Running: a Right or a Left Brain Activity?

Hi Athletes and Triathletes!

I have been running a lot more.  How much more?  I am now running 15-20+ miles a week, lame compared to my 35 - 45 mile weeks back when my hair was full and dark but... 20 is good for me now at age 55.

Three months ago I got a smart phone.  Before that I was running and listening to podcasts on an old inherited iPod, with Ted Talks, The Moth Radio Hour and  Wait Wait Don't Tell me among my favorites.

When I ran in the late 70's in high school, as a boy on the cross country team, we would occasionally discuss what songs we would sing along (in our head only) as we ran.  Songs by KISS and other hard rock bands would be mentioned.

So jump ahead some 35+ years and I started thinking about running and the brain.  When I am listening to a TED Talk when I run it's generally for enlightenment.  It's like really good food for the brain.  And that is absolutely appealing to the LEFT- logic part of the brain.

What about running?  I think running is more of a right brain activity.  The right brain of passion, creativity, feelings, intuition, etc.  I paired this hunch up with what I was playing on my phone when I ran.  Now when I hear ZZ Top, Lenny Cravitz, or Tom Petty, a few things happened.

The first thing was I felt cooler.  This is no small feat since running 9-10 minute miles at age 55 is about as glamorous as cleaning the toilet.  And by cooler, I also felt more coordinated.  That lasted about 10 days.  Then I found that my favorite rock-n-roll could give me a boost in power and speed and that is currently what I am still experiencing.  For me to finish off a 5 or 6 mile run, and finish faster the last mile than the first, I need AC/DC, and not an interesting podcast on parenting or medical technology. I need to tap passion and energy.


I save the music for later in runs.  For those first 10-15 minutes when the run is slow and laborious it's fine to listen to NPR, but when I want to kick it up a notch it's blues, rock and who knows, maybe the frenetic pace of techno!

In swimming laps, what works best for me is to think about a family or work problem and problem solve when in the pool.  My friend has somewhat successfully listened to music while swimming laps but there are still kinks involved in that technology.

When running, gone are the days of paying full attention to your breathing and pace.  I still do some of that in races, preferring to talk to fellow runners to relax but in racing I am not there to just run, but I am there to run a certain time.

So what works for you?  Drop me a note below in the comments box and happy running, riding, swimming, hiking, and what not!  It's all good.

Hitting the Wall, and Then Some

    Ten days ago I am on a ride with my friend Dave.  We were going for 47 miles, with 2300 feet of climbing. All but 200 feet of the climbing was in the first 23 miles.  Ouch.  At the rest stop midway, I got 16 ounces of chilled orange juice, ate some energy chews and right before we left - for good measure - I squeezed out a few ounces of energy gel - something I had never eaten before. A colossal and soon to be a painful mistake.

Five miles later I am noticing some pain building low in my right side.  Five miles after that, at 33 miles, I tell Dave I have to stop.  "I think I have a kidney stone."  I was having a flashback to about 15 years earlier when I had to be hospitalized and have a stone removed.  I tried to throw-up, but didn't as I also didn't want that added pain.  Next I became dizzy and weak and wanted to lie down on the ground in the fetal position in the parking lot.  Instead, Dave got me inside into an air-conditioned hotel lobby where we stopped when I began to sweat profusely but the pain subsided a bit.  Fifteen minutes later as Dave rode back to get our car, I was checking golf scores on my phone.  No kidney stone.

The culprit? Probably an acid stomach and a reaction to the suicidal dose of sugar I had put into my system. Moral of the story?  Don't experiment on nutrition when out on a long training ride or run.  Water works every time.  If I had wanted to have a bit of sugar to add to that there were safer choices, choices that I had made before like a mild solution of Cytomax or maybe a few (like 2-3) energy chews.  Other than a headache a few hours later I was fine.

My Complicated Relationship with SWIMMING!

      Calendar year 2014 I did lap swim 15 times and 2 triathlons for 17 total swims.  Already this year in all of March and half of April I have done 800 - 1000 meters now 15 times.  Have I discovered The Joy of Swimming?  Not so much.  I realize that the best part of swimming, especially early in the morning before work, is walking to the car after a swim and shower and feeling good about heading to work. It's like the old joke:  Why did < the dumb guy > keep smashing his hand with the hammer?  Because it felt so good when he quit.  That sums up my relationship with swimming.

Hydrating is important EVERYWHERE!

      Today's low-light was 800 meters from 6:30 - 6:55 am and having some difficulty (more than usual) with coordinating my breathing - thanks (perhaps) to my 2nd time using Ambien to help me sleep the night before.  I also wish I could say my times were dropping but I am pretty consistently swimming 24 - 26 minutes for 800 and I am in the 32 minute range for 1000 meters.  Sounds slow and it is.  It's also just alternating 50 meters of freestyle/crawl with 50 meters of breast stroke.  At 400 meters of 800, I drink maybe 8 ounces of water from my bottle next to my watch.  If swimming 1000, I will get more water at 800 meters.

        Is all this increased swimming activity to get ready for another triathlon?  Not really.  I am hopeful that I will do another this summer but the increased swim activity is more about having tennis elbow so badly that instead of playing tennis normally maybe 45 times so far this year, I have only played 5 times. I find that swimming doesn't hurt my arm at all and that the cardio is also good for my running.  And more about that soon!

Why My Son is Better Than an iPod

     Imagine if I had uttered that title while working at Apple with Steve Jobs nearby.  I would have disappeared faster than a box of donuts near hungry teens!  Of course I love my son more than any type of mp3 player but I am referring to RUNNING with my 12 year old is preferable to listening to my favorite podcasts.

    When I ran in high school and after college I logged a lot of solitary miles-- sans music or podcasts.  But I also had a lot of people to run with on occasion.

    After starting to run again about 15 months ago, all of it alone, I am finally running now with my son and it's so great!  Running with others is soooooooooo much better than running with anything Apple could dream up.  Not only am I passing on my love of exercise to my son but I am relaxed and we talk about all types of horrific subjects in my son's eyes (and ears) including girls, love, peer pressure and even his favorite subject cars and his driver's license!

    Though I still start S L O W, after 10-12 minutes I am able to run faster with him than I know I would be able to do on my own.  Faster running and more relaxed, sounds like I have discovered the fountain of youth.  And maybe I have.  The youth of my son. Good times!

Holy Crap Batman, that was a HARD SPRINT!

Now if you are like me you think "third sprint tri, can't be that hard".  Yeah.  I.  Was.  Wrong.  Almost 2 weeks ago I went to Castaic Lake, just past California's Magic Mountain, and competed in the 1/2 mile lake swim, 14 mile bike, and 5k run. Looks good on paper but the problem wasn't the uphill 75 yard run to the transition area after the swim (dodging sandy bird-poop on the way), and the problem wasn't the hilly and convoluted 5k course at the end, so that leaves only one other suspect.

The 14 mile bike was an out and back course.  Meaning that the first seven miles meant climbing for probably 5.75 to 6 miles before descending on the same route.  I knew it was difficult when I passed 3 people walking their bikes BEFORE the 2 mile mark.  Being a strong cyclist I was out of my saddle riding pretty strong for parts of those 7 miles.  There were no cars to worry about as the road was roughly parallel to the 5 freeway that runs north all the way to Canada.  At times it was steep enough that I slowed to 6.5 mph pace, but even at that rate I could easily chat with fellow sufferers and an added blessing was cloud-cover.  Coming down should have been a blessing and it was but it was also a bitch (pardon my French).  The race director announced "no aero bars" on the way down.  Yes, I agree with that because the pavement which he had also deemed as "pretty good" was in fact pretty horrible.  Going UP you can avoid the broken pavement easily because of the slower speed, but going down- mainly over 30 mph (maxed out at 39.4), broken pavement can equal broken bones or worse.

I told the race director in an email that IF I do the race next year I will ride a mountain bike with 1.5" tires as to ride what I did (700 x 23 mm tires) is akin to suicidal behavior.  I heard of no casualties among the 104 participants but run that same course 5 years and I would guess one racer will suffer road rash and at least one more will be in the ER and/or hospitalized.

On a brighter note, my wife and sons ran in the 5k that began one hour earlier than the triathlon.  Of the 18 participants, my wife won it outright, my 12 year old son took second a few minutes later, and my almost 10 year old got 5th place.  Overall, a good experience for all and for me a 6 hour post race headache and a new record for my slowest time for a sprint tri-- 2:09:59. there's me in 58th place and there are my wife and son's results here-- so proud!

Darn, Wish I Had Kept Track!

My next triathlon is 8 days away.  "Honey, when did we do that last triathlon, March, April?"
"No, December, it was so cold..."
Darn.  I was looking through the exercise log I have kept daily since the first day of January this year.  I was hoping to see what I trained like and what I was doing in the previous 2-3 weeks before the last triathlon.

But I got nothing since I have no records earlier than January.

I continue to run on tired legs.  I played 2 hours of doubles tennis this morning and then tonight I was running once again on "tired legs".  With not much activity this week ahead I hope that they will recover some "snap" that they currently lack.

Time will tell.  Like eight days of time.

The Other Tin Man and California Chrome

Yes, sometimes Sprint Triathlons are called Tin Man Triathlons but this title goes back, way back to the original Tin Man.

My wife is a walker and a runner and even though I have competed in many more races than she, can tell a fartlek from a plain old fart, and have run in excess of 10,000 life time miles while she is still working on her 2nd grand, she nevertheless has some good ideas when it comes to the sport.  She walks a lot before, after and sometimes in the middle of a running workout.

I am not a walker.  I will take one of my sons bikes or one of their scooters 200 yards  to the corner to mail a letter rather than walk.

Today, after running only 5 times in the last 6+ weeks, I ran an entire 32 minutes without stopping.  This was huge for me, since my typical run has been only 16-24 minutes.  And why is this noteworthy?  I began with a 4 to 5 minute walk.  I generally start with a 20-30 foot walk so this was a virtual walking marathon for me before I ran.

When I broke from the walk into a slow jog, my immediate thought was the transition felt normal and relaxed.  My next thought was my left upper hamstring isn't hurting or pulling (it has off and more ON since December).  In fact in the next 32 minutes it didn't hurt at all.

Remember Dorothy's Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz?  At first it's just a soft, almost silent groan that emanates from his mouth.  The oil can then is applied to his jaws, crooks of his elbows, knees, etc and then he is able to move freely.  Walking for several minutes allowed me to move naturally and freely too.  

One of running and walking's unpopular cousins is called stretching and I still am an undisciplined stretcher.  I would always quip when others encouraged me to stretch before a run, "have you ever seen a race horse stretch?" What race horses do before their race is walk-walk-walk as their warm-up before the slow trot to ready their muscles for the strain ahead.

So leave it to Secretariat, California Chrome and the Tin Man to remind us of that old cliche, "you gotta walk before you can run."  It works for me and my guess is that it will probably work for you too.