

There is a beautiful and profound sense of peace at the end of a hard effort like that. The training, the scheduling, the opportunity cost of it all, and the race itself, leaves a huge wake. In that vacuum, is serenity, in the most essential form I am familiar with. SerenityThroughSweat, if only for the briefest of moments.

This is where the wheels started to fall off the post race “recovery”.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

A special thank you to my wife and my mom and a very happy mother’s day. I was able to race and still make it back to take them out to dinner.

Wandering

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast on meditation, and he referenced an interesting 2010 study out of Harvard that I thought was worth sharing.

“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind” by Matt Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert details their study into happiness and day dreaming.

This weekend I’ll be racing in the Gulf Coast Ironman 70.3 event, and I was particularly interested in this study and its interplay with endurance sports.

A quick stop in Murphy and a trail run at lake nottley before work

The Harvard based researchers designed a web app and recruited participants to self report their levels of happiness and what they were thinking about.

Participants were prompted to use the web app at randomly assigned times during their waking hours. They were asked what they were currently doing, how happy they were on a 0-100 sliding scale, and what they were thinking about with four options.

Participants could report thinking about; what they were doing currently, something else positive, something else neutral, or something else negative.

Taper week training run through the Bellevue botanical garden

Participants would be surveyed 1-3 times daily until they opted out, which resulted in a significant data set. The researchers made sure to vary their participants across age ranges (18-88), gender, countries, and occupation.

The results showed some interesting insights into the human mind and happiness. What participants were thinking about turned out to be a significantly better predictor of happiness than the activities themselves.

In other words, being present in the moment, thinking about what it is you are currently doing, will likely make you happier than letting your mind wander to something else, even something pleasant.

Taper week training on a multi day Seattle layover

“multilevel regression revealed that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not, and this was true during all activities including the least enjoyable. Although people’s minds were more likely to wander to pleasant topics (42.5% of samples) than to unpleasant topics (26.5% of samples) or neutral topics (31% of samples), people were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than about their current activity, and were considerably unhappier when thinking about neutral topics or unpleasant topics than about their current activity (Fig. 1, bottom). Although negative moods are known to cause mind wandering, time-lag analyses strongly suggested that mind wandering in our sample was generally the cause, and not merely the consequence, of unhappiness.”

“In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Enduring anything is as much a mental/emotional battle as it is a physical one. While covering the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile half marathon, there will be plenty of time for my mind to wander.

Sometimes that mind wandering is helpful and even desired. There is a unique state of clarity and creativity that becomes available with extended physical exertion and an empty mind that is free to wander.

Other times it is important to center yourself on the task at hand, even if (or especially if), it is unpleasant. I’m reminded of the acid burn scene from fight club.

Edward Norton’s character wants to go to his cave and find his power animal. Brad Pitt’s character slaps him to bring him back to the present moment.

“This is your burning hand, it’s right here. Don’t deal with it like those dead people do, Come On! What you’re feeling is premature enlightenment. This is the greatest moment of your life and your off somewhere missing it.”

“A cognitive achievement with an emotional cost” is an extremely astute observation with some very powerful ramifications. Being able to dissociate from difficulty is a valuable survival mechanism. But being present, feeling that pain and difficulty, is the best way to learn. It is a tightrope walk for sure, but one worth walking.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

135lb hangover

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I spent a large portion of the past weekend traveling. While that is pretty normal for my job as a pilot, this was a different kind of travel. A real, planes, trains, and automobiles adventure.

El Duderino, Speedy, my wife, and I all headed out late Thursday evening on a flight to Atlanta. Arriving well after the boys bedtime, we went to a hotel located a short walk from the airport sky train.

After a restless night of sleep for all four of us we were up and at em, picking up the rental car and out of the hotel before 9 AM. We stopped to pick up a U-Haul truck, and then made very carefully timed subsequent stops at both IKEA and Sam’s Club, enroute to our new home in North Carolina.

We had to stop at the realtor’s office to sign closing paperwork after the two and half hour drive. All of this had to be done before 2PM so we could take possession of the house before the county offices closed for the weekend.

Only an optimist can put together a plan like that. There were so many moving pieces. So many variables outside of our control. Somehow, like a rare celestial alignment, everything worked out wonderfully and we spent the weekend in our new home.

On the two and a half hour drive, winding through the mountain roads in a crosswind catching U-Haul box, I heard Bert Kreischer tell Joe Rogan a story that struck a nerve in me.

Bert was telling Joe how he watched one of his wife’s friends, a middle aged woman whose stunning beauty had started to fade, struggle to get a bartenders attention.

The moment Bert described was probably fleeting. He doesn’t say how long she was at the bar, or how long it took her to get the bartender’s attention. But he gives an eloquent and detailed description of her confusion. The puzzled look on her face. Her inability to process why the bartender is not immediately paying attention to her.

He realizes, this is a new experience for her. As a younger head turner, this was never a problem she had to deal with. And, she has yet to come to the realization that she is no longer that person.

Joe Rogan spouts out a quote from Socrates that he is apt to use in similar situations, “beauty is a short lived tyranny”.

The whole thing made me think about my wrestling. I was very successful and adept as a high school wrestler at 135 lbs. And my wrestling base, and instincts, and movements, have served me very well in life and especially in Jiu Jitsu.

But, there is always a big glaring but. My wrestling in Jiu Jitsu, especially with a gi on, bears a striking resemblance to this former beauty at the bar. Misunderstanding my current place in the pecking order. Over reliant on a skill set that has faded. Unable to recognize the need to evolve and adapt.

Running off the bike, getting ready for IM 70.3

I’m not sure why it took me this long to see it. Maybe it was egotistical denial. Maybe there are enough alternatives in Jiu Jitsu where I could hide the deficiency. Maybe I was able to get away with old habits with less skilled opponents.

Either way, the bandaid has been ripped off. I refuse to be the bombshell at the bar, past my prime and confused about how things are changing around me. It’s time to learn again as a beginner. To embrace the potential for growth and get past my 135lb wrestling hangover.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Backcasting

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was listening to the Huberman lab podcast and was introduced by guest Dr. Peter Attia to a concept called “backcasting” which I wanted to share with you.

Dr Peter Attia is a physician who specializes in extending his patients’ life span and health span. He went to medical school at Stanford and worked at both John’s Hopkins and the NIH. He recently authored the book Outlive and also hosts his own podcast The Drive on health and medicine. He is a pretty highly qualified guy in the space.

During the conversation with Huberman (another very informative voice in the space of health and wellness) he introduced the concept of backcasting with the following question. What do you want the last decade of your life to look like?

This is called the Marginal decade. “Delineate the objective function and break that down into metrics that we can measure” you can set the goal posts for what you want your marginal decade to look like, and work backwards to find definable goals and measurable markers and at what ages you need to hit them

What do you want to be doing in your marginal decade? Picking up a grandchild, getting up off the floor, have an athletic hobby. Living alone. Do you want to be paddle boarding, bicycling, still driving your car?

If I ask you what is going to happen next year you can predict certain variables and make some educated guesses. This would be a forecast. The period of time is fixed and defined. You don’t know when the last decade of your life will be. Even if you did, there are likely too many variables to forecast that far out. But you can backcast.

Start with the desired outcome and trace the markers you need to hit in order to reach it. Let’s say for example you want to be able to go for a brisk walk on the beach every morning in retirement in your 80’s or even 90’s. That sounds like a nice goal and not outlandish.

“The gravity of aging is more vicious than people realize and therefore the height of your glider needs to be much higher than you think it is when you are our age if you want to be able to do the things we probably want to be able to do when we’re ninety “

Studies show that VO2Max (your ability to process oxygen during aerobic activity) declines roughly 5% per decade after 30, almost regardless of exercise intervention. As Dr Attia so eloquently put it. You need a lot of altitude for that glider flight into your marginal decade.

Changes in peak VO2 with age (left) and percent change in VO2 per decade (right) in men and women. Source: Strait and Lakatta, 2013

A VO2Max of 35-45 is considered fair to good for males in their 30s. This can be tested very scientifically in a lab while wearing a mask on a treadmill, but many running watches or fitness wearables can give a pretty good estimation for general purposes.

From there the math isn’t hard to cary out if you are right in the middle of average at a VO2Max of 40 in your 30’s, by the time you are 80 it will be closer to 30.

Murtagh et al., 2002 (4), investigated self-selected speed of recreational walkers and their interpretation of “brisk walking”.

It turned out that the self-selected speed, which was between 1.55 and 1.6 meters per second, resulted in an exercise intensity of almost 60% of VO2max and a heart rate of 67% of the maximum. A “brisk” walking speed observed was 1.79 meters per second in a parc and 1.86 meters per second on a treadmill. The “brisk” walking speed equated to almost 69% of VO2max and 78.5% of the maximum heart rate.

By your 80’s in our example your VO2Max has dropped a full 25% (and that’s likely best case if you remained healthy and active for those 5 decades). And that brisk walk you wanted to take (4mph is the conversion) was already taking up 69% of your VO2Max. That means you are going to have to slow your pace considerably or reduce the duration of you walk to meet your goal.

Or as Dr Attia told us, increase the height of your glider now in middle age. If your VO2Max is closer to 50 or 60 in your thirties, that brisk walk (all other variables constant) in your 80’s is much more attainable.

The same benchmarks can be set for strength in individual muscle groups or specific movements. Squats, pushups, pullups, grip strength. Gravity is unrelenting, as is the “vicious gravity of aging”. The Stronger you are now and the more you continue to train, the higher you can climb the glider, and the longer you can stay aloft.

Backcasting gives you the tools to set yourself up for success, once you have defined what you want your marginal decade to look like.

So stretch out those glider wings and keep climbing. gravity is thus far undefeated, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prolong, and thoroughly enjoy the ride.

Thanks for joining me,. stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Loss

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This past weekend I competed in the Pan American Jiu Jitsu championships, and I wanted to share my results and my experience.

One of my favorite TV shows in college was scrubs. This was in a TV era where dvr technology had just emerged but I couldn’t afford it at the time.

New episodes of your favorite show aired at a certain time, on a certain day. If you weren’t able to watch it you had to wait till the episode reran. Or, maybe you were lucky enough to have a friend with a dvr and could watch it at their house.

This also gave rise to the spoiler, and the spoiler alert. Someone who watched the newest episode would inevitably want to discuss it with you, knowing that you were also a fan, but unaware that you hadn’t seen it yet.

My roommates and I watched a lot of scrubs. The show was humorous and heartwarming. I was never really concerned about spoilers. (Lost was another story)

Most of the show was narrated in the voice of JD, John Dorian. The main character played by Zach Braff who works his way as a doctor through the Sacred Heart Hospital and grows up along the way.

There are a few episodes which are narrated by his tough love mentor figure, Dr Cox. These episodes occur after Dr Cox’s botched vasectomy where he is having overly philosophical conversations with his infant son Jack, swinging in a baby rock n play. (Way more back story than you needed, but that was more for my trip down memory lane than anything else)

That image of a grown man, established and respected in his profession, bearing his soul to an unresponsive drooling baby swinging back and forth, is one I think about often with this blog.

It is a very one sided conversation, a monologue with a captive audience that is unable to respond.

It is also a beautiful moment of vulnerability and sensitivity for an otherwise rough and gruff character. Dr Cox bearing his soul to a child who likely won’t remember any of what is said.

A lot of this blog is directly or indirectly for my boys. That they might look back in time at the man their father was before they were able to understand such adult intricacies. I found myself in one of those conversations yesterday with El Duderino.

My wife had taken the boys to a birthday party while I went to the Jiu Jitsu tournament. I was able to join them after a rather unceremonious first round loss. By the time I got there El Duderino was in a full meltdown.

My wife scooped him up and took him home. I stayed with Speedy for another hour or so, letting him play while I caught up with friends.

We had a very nice rest of the evening as a family, bit when it came time for bed El Duderino was still struggling. There were lots of things I could have said to him. Things I know have worked in the past to calm him down. But I found myself giving one of those Dr Cox like monologues to a somewhat captive audience instead. (El Duderino had crawled into his trundle bed mattress while it was still tucked under his twin bed, I layed at the lengthwise exit so he was very much a captive audience)

I told him he seemed sad and upset. I told him I felt sad, and upset, and disappointed. I told him I had competed that afternoon and lost. I told him I fell short of my goals and expectations. I told him that good things can be born from disappointment.

I tried to boil my feelings down to a five year old, hiding under the bed, level. To put my disappointment, frustration, and anger into a positive light for El Duderino to see. To show him the soil that can be tilled for growth out of loss.

I don’t know if the lesson sank in. I may never know. I don’t think I was as gracious in loss as I ought to have been in the moment. Losing 0-0 by advantage is a tough pill to swallow. But there was a unique catharsis in sharing the emotions of my loss with my young son. I had never experienced that before.

I don’t like to lose. I am very fortunate to still be somewhat unaccustomed to it, after essentially thirty years of grappling. Still, I recognize the lessons to be learned. Even more so now that I am a father. I hadn’t competed in a Jiu Jitsu tournament in three years, and I hadn’t lost a competition match since having kids. It only felt right to share that with them, and I hope they can learn as much from it as I did.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Doubt

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I’ve signed up to compete in the Pan American Championships in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at the end of the month. That has brought with it excitement, anxiety, and doubt.

I’m no stranger to competing. And certainly no stranger to grappling or even jiu jitsu competition. I’ve completed in three smaller local BJJ tournaments, and I’ve lost count how many wrestling tournaments over a 13 year wrestling career.

I’ve also been active in triathlon and ultimate frisbee in those years I wasn’t grappling. Each had their own varying level of competition.

This one feels a little bit different. It will be my first grappling competition since before COVID. It will be my first competition at brown belt. I haven’t competed since I was a blue belt, missing out on competing at the purple belt level.

Anxiety and excitement are to be expected. I got the same butterflies and pit feeling in my stomach before every wrestling match and every big triathlon. But doubt wasn’t something I really thought about.

Maybe it is having kids (even though I’ve raced and competed in smaller BJJ tournaments as a father). Maybe it is getting older and being in the Masters 2 division. Maybe it is my lack of recent competition experience. Maybe it is the thought of injury now as a provider.

Whatever it is, doubt has been creeping in. Will I make the weight? Will I stay healthy and injury free? Will I perform in a way I can be proud of?

That doubt isn’t necessarily bad though. I’m reminded of a conversation I had about doubt, with two close friends at a bachelor party.

We were in a hotel room in Tampa. Sharing a drink, making small talk and getting ready for a hockey game. The celebrated bachelor wanted to read us the vows he had written and have the two of us help workshop them. I know, not your typical rowdy bachelor party story.

He is a scientist, a medical researcher, and one of the smartest people I have ever talked to. He is very methodical in his thinking and communication. All of those qualities came out front and center in his custom written vows.

“As I scientist I am taught to doubt” his message to his soon to be wife, on their most important day, began. “But I don’t doubt my love for you, or the relationship we’ve built”.

His vows went on with a series of “I don’t doubt” statements. Doubt seemed to me, at first, like an inappropriate word for wedding vows, but it fit perfectly with who he was. Doubt was part of his daily life as a scientist and researcher, but his marriage was a place doubt never crept in.

I modeled my own custom wedding vows, a few years later, in a very similar format. A series of “I can’t promise X, but I can promise Y” statements.

To me, this felt like the same removal of uncertainty, and exchange of promises, without the perceived negativity that doubt brings to the table.

Because that’s all doubt really is right? Uncertainty. As a scientist and a researcher, my friend is very deliberately, an active participant in his uncertainty. Trying not to bias his observation of data with his own opinions or desires.

The future is always uncertain. The degree of that uncertainty may vary, but it is never fully predictable. I think it is an old Yogi Berra quote “predictions are hard, especially about the future”

The doubt that has crept in since I’ve signed up for this competition has been an ever present feeling in the pit of my stomach. It has been my somewhat less than welcome companion. (And due to a small weight cut, sometimes the only thing in my stomach)

I’m trying to channel the courage of my friend and embrace that doubt. Uncertainty, just means I get to have a hand in writing out how the future will be told.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Bumps

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I have not been writing nearly as much as I want to.

There are dozens of excuses. Some are very understandable and relatable. Other are a niche of my particular hobbies and career lifestyle. Still others are very much first world problems.

None of that changes the fact that words are not making their way to paper. Or the digital equivalent o suppose. Thoughts are not being worked over and properly curated. Ideas wilt on the vine.

While I hope that you get something out of these musings, it is ultimately a selfish endeavor. One that helps me think. Reflect. Ultimately better understand my own worldview. To realize any changes that I need to make for myself or my family.

Dedicating the time to this pursuit is one of those changes. Alas, life has a way, of getting in the way. I noticed this same problem manifest itself on El Duderino’s daily scooter ride.

Nothing makes him happier than being picked up from school with his scooter. I’m not sure if it the the excitement of escape. The satisfaction of scooting. Or the perception Infront of his peers. El Duderino loves scooting home from school.

He takes off on a tear down the sidewalk, often times before I am done talking with his teacher and ready to start my pursuit.

He can be heard halfway around the block engaging his dragon power, or eagle power, or whatever the day’s inner monologue calls for.

He will scoot right into the open garage and then come back to look for me. Being sure to let me know how much he beat me by.

Occasionally he will stop for no apparent reason. He will abandon his scooter and walk back to give me a hug and tell me he loves me. Such unabashed emotion is powerful amongst men. I hope he never loses it.

Sometimes he makes the cardinal sin of racers. He removes his focus from the road ahead to look back and see how close I am behind him.

This is normally not necessary. I’m hard to miss since I’m prancing with his dinosaur backpack slung over my right shoulder. The leftover contents of his lunchtime trail mix shaking like a maraca in it’s tiny Tupperware. It is not by any means a stealthy pursuit.

This has lead, on occasion, to El Duderino wiping out pretty hard on some of the bumps in the sidewalk. Sometimes he can maintain composure and keep it upright. Other times it is a full yard sale crash.

Knowing that this happens. Knowing where and why it happens, I try to adjust my pursuit, lagging further behind El Duderino on the sidewalk sections with bumps.

When you are moving forward with some momentum small bumps in the road are little more than a nuisance. When you are moving too slow, they can derail you entirely. Especially if your focus is elsewhere.

I didn’t really need to see El Duderino eat it on the sidewalk to understand the concept. But it does have a way of illustrating it in living color. Bringing that idea right to the forefront. Screaming bloody knees and all.

Momentum is a powerful thing. Without enough of it, the smallest of bumps can totally derail us. But, we are also capable of squishing those obstacles like pennies on a train track.

I hope to be able to report fewer derailments, and more squished pennies going forward.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

What doesn’t kill you

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I found this really interesting article through a link on Sunday’s with Sisson and wanted to share it with you.

The article discusses recent research into the longevity of ants. While this may seem inconsequential, or unrelated to humans, the findings are somewhat surprising and unexpected.

The first part of the article focuses on the relative lifespan of queen ants compared to worker ants. While there is significant variety amongst different ant species, queen ants tend to live significantly longer despite their increased metabolic functioning.

The queen consumes exponentially more calories due to the increased metabolic demands of laying thousands of eggs. The increased calorie consumption and metabolic functioning means significantly more insulin production. Increased insulin is linked to aging as well as a host of other diseases in humans and other animals.

These ants have evolved into social creatures where only the queen is reproductive. This has lead to some other evolutionary adaptations. When a queen is removed from the colony worker ants will change into “gamergates” or pseudo queens. They start eating more, producing more insulin, and becoming reproductive.

The researchers expected the increased insulin levels to lead to decreased lifespan. However, the insulin signaling in the gamergates deviated from the standard expression and led to increased lifespan.

“Further work showed that the ovaries of the gamergates strongly expressed a protein, Imp-L2, that ignored the MAP kinase pathway but interfered with the second pathway in the fat body. “This protein appears to have the function of protecting one pathway that allows metabolism, but inhibiting the pathway that leads to aging,” Desplan said.”

The second part of the articles describes a parasitic tapeworm that infects acorn ants as an intermediate host. The cestode lays eggs that are eaten by acorn ants. The tapeworm must live inside these acorn ants, that make their nest in a single acorn, until the ants are hopefully eaten by a woodpecker.

If a woodpecker eats an acorn that has infected acorn ants in it, the tapeworm then moves from it’s intermediate host, to it’s final host.

The infected ants are very easy to tell apart from the uninfected ants because their color changes from brown to yellow.

You would expect that the parasite infected ants would have a shorter lifespan, since the parasite is sustaining itself off of the host. However the opposite was observed.

Infected ants lived five times as long as uninfected ants, in part due to a cocktail of different proteins pumped into the ants by the parasite.

Researchers are working to distinguish, analyze and retest these various proteins and antioxidants to see if the results are reproducible outside of parasitic infection.

From an evolutionary and adaptive standpoint this makes a ton of sense. The parasite’s ultimate goal is to get to the woodpecker. The longer the ants live, the greater the chances that they will be eaten by a woodpecker. Increasing the host lifespan is in the best interests of the parasite.

Whether it is increased metabolic functioning to step into the queen role, or parasitic infection, for the ants in these studies, what doesn’t kill them makes them live longer. (Not coincidentally, the title of one of the studies that the article was based on)

On some sort of intuitive level didn’t we already know this. The individual protein pathways and antioxidants are compelling. I hope the research leads to new understanding and potentially even clinical, pharmaceutical, and lifestyle interventions. But there is so much more to a healthy lifespan than a protein cocktail secreted from a tapeworm.

I like to bounce around on this platform, ping-ponging back and forth between topics that pique my interest. But every post, regardless of topic, has some sweat in it. Challenges that push the body both physically and mentally.

There is a mental clarity and a physical calm that follows these efforts. (SerenityThroughSweat) but there is also the undeniable benefit, that what doesn’t kill us, helps us live longer.

Thanks for joining me stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Intimidation

The lights seem to pulse around me. I know this is only an illusion. The effect created by the spacing of dim lights and alternating darkness as I float down the hall.

The sweat has gone past the point of beading and running, and has progressed to a steady trickle. I can feel the gentle squish of wet socks in each step as I make my way down the seemingly psychedelic hallway.

I know my body is depleted from the training and the fasting that is now approaching twenty hours. I don’t feel depleted though. I feel light. Liberated. Unburdened.

The squishing intensifies as I start bouncing gently to the music. It is a short way around the courtyard from the fitness center to my room. The twang of the guitar and the blaring horns during the bridge of Gregg Allman’s Midnight Rider, the dim alternating lights, and the runners high work on union to transport me back in time.

The pulsing of lights, footsteps echoing off the tile floor and the walls of lockers, breaths heavy with exertion. I’m running sprints down the freshman hallway of my highschool after wrestling practice.

Sometimes with my teammates. Sometimes in solitude. Occasionally the chemistry teacher, a great runner in his own right, pokes his head out to investigate this intrusion to his own late night solitude.

The same trickle of sweat fills my shoes and bounces off the tile as it cascades off my younger self. That same liberated, unburdened feeling seeps in. The work is done, and it was done in earnest.

The moment fades as I reach my hotel room. I haven’t had a runners high like this in a while. One that alleviates and transports in such a powerful way. I spend a lot of time chasing that dragon, but it is elusive.

I’m in Atlanta and spent the morning in the simulator. Cortisol levels run high in this place. There is no way around it. Knowing it is a simulation, doesn’t take away the feeling that the emergency is real. Being a simulation, it can be reset to the next emergency with daunting speed and efficiency. We aren’t designed for catastrophe on repeat, and it takes it’s toll.

I figured after the sim was as good a time as any to try this new workout. 6 rounds of 6 minutes at threshold running pace, with 2 minutes moving rest between sets. Add in a warm up and cool down and that makes a solid hour block on the treadmill in the training hotel’s lack luster fitness center.

One of my best friends and training partners had done this workout a few times before and shared it with me. I was intimidated.

I’m not even sure what my threshold pace is but my best guess was around a 6:30min/mile pace. That is, as the term threshold might imply, right where things start getting uncomfortable. Each interval is long enough to really make you think about it. The total time in zone accumulates quickly. The rest is enough to recover, only by the smallest of margins.

As much time as I spend intentionally putting myself into discomfort, there are still levels of it that intimidate me. Places I will shy away from. Workouts that I will procrastinate or put off entirely. Or tap out from early.

This was one such workout. I had toyed with the idea of trying it for weeks. An excuse always seemed to pop up. I didn’t have enough time. I would be too depleted afterwards. The alternative I gave myself was better suited to my goals.

It is easy to convince yourself of something you already believe. It is even easier when you are intimidated.

4000′ of climbing, I finished the event but the didn’t make it to the top of the mountain. Another intimidating challenge and an excuse made.

I’m not sure what about it was so intimidating. Extended time at threshold as we have discussed can be uncomfortable. But I like uncomfortable. I know growth comes from being uncomfortable. I actively seek out those situations. This workout though was an outlier in that paradigm.

It went so much better than I thought it would. The intimidation, transformed into satisfaction and serenity. I don’t know if my initial trepidation added to the post workout sensations I described at the start. That light, liberated, unburdened state of post run serenity.

The only time a man can be brave, is when he is first afraid. But the benefits of standing tall in the face of intimidation only adds to the elation when the task is ultimately completed.

Putting in miles in my old stomping grounds

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Kindness

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Against all odds, I found myself in a central Iowa bar, in the middle of a snow storm talking about surfing this Christmas Eve, and I wanted to share the experience with you.

This trip was the first line choice on my bid for December. I should have known better, but as has been revealed here before, I am a masochist and a glutton for pain. This trip was set to have a 30 hour layover in cedar rapids Iowa, followed by a 15 hour layover in Boise, and then finishing on Christmas day in Orlando around 2:00 pm.

It looked good on paper when I was bidding it in early November. The bomb cyclone that appeared days beforehand had other ideas. We landed in Cedar rapids around ten o’clock at night in blowing snow and 40+mph winds.

The crew who was bringing in the airplane we were to fly out didn’t fair as well, and never made it in. So that is what set me up to be in a local bar on Christmas Eve, watching the Bills game with some locals, and engaging in the conversation I want to share with you.

The first couple that sat down next to me came from an army household and had lived all over. One of their stops was Patrick air force base in Florida. We talked about the changes in central Florida over the past few decades. We talked about surfing the warm water of the Atlantic in contrast to the below freezing wind chill outside.

We shared our fondness for the space coast. The welcoming and small town feeling it had, despite it’s continuing technological progress. We shared our appreciation for the sunshine state.

They left around half time of the bills game, to be replaced by another local mother and son duo. The son appeared to be around my age or so, heavily bearded and heavily jeweled. I think he was wearing more rings, with more gemstones than my wife owns in entirety. Granted that is a low bar, but every finger was covered in a unique ring with a different color stone.

His mother was a self proclaimed long muscled and lithe woman who would outlast me on the bar’s non existent dance floor. She was an ardent disciple of stretching and long muscles, and as I found out, a proponent of being “kind” to your body.

Despite my agreeing with most of what she had to say about stretching and long, lithe muscles, when I twisted my chair to show her the IronMan logo on the back of my jacket, and I told her this was the eleventh year of my annual Christmas half marathon tradition, she rolled her eyes in disapproval.

Running for any length, but certainly a marathon (which she thought was 25 miles, but that may have been the 2-4-1 happy hour talking) was being ‘unkind’ to your body. Why would you ever want to be unkind to your body? What good could that bring?

We had a very nice conversation, agreeing on many fronts and agreeing to disagree on many others. It was a refreshing human interaction. But, it also got me thinking about the primary point of contention. Certain activities I was participating in were deemed as ‘unkind’ to the body, but then what is kindness?

Her argument was that running, biking swimming, triathlon, and certainly weight training, were unkind to the body. That their short term benefits did more long term damage. That the practice of them was unkind to the body, in pushing it beyond it’s limits.

It was difficult to pin down exactly where limits where pushed. Where was too far, or what was too heavy, or when a limit was exceeded. But in her mind stretching, lengthening exercises that promoted mobility and flexibility, and the ability to dance in her 70’s were all that mattered.

By this point the Bills game was wrapping up with the Bills coasting towards a division clinching win over the Bears. The 2-4-1’s had been flowing steadily throughout the duration of the game and my normal excitement to engage in debate was wanning.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder, what is it to be kind to your body. What is it to be kind to your children? My five year old loves to tell me that making him do difficult things by himself is not being kind. And in a sense he is right. I could do it for him with greater efficiency and effectiveness. The immediacy of that kindness, would in my opinion, be dwarfed by the disservice it would do him for future development.

I feel the same way about my body. Treating it ‘kindly’ at the expense of future development doesn’t seem like a good option to me. Sure the masochistic tendencies might seem ‘unkind’ to the outside observer, but they come from a place of love. I love my body and all of the incredible things it can do. All of the grand adventures I am able to have and share in because of the ‘unkind’ stresses my body has endured and grown from.

No one watching a parent talk a toddler through a ten minute shoe tying session would deem the exchange ‘unkind’. Providing the parent was coming from a place of love and respect and engaging the toddler on an appropriately challenging level.

Be kind to yourself. Sometimes that might mean a little bit of a break, but sometimes it might mean a kick in the ass. And, it will always include a little serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.