Some recent research has revived a very old issue among runners--whether you should land on your heels (as in fact most of us distance runners do) or on the balls of your feet (forefeet) as most sprinters and top middle-distance runners do. The new research, reported by the Harvard professor of human biological evolution Daniel Lieberman and his colleagues, has raised a ruckus and caused a lot of consternation by suggesting that runners who land on their heels may be at greater risk of injury than those who land on their forefeet.
I have good reason to think that for the great majority of runners, that conclusion might be mistaken. I'm not challenging Lieberman's study at all, and in fact I think Lieberman is one of the most important figures in the science of human biomechanics. So, how could the injury-risk worry be a mistake? A simple answer is that unless you are a college-level cross-country runner or elite competitor at sprints or middle-distances, the study may not apply to you--and in fact its findings may be the opposite of what they'd be for you and me.
Here's why.
Of the approximately 50 million Americans (according to surveys by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association) who are active lifestyle runners or joggers, I'd bet that more than 95 percent are either (1) middle-of-the-pack road or trail runners (those at the back of the pack still get to call themselves "middle-of-the-pack") who run distances ranging from 5k to half-marathons, or (2) long-distance runners whose main interests range from half-marathons to marathons or ultras. People in those two categories are mostly runners who have a natural inclination to land on their heels. And for most, to land on their forefeet would feel so unnatural to them that few would even try it.
To illustrate this point, before going on to explain why heel-striking probably does not increase injury risk, consider the case of Clarence deMar, the legendary Boston Marathon runner of a century ago. In his 1937 memoir, Marathon, DeMar tells of how he began his running career by going out for cross-country in his third year of college: "At that first trial . . . captain Stevens kept yelling at me, 'Run on your toes, on your toes!'" DeMar tried it, but "I couldn't get the idea of hitting the toes first.... Sometime within a year I learned how to run on my toes. Still, I have never done that any more than one third of the time." Staying mainly on his heels, DeMar went on to win the Boston Marathon seven times. And considering how little was known about exercise physiology, optimal training, shoes, nutrition, and endurance fueling at the time, his sub-2:20 marathons would probably rank him right up there with the top American marathoners of today.
When I read that "run-on-your-toes" passage in DeMar's memoir, I almost fell out of my chair in surprise: the same thing had happened to me, half a century after it happened to him! When I went out for cross-country as a high-school sophomore in 1956, my coach took one look at me and shouted, "Run on your toes! Run on your toes!" I, too, learned to do it, and as it turned out I was quite successful at cross-country; the following year, I broke the Westfield (N.J.) High School course record that had been set by Westfield's New Jersey state champion Edgar Hoos ten years earlier. And I ran fairly well in college as well. But--keep this in mind--it was in cross-country that I received and followed that "run-on-your-toes" admonition, as it was for DeMar and, no doubt, thousands of others. I'll come back to this cross-country connection in a minute.
A few years after my graduation from college, in the mid-1960s, I decided to run a marathon. I entered the Cherry Tree Marathon in New York City (a predecessor of the New York Marathon), and at around 17 miles into the race found myself catching up with a man I knew to be a legend in the New York running community--Ted Corbitt. Ted had run the marathon for the U.S. in the 1952 Olympics, and had been the national champion in 1954. He'd also been the founding president of the New York Road Runners Club, and first president of the Road Runners Club of America. He was older now, and not as fast as he'd once been, but I could hardly believe I was catching him. As I pulled alongside, Ted glanced at my feet and smiled, and said, "You know, you might run easier if you let yourself land on your heels." It was as if I'd been spoken to by God. I took what he'd said to heart, and over the next several months I let myself gradually return to the way I'd landed on my feet before that first day of high-school cross country. My feet, ankles, legs, and back all became more relaxed, and ever since, I've felt more in touch--well, I have been more in touch--with the ground I was running on. Years later, I would surmise that that quiet suggestion from Ted Corbitt had added 20 miles to my running longevity (I'm now in my 55th consecutive year).
Then, last month, the study reported by Professor Lieberman and his colleagues at Harvard hit the news. What they found was that over a four-year span, Harvard cross-country runners who landed on their heels had higher rates of injury than those who landed on their forefeet--the very opposite of what my own experience had suggested. The result seemed counterintuitive, because in short events, from 100 meters to 5000 meters or so, where most top runners do land on their forefeet, the greater speed and longer strides required for success in those races require greater biomechanical force, which puts greater stress on the legs and feet. In the slower, longer, distance events, most of us land on our heels--exerting less force and therefore presumably making ourselves less vulnerable to injury than we'd be if we ran like sprinters or 5000-meter runners.
The Harvard study seemed to belie my Ted Corbitt epiphany, but I think I might have an explanation. That study's results were for cross-country, which is run at neither very-short (primarily forefoot) nor very-long (primarily heel-strike) distances. At the college level, cross-country races are run at in-between distances, around 10,000 meters, where both heel-strikers and forefoot strikers can be competititive--and where of course both were represented on the Harvard men's and women's teams. But--here's the rub--the training for cross-country requires a lot of interval work, or other high-speed running. Those of the Harvard runners who were naturally inclined to run on their heels may therefore have been farther out of their element--pushing the envelope, biomechanically--than were the natural forefoot strikers. The stresses on feet and knees were therefore relatively greater for the heel strikers than for their forefoot-striking teammates, so their vulnerability to injury at those speeds was greater. I suspect that if the same group of runners had been training for marathons or ultras, with much less speedwork but greater mileage, it would have been the forefoot strikers who were more out of their element--and the injury results might well have been reversed.
That explanation might beg the question of why long-distance runners shouldn't (or don't) take advantage of the greater power that can be deployed by running on their forefeet, just as sprinters or milers (or about a third of the Harvard cross-country runners) do. The answer is suggested by another study of the heel-vs-forefoot question (reported by David Carrier, the University of Utah persistence-running theorist), which found that while heel-striking is slower, it is about 55 percent more energy-efficient than running on the forefeet. In shorter-distance foot races, just as in short-distance car races, energy efficiency offers no competitive advantage. If a drag-race driver knew he had the fastest car, it wouldn't matter to him if the car were so energy-squandering that it got only 2 miles to the gallon. Only its power and speed would matter. Similarly, if a sprinter or 800-meter runner gets only two-thirds the distance per 100 calories of fuel that a heel-striker gets, it doesn't matter. But for a marathoner or ultrarunner, it matters hugely. Sprinters have to run on their forefeet to maximize their power. Most ultrarunners land on their heels to maximize their staying power. Clarence DeMar, it seems, knew this all along. Reflecting years later on that "run-on-your-toes" exhortation, he mused that forefoot running "seems to me a trifle faster, but it is more fatiguing."
I had been a good cross-country runner in high school and college, but at the Cherry Tree Marathon I was a prime candidate to learn how much more easily and sustainably I could run this much longer distance--and eventually run even farther--by reducing the force of my footplant. Ted Corbitt, who a few years earlier had been the national marathon champ and the best ultrarunner in the country, knew that at a glance.
Josh about to pass his grandpa
Here, at age three, Josh regularly runs a mile or two with me--and I have to work hard to keep up!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
How Do Runners Breathe? "Born to Run" Got it Backward. Why Won't the Author Own Up?
Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run, is wrong again. And this time, it doesn't seem to be either his relative lack of experience as a runner or his carelessness in checking the facts about what he writes. This time, it looks like outright denial that he made a serious mistake--a mistake that could cause a lot of discomfort to other people.
I don't like bringing this up, because I think McDougall did something quite admirable in writing a book that has evidently inspired many thousands of people to take up running. As I said in a previous post, his tale about the barefoot-running Tarahumara Indians is quite entertaining. However, I also pointed out that he was quite mistaken about a few things--such as his suggestion that Nike running shoes were the cause of innumerable running injuries, and that the University of Utah researcher Dennis Bramble had said that we human runners have an advantage over other (quadruped) animals because humans can take more than one breath per stride--as if that were somehow an advantage.
In my earlier post, I noted that when I read that purported quote, I knew something had to be wrong. As an experienced long-distance runner, I knew perfectly well that it has to be the other way around--humans normally take two or more strides per breath. Anyone who tries running the way McDougall implied, in his quoting of Bramble, would quickly hyperventilate. I e-mailed Bramble to ask if he'd been misquoted, and he confirmed that he had.
Then, a few days ago, I got an email from a sportsmedicine and exercise-medicine physician, Dr. Rajat Chauhan, who had seen my post and quoted it in a post of his own, on a Wall Street Journal blog. Dr. Chauhan, like Dr. Bramble, confirmed my point. A couple of days later, Dr. Chauhan sent another email saying that McDougall had commented on his post:
Rajat, you and Ed Ayres are incorrect. The passage you mention in "Born to Run" refer(s) to two steps per breath, not two breaths per step.
Unfortunately, that isn't what the passage says at all, as Dr. Chauhan pointed out in the following reply:
In hardcover copy of 37th printing, January 2011 edition of book Born to Run: a Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race Never Seen, on page 223, Christopher McDougall states the following:
"Whenever quadrupeds run, they get stuck in a one-breath-per-locomotion-cycle," Dr. Bramble said. "But the human runners we tested never went one-to-one. They could pick from a number of different ratios, and generally preferred two to one." The reason we're free to pant to our heart's content is the same reason we need to shower on a summer day: we are the only mammals that shed most of our heat by sweating.
Clearly, this passage quotes Bramble as saying humans prefer two to one breaths per locomotion cycle (stride). But if there's any doubt about that being a misquote that could cause a lot of beginning runners a lot of discomfort or worse, two other points settle it. First, McDougall's wording "we're free to pant to our heart's content"(!) is an appropriate description for two breaths per stride, but not for two strides per breath. "Pant" is exactly what you'd do if you took two breaths per stride: you'd be like a dog panting with its tongue out after a hard dash. And second, there's that point about sweat, which McDougall seems also to have misunderstood. The reason a dog pants is precisely because it does not have the human's bare skin and capacity to get evaporative cooling from sweat, except maybe on its tongue. And because the human runner has that unique cooling mechanism, he or she does NOT have to "pant!" Since when is it desirable or comfortable, or even sustainable for more than a minute or two, for us human runners to "pant to our heart's content"? Apparently, McDougall got quite mixed up about what Bramble was saying about how human runners breathe, and about how that is related to cooling. Our cooling system means we don't have to pant like dogs with their tongues hanging out. In other words, a big part of what makes humans outstanding long-distance runners, compared with other mammals, is that we get a lot of distance for each breath we take. I have no doubt that many of those Tarahumara McDougall admires can run up steep hills with two strides per breath and on easier terrain with four or five strides per breath. I do it myself, all the time. Beginning runners need to know that they can too.
Being wrong is undestandable, of course; it's only human. "What's more worrying," writes Dr. Chauhan about McDougall's flat denial, "is his attitude: is he going back on what he says, but can't publicly say he is wrong. That could help the running community in a far bigger way."
I don't like bringing this up, because I think McDougall did something quite admirable in writing a book that has evidently inspired many thousands of people to take up running. As I said in a previous post, his tale about the barefoot-running Tarahumara Indians is quite entertaining. However, I also pointed out that he was quite mistaken about a few things--such as his suggestion that Nike running shoes were the cause of innumerable running injuries, and that the University of Utah researcher Dennis Bramble had said that we human runners have an advantage over other (quadruped) animals because humans can take more than one breath per stride--as if that were somehow an advantage.
In my earlier post, I noted that when I read that purported quote, I knew something had to be wrong. As an experienced long-distance runner, I knew perfectly well that it has to be the other way around--humans normally take two or more strides per breath. Anyone who tries running the way McDougall implied, in his quoting of Bramble, would quickly hyperventilate. I e-mailed Bramble to ask if he'd been misquoted, and he confirmed that he had.
Then, a few days ago, I got an email from a sportsmedicine and exercise-medicine physician, Dr. Rajat Chauhan, who had seen my post and quoted it in a post of his own, on a Wall Street Journal blog. Dr. Chauhan, like Dr. Bramble, confirmed my point. A couple of days later, Dr. Chauhan sent another email saying that McDougall had commented on his post:
Rajat, you and Ed Ayres are incorrect. The passage you mention in "Born to Run" refer(s) to two steps per breath, not two breaths per step.
Unfortunately, that isn't what the passage says at all, as Dr. Chauhan pointed out in the following reply:
In hardcover copy of 37th printing, January 2011 edition of book Born to Run: a Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race Never Seen, on page 223, Christopher McDougall states the following:
"Whenever quadrupeds run, they get stuck in a one-breath-per-locomotion-cycle," Dr. Bramble said. "But the human runners we tested never went one-to-one. They could pick from a number of different ratios, and generally preferred two to one." The reason we're free to pant to our heart's content is the same reason we need to shower on a summer day: we are the only mammals that shed most of our heat by sweating.
Clearly, this passage quotes Bramble as saying humans prefer two to one breaths per locomotion cycle (stride). But if there's any doubt about that being a misquote that could cause a lot of beginning runners a lot of discomfort or worse, two other points settle it. First, McDougall's wording "we're free to pant to our heart's content"(!) is an appropriate description for two breaths per stride, but not for two strides per breath. "Pant" is exactly what you'd do if you took two breaths per stride: you'd be like a dog panting with its tongue out after a hard dash. And second, there's that point about sweat, which McDougall seems also to have misunderstood. The reason a dog pants is precisely because it does not have the human's bare skin and capacity to get evaporative cooling from sweat, except maybe on its tongue. And because the human runner has that unique cooling mechanism, he or she does NOT have to "pant!" Since when is it desirable or comfortable, or even sustainable for more than a minute or two, for us human runners to "pant to our heart's content"? Apparently, McDougall got quite mixed up about what Bramble was saying about how human runners breathe, and about how that is related to cooling. Our cooling system means we don't have to pant like dogs with their tongues hanging out. In other words, a big part of what makes humans outstanding long-distance runners, compared with other mammals, is that we get a lot of distance for each breath we take. I have no doubt that many of those Tarahumara McDougall admires can run up steep hills with two strides per breath and on easier terrain with four or five strides per breath. I do it myself, all the time. Beginning runners need to know that they can too.
Being wrong is undestandable, of course; it's only human. "What's more worrying," writes Dr. Chauhan about McDougall's flat denial, "is his attitude: is he going back on what he says, but can't publicly say he is wrong. That could help the running community in a far bigger way."
Saturday, December 17, 2011
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Wait Three Weeks . . . and then Get Going!
If you thought I'd hang up my running shoes after that last post I did, for once in your life you thought wrong! I'm too stubborn to do that. After 54 years of distance running through hell and high water, ya think I'm going to stop now?
For one thing, I'm pretty good at recovery. Genetically, I'm one of those lucky people whose knees hold up over the years, even after I take knee-bashing face plants like the one I took at the JFK 50-Mile last month. For another thing, I'm especially good at rationalization. If things go badly, I'll find a reason why--come hell or high water--and learn from it, and go on from there.
As it turns out, I think I've figured out what went awry at the JFK 50. Two things went wrong, and both have to do with my legs--not totally surprising, if you consider that without fully functioning legs, running would be pretty hard. Ask any snail.
The first thing was that about three weeks before the race, my right leg got a little swollen and sore along the big vein that runs up the inner thigh from the knee. I might have shrugged it off, except that my younger brother, Alex, had recently gone to a doctor with a similar condition--in his case the whole leg was swollen--and had been diagnosed with "deep vein thrombosis" (DVT), a blood clot deep in the lower leg that can be a serious threat to life and limb. Apparently, if a clot like that breaks loose and travels to the lungs, it can be fatal.
So, I decided to get my leg checked out. My diagnosis turned out to be similar to Alex's, though less severe. But it still posed the same threat, to a lesser degree. I was put on a prescription blood thinner for 10 days, and the swelling gradually subsided. I never had to interrupt my running. After the JFK, I didn't think that ailment had been a factor. (I still finished 2nd in my age division, but nearly two hours slower than I'd planned. Boy, did I make God laugh with that plan.) But now, having invoked my expertise at rationalization, I've decided it was. My brother had been on a blood thinner for six months by then, and his leg was still a little swollen, so evidently this is a condition that doesn't subside overnight--not even the "superficial vein thrombosis" (SVT) that I was told I had. In the race, I think I must not have been getting quite the full circulation of blood I'd trained for.
The other factor was that face-plant I took when I tripped over an unexpected rocky patch that was lurking under a blanket of fallen leaves. When I went down, my knee smacked one of the rocks and bled, but I was able to get up and keep going. But this time, unlike in previous falls I've had over the years, the knee didn't bounce back withgin a few days. For a week after the race, it hurt enough to make me wonder if I'd chipped or cracked a bone, and I considered going for an x-ray. But then I thought, if it is a damaged bone, what's the doctor going to do? He'll say (so to speak), "Give it time to heal before you start running again. Two hundred dollars, please." So a waited a little longer. After three weeks, I felt comfortable running again, and realized there'd been no lasting damage. But the bone had taken quite a bruising, and after another five hours of running following the fall (and no stopping to clean or apply antiseptic), it may have been fairly stressed. Now it's OK.
So there,m I've tied it up quite neatly. No longer baffled, no longer discouraged, I'm back into running. Wait 'till next year!
One coda to this post, which I can't resist because it's a good illustration of my thesis that endurance--the kind of endurance that is one of the keys to human survival in the very long run--is not just about what you can do in 3 or 8 or 24 hours, but what you do over a lifetime. My brother Alex (aka Glenn) and I are, as far as I can determine, the only pair of brothers ever to finish in the top 10 at the New York Marathon in the same year(1970), and here we are 41 years later, both still running and still loving it. Neither one of us is about to let DVT or SVT--orthe DMV or anything else--stop us now.
For one thing, I'm pretty good at recovery. Genetically, I'm one of those lucky people whose knees hold up over the years, even after I take knee-bashing face plants like the one I took at the JFK 50-Mile last month. For another thing, I'm especially good at rationalization. If things go badly, I'll find a reason why--come hell or high water--and learn from it, and go on from there.
As it turns out, I think I've figured out what went awry at the JFK 50. Two things went wrong, and both have to do with my legs--not totally surprising, if you consider that without fully functioning legs, running would be pretty hard. Ask any snail.
The first thing was that about three weeks before the race, my right leg got a little swollen and sore along the big vein that runs up the inner thigh from the knee. I might have shrugged it off, except that my younger brother, Alex, had recently gone to a doctor with a similar condition--in his case the whole leg was swollen--and had been diagnosed with "deep vein thrombosis" (DVT), a blood clot deep in the lower leg that can be a serious threat to life and limb. Apparently, if a clot like that breaks loose and travels to the lungs, it can be fatal.
So, I decided to get my leg checked out. My diagnosis turned out to be similar to Alex's, though less severe. But it still posed the same threat, to a lesser degree. I was put on a prescription blood thinner for 10 days, and the swelling gradually subsided. I never had to interrupt my running. After the JFK, I didn't think that ailment had been a factor. (I still finished 2nd in my age division, but nearly two hours slower than I'd planned. Boy, did I make God laugh with that plan.) But now, having invoked my expertise at rationalization, I've decided it was. My brother had been on a blood thinner for six months by then, and his leg was still a little swollen, so evidently this is a condition that doesn't subside overnight--not even the "superficial vein thrombosis" (SVT) that I was told I had. In the race, I think I must not have been getting quite the full circulation of blood I'd trained for.
The other factor was that face-plant I took when I tripped over an unexpected rocky patch that was lurking under a blanket of fallen leaves. When I went down, my knee smacked one of the rocks and bled, but I was able to get up and keep going. But this time, unlike in previous falls I've had over the years, the knee didn't bounce back withgin a few days. For a week after the race, it hurt enough to make me wonder if I'd chipped or cracked a bone, and I considered going for an x-ray. But then I thought, if it is a damaged bone, what's the doctor going to do? He'll say (so to speak), "Give it time to heal before you start running again. Two hundred dollars, please." So a waited a little longer. After three weeks, I felt comfortable running again, and realized there'd been no lasting damage. But the bone had taken quite a bruising, and after another five hours of running following the fall (and no stopping to clean or apply antiseptic), it may have been fairly stressed. Now it's OK.
So there,m I've tied it up quite neatly. No longer baffled, no longer discouraged, I'm back into running. Wait 'till next year!
One coda to this post, which I can't resist because it's a good illustration of my thesis that endurance--the kind of endurance that is one of the keys to human survival in the very long run--is not just about what you can do in 3 or 8 or 24 hours, but what you do over a lifetime. My brother Alex (aka Glenn) and I are, as far as I can determine, the only pair of brothers ever to finish in the top 10 at the New York Marathon in the same year(1970), and here we are 41 years later, both still running and still loving it. Neither one of us is about to let DVT or SVT--orthe DMV or anything else--stop us now.
Monday, November 21, 2011
I Got Whupped
In my last post, I said I'd do something terrific at the JFK 50-Mile. What I ended up doing was a terrific disappointment. I won't say embarrassment, because this is way beyond embarrassment. It's what I'll euphemistically call a "peak learning experience."
I predicted that I'd win my age division at the race on November 19, and that I'd break Anthony Cerminaro's over-70 record of 9:09. Ouch.
First, a little comic moment: When I finally did cross the finish line, the announcer on the p.a. system said, "Here's Ed Ayres, our 1977 JFK champion, and now our first finisher in the over-70 division . . . congratulations, Ed!" I should stop the story right there, but.... I winced, and it wasn't because I had stopped running and now maybe my left leg would never bend again. I knew, from what the clock told me, that there was no way I could have finished ahead of Tony Cerminaro, or even near him.
Put it this way: If you'd told me before the race that Cerminaro would have what he later told me was an "awful" day and had finished over an hour slower than his record, I'd have said, "I bet I'll beat him by an hour and a half!" So, after the announcer inexplicably said I'd won the division, I went to the wall where they were posting the results (which wouldn't lie, because we wore chips on our shoes), to look for Tony's name and confirm what I already knew. I noticed a rugged-looking, white-haired guy who was also peering at the same part of the posting, sort of squinting--said he couldn't see very well without his glasses. There was something about him. I asked, "What's your name? I can help find it."
"Anthony Cerminaro."
"Funny thing," I said. "That's the same name I'm looking for!" I had never met Tony. I told him that they had announced at the finish line that I had won the division, but that I knew it couldn't be. "I just came over here to confirm that," I said.
"No," Tony said. "You must have been way ahead of me. I had an awful run."
But as the results confirmed, I had been more awful than he. Tony had finished nearly half an hour ahead of me. More to the point (this is the part that's really hard to write), I'd been about 2 hours slower than the time I'd planned to run. And over 4 hours slower than I'd run this race in my 30s.
So, what happened? I honestly don't know,but I did think of three possible explanations (not excuses).
1. The knee? Somehow I got through the notoriously rocky Appalachian Trail sections without a face-plant this year--then about two hours later did a face plant on the C&O Canal Towpath, where the footing is so good and the rocks are so few that I guess I stopped watching for them. In all my previous runs on this course, I'd never taken a fall on the Towpath. But somehow, Saturday, my feet managed to find a place where a thick cover of fallen leaves covered a few rocks, I tripped, and down I went--gashing my left knee. The problem with this explanation, though, is that I'd been feeling inexplicably awful even before the fall, which may even have been a factor in the fall. I think I'd been getting a little woozy. By 25 miles, I'd been thinking about actually dropping out. So, although the knee might have made the situation worse (today I'm limping), it can't be the main cause.
2. Heavy stress in my personal life? Again, this is not an excuse. To me, excuses for bad performances or broken promises are a big turnoff. I mention this only because it might be useful for other runners to consider what stress can do. I won't go into details. But I know that a lot of people are deeply distressed these days, and it might have more of an effect on performance--whether at work, at home, or in sports--than we realize.
3. Aging? My good friend Jim Hall, a Methodist minister and family counselor whom I coached through his first marathon (Boston) many years ago, and who has said it changed his life, is the guy who waited for me at the finish line Saturday. Jim is now 82, and after I told him how mystified I was about my ordeal (and how sorry I was that he'd had to wait for over 2 hours past the time I suggested he be there), he gently suggested that maybe aging is more of a factor in the slowing of the body than we want to believe. (Jim had done a half-marathon a couple of weeks ago, and was quite content to walk it.)
I agreed that maybe I'd been in denial, but here too, it didn't entirely explain what happened. For one thing, Tony Cerminaro is older than I, so it was the older guy who'd won our little competition-within-the-competition.
And then there was that little experience I had in the final five miles, where I felt like I was in a Soviet forced march across Siberia, trying not to pass out. As I shuffled along, runner after runner streamed past. And then, also passing, was a little old lady who looked like one of those curly-white-haired women you might see playing canasta or whatever it is they play in the game room of an assisted-living facility. And next to her, a much larger, old white-haired man like you might expect to see in the VFW lodge, explaining that he has to walk with a cane now because his knee had been shot out at the Battle of the Bulge, in WW II.
The white-haired couple were discussing their strategy for the final miles. The last 8 miles of the JFK are on a rolling country road, and since coming off the Towpath they'd been walking the uphills and running the downhills and flats. The man, who apparently had run this race 20 or 30 times, said to her that if they continued going as they were, they could make their time goal. "If we go any faster, we won't."
Somehow, hearing that aroused the very last ounce of competitiveness in me. I don't like the now popular strategy of interspersing walking breaks with the running (we never did that, back in the day), but since leaving the Towpath and hitting that first hill, I'd had no alternative. Or my courage had failed and I'd just given up. So I had been walking the uphills just like this couple, for the past 3 miles. But when they decided on their plan (to just keep on keeping on, so to speak), I saw an opportunity. (I feel awful writing this; it makes me feel like a vulture.) Instead of walking the uphills, I'd now "run" them! "Wobble" is more like it, but that was what I did. And I eventually finished ahead of them, even though I'm pretty sure I'm older than they. So aging, too, can't be the whole explanation for my ordeal.
In the last mile, I passed a group of five or six runners who were walking, talking as if they were out for a stroll in the park. My impression is that even ultrarunners who walk intermittently as part of a pacing strategy don't generally do that in the last mile or two--the last mile is where you stop conserving whatever you have left and go for broke. But this group evidently had a different approach. It had been a perfect day for running (sunny, cool, no wind, and beautiful vistas all the way) and they had obviously been enjoying their companionship and weren't going to interrupt it with a pointless dash to the finish. The age-group winners in all their divisions had finished hours earlier, no doubt. What did it matter of one of them finished 514th instead of 517th?
Here too, I saw a competitive opportunity, old hungry wolf that I am. I toddled past them, exhausted and nauseous, but intent on beating them to the finish line. Why? My chance for a meaningful competition had died on the trail five hours ago. But if a half-starved, three-legged dog that had to stop every few seconds to sit down and use one of its three remaining legs to scratch its fleas had limped out on the road and headed for the finish line banner, I'd have raced to beat it.
So, as I say, this was a peak learning experience. Competitiveness can be a gift, but also a curse. With my 54-plus consecutive years of competitive long-distance running, I may be the most experienced runner in America. But when it comes to the rewards of running with friends, enjoying the adventure and camaraderie of doing something truly difficult together, I'm just a beginner. I envied the old couple who ran together, and I felt wistful about the group of younger men and women who so exuberantly shared the experience of running 50 miles on a gorgeous day, and whom I had so intently passed in that final mile. I'm guessing that they know better than I what it is to really live.
I predicted that I'd win my age division at the race on November 19, and that I'd break Anthony Cerminaro's over-70 record of 9:09. Ouch.
First, a little comic moment: When I finally did cross the finish line, the announcer on the p.a. system said, "Here's Ed Ayres, our 1977 JFK champion, and now our first finisher in the over-70 division . . . congratulations, Ed!" I should stop the story right there, but.... I winced, and it wasn't because I had stopped running and now maybe my left leg would never bend again. I knew, from what the clock told me, that there was no way I could have finished ahead of Tony Cerminaro, or even near him.
Put it this way: If you'd told me before the race that Cerminaro would have what he later told me was an "awful" day and had finished over an hour slower than his record, I'd have said, "I bet I'll beat him by an hour and a half!" So, after the announcer inexplicably said I'd won the division, I went to the wall where they were posting the results (which wouldn't lie, because we wore chips on our shoes), to look for Tony's name and confirm what I already knew. I noticed a rugged-looking, white-haired guy who was also peering at the same part of the posting, sort of squinting--said he couldn't see very well without his glasses. There was something about him. I asked, "What's your name? I can help find it."
"Anthony Cerminaro."
"Funny thing," I said. "That's the same name I'm looking for!" I had never met Tony. I told him that they had announced at the finish line that I had won the division, but that I knew it couldn't be. "I just came over here to confirm that," I said.
"No," Tony said. "You must have been way ahead of me. I had an awful run."
But as the results confirmed, I had been more awful than he. Tony had finished nearly half an hour ahead of me. More to the point (this is the part that's really hard to write), I'd been about 2 hours slower than the time I'd planned to run. And over 4 hours slower than I'd run this race in my 30s.
So, what happened? I honestly don't know,but I did think of three possible explanations (not excuses).
1. The knee? Somehow I got through the notoriously rocky Appalachian Trail sections without a face-plant this year--then about two hours later did a face plant on the C&O Canal Towpath, where the footing is so good and the rocks are so few that I guess I stopped watching for them. In all my previous runs on this course, I'd never taken a fall on the Towpath. But somehow, Saturday, my feet managed to find a place where a thick cover of fallen leaves covered a few rocks, I tripped, and down I went--gashing my left knee. The problem with this explanation, though, is that I'd been feeling inexplicably awful even before the fall, which may even have been a factor in the fall. I think I'd been getting a little woozy. By 25 miles, I'd been thinking about actually dropping out. So, although the knee might have made the situation worse (today I'm limping), it can't be the main cause.
2. Heavy stress in my personal life? Again, this is not an excuse. To me, excuses for bad performances or broken promises are a big turnoff. I mention this only because it might be useful for other runners to consider what stress can do. I won't go into details. But I know that a lot of people are deeply distressed these days, and it might have more of an effect on performance--whether at work, at home, or in sports--than we realize.
3. Aging? My good friend Jim Hall, a Methodist minister and family counselor whom I coached through his first marathon (Boston) many years ago, and who has said it changed his life, is the guy who waited for me at the finish line Saturday. Jim is now 82, and after I told him how mystified I was about my ordeal (and how sorry I was that he'd had to wait for over 2 hours past the time I suggested he be there), he gently suggested that maybe aging is more of a factor in the slowing of the body than we want to believe. (Jim had done a half-marathon a couple of weeks ago, and was quite content to walk it.)
I agreed that maybe I'd been in denial, but here too, it didn't entirely explain what happened. For one thing, Tony Cerminaro is older than I, so it was the older guy who'd won our little competition-within-the-competition.
And then there was that little experience I had in the final five miles, where I felt like I was in a Soviet forced march across Siberia, trying not to pass out. As I shuffled along, runner after runner streamed past. And then, also passing, was a little old lady who looked like one of those curly-white-haired women you might see playing canasta or whatever it is they play in the game room of an assisted-living facility. And next to her, a much larger, old white-haired man like you might expect to see in the VFW lodge, explaining that he has to walk with a cane now because his knee had been shot out at the Battle of the Bulge, in WW II.
The white-haired couple were discussing their strategy for the final miles. The last 8 miles of the JFK are on a rolling country road, and since coming off the Towpath they'd been walking the uphills and running the downhills and flats. The man, who apparently had run this race 20 or 30 times, said to her that if they continued going as they were, they could make their time goal. "If we go any faster, we won't."
Somehow, hearing that aroused the very last ounce of competitiveness in me. I don't like the now popular strategy of interspersing walking breaks with the running (we never did that, back in the day), but since leaving the Towpath and hitting that first hill, I'd had no alternative. Or my courage had failed and I'd just given up. So I had been walking the uphills just like this couple, for the past 3 miles. But when they decided on their plan (to just keep on keeping on, so to speak), I saw an opportunity. (I feel awful writing this; it makes me feel like a vulture.) Instead of walking the uphills, I'd now "run" them! "Wobble" is more like it, but that was what I did. And I eventually finished ahead of them, even though I'm pretty sure I'm older than they. So aging, too, can't be the whole explanation for my ordeal.
In the last mile, I passed a group of five or six runners who were walking, talking as if they were out for a stroll in the park. My impression is that even ultrarunners who walk intermittently as part of a pacing strategy don't generally do that in the last mile or two--the last mile is where you stop conserving whatever you have left and go for broke. But this group evidently had a different approach. It had been a perfect day for running (sunny, cool, no wind, and beautiful vistas all the way) and they had obviously been enjoying their companionship and weren't going to interrupt it with a pointless dash to the finish. The age-group winners in all their divisions had finished hours earlier, no doubt. What did it matter of one of them finished 514th instead of 517th?
Here too, I saw a competitive opportunity, old hungry wolf that I am. I toddled past them, exhausted and nauseous, but intent on beating them to the finish line. Why? My chance for a meaningful competition had died on the trail five hours ago. But if a half-starved, three-legged dog that had to stop every few seconds to sit down and use one of its three remaining legs to scratch its fleas had limped out on the road and headed for the finish line banner, I'd have raced to beat it.
So, as I say, this was a peak learning experience. Competitiveness can be a gift, but also a curse. With my 54-plus consecutive years of competitive long-distance running, I may be the most experienced runner in America. But when it comes to the rewards of running with friends, enjoying the adventure and camaraderie of doing something truly difficult together, I'm just a beginner. I envied the old couple who ran together, and I felt wistful about the group of younger men and women who so exuberantly shared the experience of running 50 miles on a gorgeous day, and whom I had so intently passed in that final mile. I'm guessing that they know better than I what it is to really live.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
At JFK, I'm Out to Run the Way Ali Boxed!
There's a powerful force we can call on in sports, which is rarely used thesed days but which I'm now ready to use. I doubt that Muhammad Ali was the first to invoke it, but I don't know of any athlete who ever deployed it with more nerve and verve. I'm referring to the power that's unleashed when you take the risk of predicting, with no hesitation or reservation, that you are going to do something fantastic.
From the moment he appeared on the world's athletic stage in the 1960s, the young Cassius Clay--who later renamed himself Ali--provoked as much uproar with his mouth as with his fist. Though he was America's most formidable fighter, he refused to support the misguided fighting in Vietnam--and said so publicly. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," he said. "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger." He was stripped of his title and not allowed to box for four years in his prime, but he never relented. And when he returned, though he made his living as a boxer, he declined to abide by the rule that you never provoke an opponent lest you provoke him to a fiercer performance than you'd otherwise have to deal with. Ali liked to provoke, and did so with panache.
In the decades since, most top athletes have been far more circumspect. Part of it may be cultural: the rebelliousness and nonconformity of the '60s and '70s receded into the conservativism of the '80s and '90s, And part of it may have been the"locker-room bulletin-board" phenomenon--the now common practice of seizing on the comment of any forthcoming opponent who does say something provocative, and posting it as a spur to heightened motivation. These days, athletes are cautioned by their sponsors, agents, managers, coaches, and owners (yes, these pro athletes are owned) not to say anything that might spur an opponent. Even Superbowl quarterbacks and NBA All Stars who grew up taunting their playmates with "your mother" jokes now know well enough to keep their mouths shut., When top jocks are asked by reporters whether they're going to whup their opponents, they almost never say they will, the way Ali did. Instead, they mumble polite, forgettable cliches like "He's really tough, and I'm going to have to really get out there and, you know, do my best."
What's unfortunately overlooked in this enforced non-offensiveness, I think, is that holding back in what you say may result in some subconscious moderation in what you do. "Attitude" isn't just about how you feel and what you say. The word "attitude" is a dead metaphor, originally referring to a physical stance. Taking the sting out of what you feel or say before a big game, or race--pulling your punches--could subconsciously take some of the sting out of what you do in the competition itself.
Ali never pulled his punches. He stung like a bee!
As it happens, I'm about the same age as Ali. I just turned 70; he turns 70 in January. I still remember, with admiration, the ballsy candor he had when we were young. And now, suddenly, I've had an inspiration. As an amateur athlete in a relatively unpublicized sport, I don't have to worry about upsetting sponsors. I don't have any sponsors. So, why should I, like all those corporate athletes, be constrained by the enforced false modesty we see in 21st-century spectator sports? The only reason I can think of, for guys like me, is that we're afraid that if we think we're ready to do something big and say so publicly, and then fail to do what we said, we'll be terribly embarrassed. But if holding back in expression might also mean subconsciously falling short in performance, are we condemning ourselves to falling short for the whole rest of our athletic lives? At age 70, how many chances do I have left?
On November 19 (just over two weeks from now, as I write), I'm running the JFK 50-Mile, America's largest and oldest ultra. I'll be entering the 70-79 age division, and--here goes--I'm out to win the division and break the age group record. Winning won't be easy, because there are 10 very tough guys entered in the division, and one of them is Anthony Cerminaro, a former over-60 winner of the Boston Marathon. Cerminaro also holds the age group record of 9:09, and since the race is now in its 49th year, that's not a soft record. But I'm not just going to say "I hope to break it." To paraphrase Mae West, "hope" has nothing to do with it. I'm going to break it.
There, I said it. The results should be posted on the JFK website on November 20 or 21, so, life being what it is, it's possible that I'll end up very embarrassed. But I'm now going into my 55th consecutive year of competing in long-distance races, and God only knows how much longer I have. If ever I'm going to put it all on the line, it's now.
I met Muhammad Ali once in the 1980s, at the start of the Los Angeles Marathon. I was there to report on the event for Running Times, and when I climbed up on the photographers' platform overlooking the starting area, there was Ali, who'd been brought in to fire the starting gun. I shook his hand and asked, awkwardly, "So, what do you think of all these thousands of people warming up to run 26 miles?" I supposed (because by then we were well into those PR-conscious years) that he'd say something politely appropriate to the ceremonial nature of his presence, such as "It's a great thing, it's inspiring!" Instead, Ali fixed me with that baleful stare he'd so often laid on reporters, and replied, "They got to be crazy!"
I laughed. I knew it was just a little jab, but it was a Muhammad Ali jab, and I was still on my feet! On November 19, I'll be bouncing on my feet at the starting line in Boonsboro, Maryland, and for the next 9 hours and 8 minutes or less, I'll be leaping rocks like a butterfly, floating like a bee, liberated from inhibition, and still crazy after all these years.
From the moment he appeared on the world's athletic stage in the 1960s, the young Cassius Clay--who later renamed himself Ali--provoked as much uproar with his mouth as with his fist. Though he was America's most formidable fighter, he refused to support the misguided fighting in Vietnam--and said so publicly. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," he said. "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger." He was stripped of his title and not allowed to box for four years in his prime, but he never relented. And when he returned, though he made his living as a boxer, he declined to abide by the rule that you never provoke an opponent lest you provoke him to a fiercer performance than you'd otherwise have to deal with. Ali liked to provoke, and did so with panache.
In the decades since, most top athletes have been far more circumspect. Part of it may be cultural: the rebelliousness and nonconformity of the '60s and '70s receded into the conservativism of the '80s and '90s, And part of it may have been the"locker-room bulletin-board" phenomenon--the now common practice of seizing on the comment of any forthcoming opponent who does say something provocative, and posting it as a spur to heightened motivation. These days, athletes are cautioned by their sponsors, agents, managers, coaches, and owners (yes, these pro athletes are owned) not to say anything that might spur an opponent. Even Superbowl quarterbacks and NBA All Stars who grew up taunting their playmates with "your mother" jokes now know well enough to keep their mouths shut., When top jocks are asked by reporters whether they're going to whup their opponents, they almost never say they will, the way Ali did. Instead, they mumble polite, forgettable cliches like "He's really tough, and I'm going to have to really get out there and, you know, do my best."
What's unfortunately overlooked in this enforced non-offensiveness, I think, is that holding back in what you say may result in some subconscious moderation in what you do. "Attitude" isn't just about how you feel and what you say. The word "attitude" is a dead metaphor, originally referring to a physical stance. Taking the sting out of what you feel or say before a big game, or race--pulling your punches--could subconsciously take some of the sting out of what you do in the competition itself.
Ali never pulled his punches. He stung like a bee!
As it happens, I'm about the same age as Ali. I just turned 70; he turns 70 in January. I still remember, with admiration, the ballsy candor he had when we were young. And now, suddenly, I've had an inspiration. As an amateur athlete in a relatively unpublicized sport, I don't have to worry about upsetting sponsors. I don't have any sponsors. So, why should I, like all those corporate athletes, be constrained by the enforced false modesty we see in 21st-century spectator sports? The only reason I can think of, for guys like me, is that we're afraid that if we think we're ready to do something big and say so publicly, and then fail to do what we said, we'll be terribly embarrassed. But if holding back in expression might also mean subconsciously falling short in performance, are we condemning ourselves to falling short for the whole rest of our athletic lives? At age 70, how many chances do I have left?
On November 19 (just over two weeks from now, as I write), I'm running the JFK 50-Mile, America's largest and oldest ultra. I'll be entering the 70-79 age division, and--here goes--I'm out to win the division and break the age group record. Winning won't be easy, because there are 10 very tough guys entered in the division, and one of them is Anthony Cerminaro, a former over-60 winner of the Boston Marathon. Cerminaro also holds the age group record of 9:09, and since the race is now in its 49th year, that's not a soft record. But I'm not just going to say "I hope to break it." To paraphrase Mae West, "hope" has nothing to do with it. I'm going to break it.
There, I said it. The results should be posted on the JFK website on November 20 or 21, so, life being what it is, it's possible that I'll end up very embarrassed. But I'm now going into my 55th consecutive year of competing in long-distance races, and God only knows how much longer I have. If ever I'm going to put it all on the line, it's now.
I met Muhammad Ali once in the 1980s, at the start of the Los Angeles Marathon. I was there to report on the event for Running Times, and when I climbed up on the photographers' platform overlooking the starting area, there was Ali, who'd been brought in to fire the starting gun. I shook his hand and asked, awkwardly, "So, what do you think of all these thousands of people warming up to run 26 miles?" I supposed (because by then we were well into those PR-conscious years) that he'd say something politely appropriate to the ceremonial nature of his presence, such as "It's a great thing, it's inspiring!" Instead, Ali fixed me with that baleful stare he'd so often laid on reporters, and replied, "They got to be crazy!"
I laughed. I knew it was just a little jab, but it was a Muhammad Ali jab, and I was still on my feet! On November 19, I'll be bouncing on my feet at the starting line in Boonsboro, Maryland, and for the next 9 hours and 8 minutes or less, I'll be leaping rocks like a butterfly, floating like a bee, liberated from inhibition, and still crazy after all these years.
Friday, October 21, 2011
"What Ever Became Of...?" -- A Few Answers
This is a followup to the September post in which I listed a lot of runners I hadn't seen or heard word of for years, or in some cases, decades. Some were great stars, whose names had long ago dropped out of the news; others were guys I'd run with, long ago. Here's what I learned from readers' responses.
Two of the names I listed were stars who rocked the world when I was a young teen, and inspired me to become a runner: Roger Bannister, who broke the 4-minute barrier for the mile in 1954, when I was an impressionable 13-year-old, and John Landy, the Australian who soon ran a sub-4 mile of his own and became Bannister's great rival. Bannister's feat so galvanized the world that he was made a knight, by Queen Elizabeth II. The day after my post, Jim Ferstle e-mailed me that "Sir Roger Bannister is alive and well in the UK" and that "John Landy was alive and well when I was in Australia in 1999." My old friend Rich Englehardt, who, was a Washington Running Club teammate of mine in the 1970s, e-mailed that Landy became the governor of one of the states in Australia, and is now retired there.
Among some guys I listed not because they were famous but because they were stars in the New Jersey high-school cross-country and track world where I got my start, just three were mentioned in any of the responses I received. One was Mike Sabino, who ran for Plainfield High School, a rival of my Westfield, NJ team, and who decades later became one of the top masters runners in the East. Sabino had an enviably fluid, quick-striding form that I was still trying to emulate 50 years after we'd both graduated. After all those years, I was still wondering whether I might someday catch Mike in a race, when an e-mail from Greg Tsoucalas, forwarded by Kathleen Carmody, informed me that "Unfortunately, Mike Sabino and Herb Lorenz [another guy I'd listed] have both passed away...." I'd been afraid, from the day I wrote it, that my "What Ever Became of" post might bring a shock or two like this. No matter how often we're reminded that we are all mortal, it still somehow comes as a shock--maybe especially when mortality claims those whom we only knew as young athletes of seemingly superhuman capability. In my admittedly sketchy memory, Herb Lorenz, who ruled the roads in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area, never lost a race. As for Mike Sabino, maybe it's just a coincidence, but a few days after I got Greg's message, I was looking at trail-running shoes on line, and noticed that Montrail has a model called the Sabino. Was that a tribute to Mike?
Rich Englehardt sent news of several of the others I'd listed from my New Jersey, New York, and Washington, DC years, as well. I'd listed Gary Muhrke and Tom Fleming, the two runners who finished ahead of me in the inaugural New York Marathon in 1970, and Rich wrote that Gary "still runs a bit and made a pile of money from his Super Runner Shop in the New York City area," and that "Fleming is teaching and coaching in Joisey. He doesn't run but plays basketball." Rich also had news of Tom Osler, the pioneer ultrarunner of the 1960s who coined the term "long slow distance" (LSD, the secret of the runner's high). He said Osler "is in Joisey, teaching math at Rowan University and still running slowly. He had a couple of strokes several years ago and now has a pacemaker and isn't allowed to run hard, but still eases through a lot of races...."
Along with people I'd run with personally, I listed some of the great runners of the 20th century whom I'd not heard anything about for decades. Jim Ferstle told me that the former world marathon record-holder Rob DeCastella is still living in Australia, and Rich Englehardt added that "Deek" was at Boston last April, and that "he's big" and "I think he does some sort of martial arts thing now." Ferstle reported that "Joanie" (1984 Olympic marathon champ Joan Benoit Samuelson) is still in Portland, Maine, and that Alex Ratelle (one of the past century's greatest masters runners), "last time I saw him, five years ago, was struggling with Alzheimer's."
Katie Wolpert, of my old magazine Running Times, e-mailed that the Olympic marathoner Julie Isphording "is living in Cincinnati and directs the enormous Thanksgiving Day 10k there every November." Katie also caught me up on the legendary masters runner Norm Green, whom she noted the magazine profiled in 2010. Green had run a 2:27:42 marathon at age 55, making him the oldest American to break 2:30. Assuming he's still living in Chesterfield, PA, where he was when the magazine last had contact with him, Norm should now be 79 years old. He's a continuing inspiration to me, as I enter the 70-79 age group at the JFK 50-Mile next month.
The most surprising response I got was from a guy my own age who recalled running against some of the New Jersey high-school runners I'd listed from half a century ago. Richard Koenigsberg, who'd run for Columbia High School in Essex County, NJ, had finished second to the great Bobby Mack (another of my listees) in the Essex County cross-country championship in 1958. (Can you say "1958"?) Richard's name seemed familiar, and then I remembered why. Out of a whole lifetime of competitive running, I can recall just a few actual, specific, moments--moments that for one reason or another will be registered in my mental album for as long as I live. About 53 years ago this month, the Westfield High School cross-country team had a meet coming up against powerful Columbia High and its undefeated runner Dick Koenigsberg. I was scared, because I was the leading runner on the Westfield team but lacked self-confidence and tended to get too tense--and to tighten up--under pressure. My father had very recently taught me a trick of relaxation, and it had been an epiphany: if the muscles are loose and relaxed, they can perform far better than if they're tight. In the race with Columbia, Dick Koenigsberg took the lead as expected, but about half-way through the race I remembered my father's advice and went into the ultra-relaxed state he had suggested. Suddenly, I found myself passing the guy I'd been so afraid of, and that moment is still with me as if it were yesterday. A newspaper clip in my album of high school exploits confirms that I finished 30 yards ahead of Koenigsberg, although I have no memory of the finish itself, only that one moment of passing--and passage.
I e-mailed Richard Koenigsberg back, reminding him of that race. In responding to my post, he hadn't connected my name to his own running at first, but with my reminder he recalled that before the Westfield meet that year his coach had told his team that Westfield's top runner was a really bad-ass guy. Now, 53 years later, he replied to my reminder: "So you are the evil Ed Ayres!" With the perspective of age, he seemed amused by his coach's characterization of me. After another exchange of e-mails, it seemed to me that if we'd met under different circumstances, we'd probably have been good friends. But the 1950s were the decade after the end of World War II, and maybe the way coaches primed their young men for an athletic competition then wasn't unlike the way military officers prepared soldiers for battle. In sports like football or boxing or hockey, maybe it's that way still. But now, more than half a century after my race with Richard, he told me that despite his coach's exhortations, "It's funny, I never felt competitive toward the people I ran against. I wanted ro win and do the best for myself, but I rarely thought of 'beating' the other guy.... I knew they had to go through the same thing [as I] to get where they were." When I read this, I thought, "What an amazing thing the Internet has given us--the opportunity not only to reconnect with long-lost friends but to have second chances at making connections we'd failed to make half a lifetime ago.
Before I forget, there was one response, from Paul Schuster, noting that I'd made a mistake about Gerry Lindgren. I had written, in my opening paragraph, that the legendary Lindgren had set a national high-school 2 mile record that stood for 40 years. Schuster wrote that incredible as that record was, it had actually been broken long ago.
Finally, an update on a guy named Bob Zoellick, who was an occasional training partner of mine in the 1970s, when we were both in Washington, DC. Bob didn't have great running form, but was tough enough to run marathons in the 2:30s on sheer guts. Bob, I learned, is now president of the World Bank. And that gives me an idea, now that people are marching in the streets against the big banks. Instead of just Occupy Wall Street, why don't those of us who've been cast aside in the global rich-poor divide--whether we be Americans, Arabs, Africans, or Asians--decide the time has come to Occupy the World? When we runners are out on the trail, isn't it obvious that this world is ours to enjoy and protect just as much as it is David Koch's or the hedge-fund billionaires' or the King of Saudi Arabia's? When it comes to saving the oceans, the atmosphere, and the tops of Appalachian mountains now being lopped off for coal, Bob Z, here's a suggestion from your old running buddy: You need to redirect some of that World Bank money!
Two of the names I listed were stars who rocked the world when I was a young teen, and inspired me to become a runner: Roger Bannister, who broke the 4-minute barrier for the mile in 1954, when I was an impressionable 13-year-old, and John Landy, the Australian who soon ran a sub-4 mile of his own and became Bannister's great rival. Bannister's feat so galvanized the world that he was made a knight, by Queen Elizabeth II. The day after my post, Jim Ferstle e-mailed me that "Sir Roger Bannister is alive and well in the UK" and that "John Landy was alive and well when I was in Australia in 1999." My old friend Rich Englehardt, who, was a Washington Running Club teammate of mine in the 1970s, e-mailed that Landy became the governor of one of the states in Australia, and is now retired there.
Among some guys I listed not because they were famous but because they were stars in the New Jersey high-school cross-country and track world where I got my start, just three were mentioned in any of the responses I received. One was Mike Sabino, who ran for Plainfield High School, a rival of my Westfield, NJ team, and who decades later became one of the top masters runners in the East. Sabino had an enviably fluid, quick-striding form that I was still trying to emulate 50 years after we'd both graduated. After all those years, I was still wondering whether I might someday catch Mike in a race, when an e-mail from Greg Tsoucalas, forwarded by Kathleen Carmody, informed me that "Unfortunately, Mike Sabino and Herb Lorenz [another guy I'd listed] have both passed away...." I'd been afraid, from the day I wrote it, that my "What Ever Became of" post might bring a shock or two like this. No matter how often we're reminded that we are all mortal, it still somehow comes as a shock--maybe especially when mortality claims those whom we only knew as young athletes of seemingly superhuman capability. In my admittedly sketchy memory, Herb Lorenz, who ruled the roads in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area, never lost a race. As for Mike Sabino, maybe it's just a coincidence, but a few days after I got Greg's message, I was looking at trail-running shoes on line, and noticed that Montrail has a model called the Sabino. Was that a tribute to Mike?
Rich Englehardt sent news of several of the others I'd listed from my New Jersey, New York, and Washington, DC years, as well. I'd listed Gary Muhrke and Tom Fleming, the two runners who finished ahead of me in the inaugural New York Marathon in 1970, and Rich wrote that Gary "still runs a bit and made a pile of money from his Super Runner Shop in the New York City area," and that "Fleming is teaching and coaching in Joisey. He doesn't run but plays basketball." Rich also had news of Tom Osler, the pioneer ultrarunner of the 1960s who coined the term "long slow distance" (LSD, the secret of the runner's high). He said Osler "is in Joisey, teaching math at Rowan University and still running slowly. He had a couple of strokes several years ago and now has a pacemaker and isn't allowed to run hard, but still eases through a lot of races...."
Along with people I'd run with personally, I listed some of the great runners of the 20th century whom I'd not heard anything about for decades. Jim Ferstle told me that the former world marathon record-holder Rob DeCastella is still living in Australia, and Rich Englehardt added that "Deek" was at Boston last April, and that "he's big" and "I think he does some sort of martial arts thing now." Ferstle reported that "Joanie" (1984 Olympic marathon champ Joan Benoit Samuelson) is still in Portland, Maine, and that Alex Ratelle (one of the past century's greatest masters runners), "last time I saw him, five years ago, was struggling with Alzheimer's."
Katie Wolpert, of my old magazine Running Times, e-mailed that the Olympic marathoner Julie Isphording "is living in Cincinnati and directs the enormous Thanksgiving Day 10k there every November." Katie also caught me up on the legendary masters runner Norm Green, whom she noted the magazine profiled in 2010. Green had run a 2:27:42 marathon at age 55, making him the oldest American to break 2:30. Assuming he's still living in Chesterfield, PA, where he was when the magazine last had contact with him, Norm should now be 79 years old. He's a continuing inspiration to me, as I enter the 70-79 age group at the JFK 50-Mile next month.
The most surprising response I got was from a guy my own age who recalled running against some of the New Jersey high-school runners I'd listed from half a century ago. Richard Koenigsberg, who'd run for Columbia High School in Essex County, NJ, had finished second to the great Bobby Mack (another of my listees) in the Essex County cross-country championship in 1958. (Can you say "1958"?) Richard's name seemed familiar, and then I remembered why. Out of a whole lifetime of competitive running, I can recall just a few actual, specific, moments--moments that for one reason or another will be registered in my mental album for as long as I live. About 53 years ago this month, the Westfield High School cross-country team had a meet coming up against powerful Columbia High and its undefeated runner Dick Koenigsberg. I was scared, because I was the leading runner on the Westfield team but lacked self-confidence and tended to get too tense--and to tighten up--under pressure. My father had very recently taught me a trick of relaxation, and it had been an epiphany: if the muscles are loose and relaxed, they can perform far better than if they're tight. In the race with Columbia, Dick Koenigsberg took the lead as expected, but about half-way through the race I remembered my father's advice and went into the ultra-relaxed state he had suggested. Suddenly, I found myself passing the guy I'd been so afraid of, and that moment is still with me as if it were yesterday. A newspaper clip in my album of high school exploits confirms that I finished 30 yards ahead of Koenigsberg, although I have no memory of the finish itself, only that one moment of passing--and passage.
I e-mailed Richard Koenigsberg back, reminding him of that race. In responding to my post, he hadn't connected my name to his own running at first, but with my reminder he recalled that before the Westfield meet that year his coach had told his team that Westfield's top runner was a really bad-ass guy. Now, 53 years later, he replied to my reminder: "So you are the evil Ed Ayres!" With the perspective of age, he seemed amused by his coach's characterization of me. After another exchange of e-mails, it seemed to me that if we'd met under different circumstances, we'd probably have been good friends. But the 1950s were the decade after the end of World War II, and maybe the way coaches primed their young men for an athletic competition then wasn't unlike the way military officers prepared soldiers for battle. In sports like football or boxing or hockey, maybe it's that way still. But now, more than half a century after my race with Richard, he told me that despite his coach's exhortations, "It's funny, I never felt competitive toward the people I ran against. I wanted ro win and do the best for myself, but I rarely thought of 'beating' the other guy.... I knew they had to go through the same thing [as I] to get where they were." When I read this, I thought, "What an amazing thing the Internet has given us--the opportunity not only to reconnect with long-lost friends but to have second chances at making connections we'd failed to make half a lifetime ago.
Before I forget, there was one response, from Paul Schuster, noting that I'd made a mistake about Gerry Lindgren. I had written, in my opening paragraph, that the legendary Lindgren had set a national high-school 2 mile record that stood for 40 years. Schuster wrote that incredible as that record was, it had actually been broken long ago.
Finally, an update on a guy named Bob Zoellick, who was an occasional training partner of mine in the 1970s, when we were both in Washington, DC. Bob didn't have great running form, but was tough enough to run marathons in the 2:30s on sheer guts. Bob, I learned, is now president of the World Bank. And that gives me an idea, now that people are marching in the streets against the big banks. Instead of just Occupy Wall Street, why don't those of us who've been cast aside in the global rich-poor divide--whether we be Americans, Arabs, Africans, or Asians--decide the time has come to Occupy the World? When we runners are out on the trail, isn't it obvious that this world is ours to enjoy and protect just as much as it is David Koch's or the hedge-fund billionaires' or the King of Saudi Arabia's? When it comes to saving the oceans, the atmosphere, and the tops of Appalachian mountains now being lopped off for coal, Bob Z, here's a suggestion from your old running buddy: You need to redirect some of that World Bank money!
Monday, September 26, 2011
5 Hour Energy? Not even 5 minutes!
If you've been on this planet recently, you can't have failed to notice all those "energy" drinks taking over whole shelves of the supermarkets or convenience stores. And if you're a reasonably knowledgeable long-distance runner, maybe you've looked at the ingredients and wondered, how can this be?
The answer: It can't be.
Then again, maybe you haven't bothered to read the ingredients lists because you long ago became resigned to the reality that advertising and commerce today are so loaded with lies and deceptions that there's no point in even looking. But my view is that it's important to look--and think--because dishonest uses of language are becoming more and more common today (listen to the political debates or talk-radio rhetoric), and if we lose credibility in our basic communications, we can very quickly lose control of our whole culture and country.
So, what does this have to do with running? Well, a lot. We runners aren't out there on the roads and trails just for our own pleasure, or at least I hope not. We've also contributed to a new awakening in the larger population, to the great benefits of physical fitness, vitality, and self-discipline to our families and society. Half a century ago, John F. Kennedy worried that if Americans become too physically and mentally soft, the country will be in serious danger. Today, he must be rolling in his grave.
More particularly, as long-distance runners, we understand the nature of energy in a way our more sedentary citizens (inbcluding most of our politicians) do not. The physics of energy are the same in our industries as in our bodies, so we hav e some perspectives to share with our leaders that may be quite important for them to begin grasping. We understand through direct, visceral, experience the difference between an anaerobic sprint, which can last a maximum of no more than 2 minutes or so before you're brought to a gasping halt with your hands on your knees, and a marathon or ultra where you cross the finish line after hours of running, not yet out of breath.
Our go-for-broke, growth-at-any-cost modern economy is, as most earth scientists will emphatically attest, what I'd call a sprint economy. When the scientists say it's "unsustainable," what they mean is that as a civilization, we have the historical equivalent of the sprinter's 2 minutes before we seize up and come to a gasping halt. For the sake of our children, and our moral legacy to humanity, wouldn't we rather see our leaders become a little more aware of what we endurance athletes now know from gut experience? In historical time, the sprinter's 2 minutes might translate to no more than a few decades. (NASA's chief climate scientist, James Hansen, warns that if the planned tar-sands pipeline from Canada to Texas is built, the resulting increment in carbon emissions will mean "game over for the Earth's climate"). But the civilizational equivalent to the endurance runner's hours of sustained effort might translate in historical time to centuries, at least buying time for our species to find a more intelligent adaptation to what is now bound to be a tragically damaged planet.
So, with what we runners know about energy, what do we make of those booming sales in supermarket energy drinks?
What I see, I'm afraid, is an unconscionable reinforcement of the widely held illusion, in our popular culture, that you can get something for nothing. And that you're a loser if you don't! Success without practice, reward without work! If Americans are now quite addicted to the dream of quick shortcuts to whatever we desire (winning the lottery, hitting the jackpot in Vegas, suing for ten million dollars, taking an amazing weight-loss pill), how hard is it to believe that a quick swig of "energy drink" will give you vim and vigor for the next five hours?
There are a lot of those products out there now, but the one called 5 Hour Energy particularly caught my attention because as an ultrarunner, I'm acutely conscious of just how much energy the human body burns in five hours. Of course, the amount burned varies considerably with what you're doing, and five hours of running takes a lot more energy than, say, five hours of working at a computer or driving a truck, Just sleeping, or lying around on a couch for five hours, requires about 250 calories for a 40-year-old, 160-pound man. But running? More like 4,000 calories.
Now, look at the label for 5 Hour Energy. How many calories? 4. No, I didn't forget any zeroes. Since calories (or in industry, Calories with a capital "c") are the standard measure of energy fuels, there are two ways to regarding this product. Either (1) it will give you enough energy to run one-thousandth of five hours, or 18 seconds, or (2) to consume enough of this drink to sustain your pace for 5 hours (instead of drinking legitimate athletic energy drinks), you'd need to chug a thousand of these expensive little bottles in the course of your run.
OK, I'm being a little deceptive myself, here, because in reality when you're running a marathon or 50k, you don't depend on what you consume en-route for all your energy. The bulk of your energy is the glycogen you start the race with, stored in your muscles and liver from the dinner you ate the evening before. But during the race, you do need to replenish at least a few hundred, perhaps a thousand, of those fast-burning calories. At 4 calories a shot, you won't get very far.
Maybe it's a measure of how sadly uninformed we are--and how out of touch with our bodies--that these drinks have booming sales. If you swig one of those things and it feels like the energy is ramped up for a few minutes, it's because the drink is delivering energy you already had in your muscles or blood--sort of like if the milk-man of yore sneaked in your back door and took a quart of milk from your ice-box, then went around to the front door and sold it to you for a dollar.
Next post: Feedback on last month's post, "Where Are They Now?"
The answer: It can't be.
Then again, maybe you haven't bothered to read the ingredients lists because you long ago became resigned to the reality that advertising and commerce today are so loaded with lies and deceptions that there's no point in even looking. But my view is that it's important to look--and think--because dishonest uses of language are becoming more and more common today (listen to the political debates or talk-radio rhetoric), and if we lose credibility in our basic communications, we can very quickly lose control of our whole culture and country.
So, what does this have to do with running? Well, a lot. We runners aren't out there on the roads and trails just for our own pleasure, or at least I hope not. We've also contributed to a new awakening in the larger population, to the great benefits of physical fitness, vitality, and self-discipline to our families and society. Half a century ago, John F. Kennedy worried that if Americans become too physically and mentally soft, the country will be in serious danger. Today, he must be rolling in his grave.
More particularly, as long-distance runners, we understand the nature of energy in a way our more sedentary citizens (inbcluding most of our politicians) do not. The physics of energy are the same in our industries as in our bodies, so we hav e some perspectives to share with our leaders that may be quite important for them to begin grasping. We understand through direct, visceral, experience the difference between an anaerobic sprint, which can last a maximum of no more than 2 minutes or so before you're brought to a gasping halt with your hands on your knees, and a marathon or ultra where you cross the finish line after hours of running, not yet out of breath.
Our go-for-broke, growth-at-any-cost modern economy is, as most earth scientists will emphatically attest, what I'd call a sprint economy. When the scientists say it's "unsustainable," what they mean is that as a civilization, we have the historical equivalent of the sprinter's 2 minutes before we seize up and come to a gasping halt. For the sake of our children, and our moral legacy to humanity, wouldn't we rather see our leaders become a little more aware of what we endurance athletes now know from gut experience? In historical time, the sprinter's 2 minutes might translate to no more than a few decades. (NASA's chief climate scientist, James Hansen, warns that if the planned tar-sands pipeline from Canada to Texas is built, the resulting increment in carbon emissions will mean "game over for the Earth's climate"). But the civilizational equivalent to the endurance runner's hours of sustained effort might translate in historical time to centuries, at least buying time for our species to find a more intelligent adaptation to what is now bound to be a tragically damaged planet.
So, with what we runners know about energy, what do we make of those booming sales in supermarket energy drinks?
What I see, I'm afraid, is an unconscionable reinforcement of the widely held illusion, in our popular culture, that you can get something for nothing. And that you're a loser if you don't! Success without practice, reward without work! If Americans are now quite addicted to the dream of quick shortcuts to whatever we desire (winning the lottery, hitting the jackpot in Vegas, suing for ten million dollars, taking an amazing weight-loss pill), how hard is it to believe that a quick swig of "energy drink" will give you vim and vigor for the next five hours?
There are a lot of those products out there now, but the one called 5 Hour Energy particularly caught my attention because as an ultrarunner, I'm acutely conscious of just how much energy the human body burns in five hours. Of course, the amount burned varies considerably with what you're doing, and five hours of running takes a lot more energy than, say, five hours of working at a computer or driving a truck, Just sleeping, or lying around on a couch for five hours, requires about 250 calories for a 40-year-old, 160-pound man. But running? More like 4,000 calories.
Now, look at the label for 5 Hour Energy. How many calories? 4. No, I didn't forget any zeroes. Since calories (or in industry, Calories with a capital "c") are the standard measure of energy fuels, there are two ways to regarding this product. Either (1) it will give you enough energy to run one-thousandth of five hours, or 18 seconds, or (2) to consume enough of this drink to sustain your pace for 5 hours (instead of drinking legitimate athletic energy drinks), you'd need to chug a thousand of these expensive little bottles in the course of your run.
OK, I'm being a little deceptive myself, here, because in reality when you're running a marathon or 50k, you don't depend on what you consume en-route for all your energy. The bulk of your energy is the glycogen you start the race with, stored in your muscles and liver from the dinner you ate the evening before. But during the race, you do need to replenish at least a few hundred, perhaps a thousand, of those fast-burning calories. At 4 calories a shot, you won't get very far.
Maybe it's a measure of how sadly uninformed we are--and how out of touch with our bodies--that these drinks have booming sales. If you swig one of those things and it feels like the energy is ramped up for a few minutes, it's because the drink is delivering energy you already had in your muscles or blood--sort of like if the milk-man of yore sneaked in your back door and took a quart of milk from your ice-box, then went around to the front door and sold it to you for a dollar.
Next post: Feedback on last month's post, "Where Are They Now?"
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