Stalking 50

nkrichards wrote:Tough when we hit those slumps isn't it.  I'm sure you'll figure out how to get through it...you've done it before.

btw Wasn't it a gorgeous day to day!

Hi Nancy! I'm not overly worried about it. Just a little annoyed...

It was a gorgeous day once the fog burned off on this side of the mountains.

Here's what it looked like at about 8 a.m.





Here's a little autumn color I spotted later in the afternoon outside the grocery store.



Would have liked to been out in it more (and Alita really wants to go on some walks before her foot surgery later this month), but we were trapped at home with a kid who was sick all weekend.

Mark B wrote:

ounce wrote:

Mark B wrote:

ounce wrote:I don't have any real suggestions, but maybe the 50 miler gave you more slow-twitch muscles from the not-as-slow twitch muscles?

Hm. Possible, but the slump in time probably best correlates to this chart:



I think it's called "entropy."  

I can see some of it due to your reduced weekly mileage.

I don't know about this 'entropy' word you came with, kimosabe.  I don't see the relationship.

All I see are the purdy, purdy COLORS!!!!  

I guess the other way to say it is: "Use it or lose it."

And aren't the colors totally psychedelic, man? Groovy.

Wouldn't that be atrophy?????  

Michele \"1L" Keane wrote:

Mark B wrote:I think it's called "entropy."  

Wouldn't that be atrophy?????  

Oh, sure, fire up my word geek tendencies early in the morning, will ya?

When I wrote "entropy," it seems I was (mis)using a scientific term to represent systems' tendency to fall apart over time.

When I actually looked it up, however, this is what I got:

entropy  (ěn'trə-pē) Pronunciation Key 
A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system not available to do work. As a physical system becomes more disordered, and its energy becomes more evenly distributed, that energy becomes less able to do work. For example, a car rolling along a road has kinetic energy that could do work (by carrying or colliding with something, for example); as friction slows it down and its energy is distributed to its surroundings as heat, it loses this ability. The amount of entropy is often thought of as the amount of disorder in a system. See also heat death.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary

You can see that's maybe, kinda, sorta, similar to the point I was trying to make... but in retrospect, it's not really the right word. (I will note, however, that "deterioration" is listed as a synonym for "entropy" in the thesaurus.)

You suggest "atrophy," which is, of course, the closest scientific explanation for the loss of muscle function through disuse.

To wit:

atrophy (āt'rə-fē) Pronunciation Key 
A wasting or decrease in the size of an organ or tissue, as from death and reabsorption of cells, diminished proliferation of cells, pressure, lack of oxygen, malnutrition, decreased function, or hormonal changes.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary

So let's go with that. Though I'm now scratching my brain to remember if there is a word that more closely captures the concept of the natural tendency of things to decline if left untended... (be they bodies, buildings, relationships, etc.). Hm...

I always think of entropy as a natural tendency towards disorder in any system. I think I learned that in high school chemistry and physics.

It explains why my kids' rooms look the way they do most of the time...

Michael Enright wrote:I always think of entropy as a natural tendency towards disorder in any system. I think I learned that in high school chemistry and physics.

It explains why my kids' rooms look the way they do most of the time...

 

Trail Run: 3.36 miles

Weather: Sunny, cool. 50 degrees. Gear: Superiors, shorts, T, jacket (shed). Fuel: Post-breakfast, also a small Grape Nuts snack. Carried nuun in handheld.

I've been avoiding back-to-back runs lately, but I decided to chance it today with a trail run in a nearby park. It was a gorgeous day, and I wanted to be outside in it.

The park has a mix of fir, cedar and a bunch of different deciduous trees, so it made for lots of color and leaves on trail.


Going in...

We had an unusually wet September, so there was a decent amount of mud churned up by the horses that also use the trails. It made slow going in a few spots, and I had one shoe-sucking incident, but I got away with my shoe still attached.

Fall trails can be tricky for visibility, with leaves hiding the surface and lower-angled light causing deep shadows. But I made it out without any trips or slips, which was good.


(This was a common view for the ground next to the trail... and sometimes on the trail itself.)

I tried to find the granny gear to make it up some shorter steeper hills (with mixed results) and walked others when my heart rate got too high. I punched it up one steepish section, just because, and got my HR up a lot. If I'm going to do what I'm thinking about doing in April (Lake Sonoma 50), I'm going to have to get a LOT better and quickly moving up and down hills, because that's pretty much all that course is.

I did one big figure-8 loop of the park which felt about right today.



I normally show the topo map, but I thought y'all might be interested to see this island of forest in the middle of cleared farmland. Crazy thing is, most of this whole area at one point resembled the patch of forest - which just happened to be on ground not particularly suitable for cultivation.

Walked first and last 5 minutes.  Average HR for run 121

Love the pictures.  Our bridle trail looks a lot like that at this time of year - the only difference is that it is flat.  You do have to dodge horse apples and black walnuts along with the downed leaves.

And "atrophy" was meant to be a joke since you were running less miles. 

Michele \"1L" Keane wrote:Love the pictures.  Our bridle trail looks a lot like that at this time of year - the only difference is that it is flat.  You do have to dodge horse apples and black walnuts along with the downed leaves.

And "atrophy" was meant to be a joke since you were running less miles. 

Flat? What a concept! There us a term for flat wooded areas around here: swamps.

A few road apples out there. But they were easily avoided. Mostly, the problem is thT the horses till the trail about eight inches deep. You. Ever know what the surface is going to do when you pick your landing spot. Hence the shoe suck.

I knew you were joking, but you were also accurate. Use it or lose it! Though it is surprising how fast that "losing" seems to progress.

I love the chart up there at the top!!  Boy, you sure are one to log and categorize!  Quite impressive!

dot520 wrote:I love the chart up there at the top!!  Boy, you sure are one to log and categorize!  Quite impressive!

Hi, Dot! Thanks!

To be honest, it doesn't take much work on my end to get that chart. All the credit goes to runningahead.com. The free site lets me upload my Garmin and log my runs. It generates those cool GPS maps, elevation profiles and charts, and it lets you view your past workouts in a list or on a calendar. It's full of geeky goodness, and I'd highly recommend it.

And because I've got years of data stored in it, I can use the site to see how I'm doing -- to celebrate when I accomplish something new, or to step back when I catch myself doing something that caused me problems in the past. It's a great tool.

Walk: 3.25 miles

Weather: Indoors. Warm 'n' sweaty! 70 degrees. Gear: Instincts, shorts, T (shed).

Working a night shift instead of a day shift today, so I decided to do a walk on the treadmill and continue to work on faster walking. I started off with a 5-minute warmup at 3 mph, then picked up the pace to 4 mph and held that until I'd finished 3 miles, then slowed back down to 3 mph for a 5-minute cool down.

Walking at 4 mph (a 15/mi pace) is tricky, but possible. It still doesn't feel natural - as in, I don't feel muscles engaging like they do when I'm going slower - but I think that'll change with practice. My HR was about 127 for much of the walk (which was in the aerobic benefit zone for both Karvonen and Maffetone) but started to creep into the low 130s toward the end - which was a good hint that I'd done enough.


Average HR for the entire walk: 123

I was curious, Mark.  When the horses come up from behind you, do they yell "Horse BACK!" and what kind of garmin are they using?

ounce wrote:I was curious, Mark.  When the horses come up from behind you, do they yell "Horse BACK!" and what kind of garmin are they using?

Actually, in all of the times I've been in that park, I've only seen horses on the trails a couple of times. Usually, I just see the, er, evidence of their passage. Hopefully before I land on it. 

This is for you - courtesy of the NYTimes.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/is-barefoot-style-running-best-new-studies-cast-doubt/?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Dr. Gruber agrees. “I always recommend that runners run the way that is most natural and comfortable for them,” she says. “Each runner runs a certain way for a reason, likely because of the way they were physically built. Unless there is some indication that you should change things, such as repeated injury, do not mess with that plan.”


 I continue to believe that we're each individuals and need to figure out what works best for us.

nkrichards wrote:Dr. Gruber agrees. “I always recommend that runners run the way that is most natural and comfortable for them,” she says. “Each runner runs a certain way for a reason, likely because of the way they were physically built. Unless there is some indication that you should change things, such as repeated injury, do not mess with that plan.”


 I continue to believe that we're each individuals and need to figure out what works best for us.

+1

Thanks for the link, Michele (and the comments, Nancy and Nick).

I have a few issues with the article and studies...

Such as... taking a study of forefoot vs. rearfoot striking efficiency -- in shoes -- and extrapolating that data into barefoot running? That's problematic at the outset. Then taking runners and having them switch style (forefoot to rearfoot, rearfoot to forefoot) and measuring efficiency after the switch? That only measures which is easier to slip into - and I think everybody would agree that learning to land forefoot is at the outset far less efficient than landing on the heel, if there's heel protection.

And from my perspective, I have found that I run faster, at a lower heart rate, barefoot than in shoes. So there's that.

And... on the second study that measures changes in arch height after barefoot running? That's based on what I consider this false assumption: that people think barefoot running "toughens foot muscles, lessening the likelihood of foot-related running injuries." Uh, no. What helps reduce running injuries from barefooting is the change in mechanics along the entire kinetic chain that reduces impact. If you're running on your forefoot exclusively and never allowing your heel to touch (that's for sprinting, not running distances), you'll end up with all sorts of achilles problems.

Did you notice that neither of those studies mentioned impact? And the large emphasis on anecdotal evidence on the problems -- "lots of cases" -- of barefoot running without comparison against the regular running population. Were they injured more or less often? What sort of injuries were there? And were the injuries suffered by people running barefoot, or in shoes on their forefoot? Had they been instructed on form, or were they just blundering along on their own?  Too many variables, not enough control.

Nor did they seem to track results over time. That's unfortunate, because it takes time for your body to learn new running form - and many people give up too soon, possibly because they weren't running mindfully. And that's what gets me about Gruber's comment about runners running in the way that's most natural and comfortable for them. Problem is, as my PT noted many times, many runners' form is dysfunctional, with all sorts of issues with range of motion and muscle imbalances. The body can adapt to a lot of dysfunction before it breaks.

What I'd like to see is a long-term study with runners given instruction in running form, or not, to track injury rates.

Also, another long-term study comparing injuries with properly instructed barefoot running vs. properly instructed shod running.

Then we might have a better sense of what's really going on.

Taking today as a rest day, grudgingly, as I battle yet another brush with a virus -- this time, some sort of extremely irritating head cold, sinus infection or something. It's above the neck, so I could arguably get away with running or walking, but I was active three days straight since Sunday - so a day off seems not wholly unreasonable. 

Besides, being active sure didn't help me avoid catching this bug, did it?

Still. These interruptions outside my control are driving. me. crazy.  

Barefoot Run: 3.1 miles

Weather: Overcast, cool. 48 degrees. Gear: Bare feet, shorts, long-sleeved T. Fuel: Breakfast, coffee. Nothing during.

I (hopefully) am past the worst of my sinus/cold/whatever issue this morning, so I opted to do the barefoot run I would have ordinarily done yesterday. Whatever the issue is, it's happening above my neck, and my body temperature is comfortably in its usual sub-normal range, so I didn't think I could do any harm.

It felt pretty good, and was fairly speedy (first mile in 9:27), though the intensity level was slightly higher than idea. Still, it was nice that my legs were happy to go faster. There were times when I caught myself in the low 9s, and the Garmin tells me I hit the 8s a few times. Oops! :-)

It ended up being my second fastest barefoot run at this distance ever. And while I was above my target HR, it wasn't by that much.

Average HR for entire run: 139

Okay, so the bug dug in deeper yesterday. May skip my run today. (sigh)

In the interim, here's an interesting blog post (The Barefoot Backlash: Are the Naysayers Right After All?) that offers what I think is a fair critique of the current surge in articles taking aim at barefoot running. The writer blames "journalists" (his quotes, not mine) and "click whores" (my term, not his), and there's some truth to that. But honestly, it's also what you'd expect when something outside of the mainstream comes to the attention of society as a whole: fascination, confusion, rejection.

I think that bug caught you and finished ahead of you at Mt Hood.

As far as the barefoot running and the media, can you imagine how many naysayers would be in line to debunk LC/HF?

Good luck on beating The Bug v2.0

ounce wrote:I think that bug caught you and finished ahead of you at Mt Hood.

As far as the barefoot running and the media, can you imagine how many naysayers would be in line to debunk LC/HF?

Good luck on beating The Bug v2.0

If it did, it beat me only by a (stuffy) nose.

I don't think you need to worry to much about the media and LC/HF. It's so far outside of the fat part the bell curve that they'll never see it.

And thanks. It's a beautiful day today, but I managed to convince myself that it'd be better if I didn't go out and enjoy it. My run yesterday was fine, but I ran out of steam at about 5:30 p.m. -- which isn't what you want when you're working until 11.

How beautiful was it today? Well, here's a view of the backyard. For a place that calls itself "The Evergreen State," it sure gets a lot of autumn color.

Yes, the weather is beautiful so we're back on the tractor working ground.

And...yes, the Pacific Northwest seems to be full of nasty little bugs/virus.  Still struggling with my cold.  I'm just glad it's early on in my taper and that I can recover fully in the next few days.

 Take care of yourself.

nkrichards wrote:Yes, the weather is beautiful so we're back on the tractor working ground.

And...yes, the Pacific Northwest seems to be full of nasty little bugs/virus.  Still struggling with my cold.  I'm just glad it's early on in my taper and that I can recover fully in the next few days.

 Take care of yourself.

I don't think I'm going to have any choice in the "take care of yourself" department - I started developing an intermittent dry cough earlier today, which shows that this little bugger isn't through with me yet. Drat.

Hope your cold clears out sooner rather than later. Me, I'm just goofing around right now. You've got a race to run!

And this weather is amazing, and a huge change from late September. We went from a dry summer to a dry start to September - which quickly became the wettest September on record - and now it's a record-dry October! Pretty now, but it's a weird fall.

Hack. Snort. Wheeze. Hack-hack-hack. Snort. ... etc.