Pony Espresso Express

Dear PE’s:

Sunday, December 13th was a banner day for me. Having run 128 prior marathons, I certainly did not expect to make any startling new discoveries…but I did! As I have done for the past 10-15 years, I started the race with a dear friend, John Nerness, a physician from Vero Beach, Florida. We had each run this race 27 times in a row and were planning on #28 together. It started out like each of the other Honolulu Marathons we’ve run. We met in the lobby of my hotel at 4 am and took pictures and greeted family members. We walked to the start of the race with thousands of others in quest of conquering the mythic marathon distance. We heard the gun go off at exactly 5 am and we ran carefully to avoid walkers (where did they come from?) and watched the fabulous fireworks which lit up the still dark and starry sky. We ran conservatively (with John’s son Curt, also an established marathoner and physician) through the first half, all pretty much stride for stride. At that point, John suggested that I run ahead since he was feeling a little “under the weather”.  I took off  and ran easily and within the limits of my training and abilities. Much to my surprise, I actually continued to pickup the pace and finished with my single fastest mile (if you call 8:50 fast) and cruised under the finish banner with a negative split of more than 7 minutes! Now many of you have probably done this…but for me, it was an entirely new experience. In fact, I’ve never even been within 10 minutes of an even split! I’ve often told neophyte (and veteran) marathoners that the race is really a 10K race…with a 20 mile warm-up or that the 2nd half of the marathon starts at mile 20, but I never truly embraced the concept myself. Like thousands of others, I’d always get caught up in the moment and go out at 10k or half marathon pace assuming I could hold it. I never did! Sunday was different. This is not to say that it was fast. Nor did I come even close to my fastest times. But this was more satisfying than any of the prior efforts. I got to run with my “old friend” and meet many “new friends” and do something entirely new and different. At the end, I ran into a sports columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin. It would have never happened  had I not  finished just when I did. Below is the article which appeared the following morning in the paper. This was my reward:

Marathon’s 5-hour gang keep each other going

By Dave Reardon

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Dec 14, 2009

I’d like to introduce you to someone, but it may be too late.

If you were at the Honolulu Marathon yesterday, there’s a good chance you’ve already met John Backman, a 63-year-old cardiologist from San Diego who not only talks the talk, but talks the run — seemingly the entire run, with plenty of vocal chords left to keep chatting after the 26.2 miles.

I met Backman a few feet beyond the finish line at Kapiolani Park, right around the 5-hour mark. He was getting his picture taken with a young lady who had also just completed the run, and a lot of conversation was involved. I figured they were maybe father and daughter.

“Oh, we just met,” the woman said.

Then a few minutes later, a guy dressed like Yoda floated through the finishers’ chute. Backman gave him one of those “You da man” point-and-nods, like teammates do after big plays.

“Thanks, Yoda. You helped me through that rough stretch. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

The wise one nodded and pointed back.

Later, Backman laughed when I asked him about his costumed friend. “Yoda was cool. We were playing tortoise and hare. I picked him up between the 17 and 21 (miles). That stretch I was walking, but then I would run and catch him, then walk and run again. I knew Yoda had power.”

This was Backman’s 129th marathon and he’s finished here 28 years in a row. I asked him how many people he usually talks to — how many friends does he make — at each race.

“Probably 25 to 100,” replied the good doctor. “One guy today, I picked up at the 22-mile mark. He was a Marine. I said, ‘Come on, you’re a Marine. You’re tough, you can do this. He started running again.”

My 10 minutes with Backman yesterday made getting up at 3:30 a.m. worth it. He was three Red Bulls, without the crash.

Proper training: “I push consistency over intensity. Consistency trumps intensity, like in bridge.”

Aging: “We learn there’s more to running than beating the clock.”

Starting exercise at a late age: “Get out there. It’s one step at a time.”

THE 5-HOUR finishers are the most interesting and diverse — a cross-section of everyday society. To me, they are stars as much as the elite runners who cover most of the course before the sun peeks over Diamond Head.

Many of these middle-of-the-packers are first-timers, many are veterans like Backman. Quite a few think it’s Halloween, like Yoda. One of the bigger curiosities yesterday was two guys who came in under 6 hours simply wearing jeans and T-shirts.

A barefooted runner or two is always in the mix, and beginning to despair for an angle, I was chasing down a sole man when Backman’s magnetic field pulled me in. Something just told me I had to talk to the chatterbox when I heard him say something about being “stoked” about his “negative split.”

If I’d ever learned that term when I ran in the ’70s and ’80s, it’d gone the way of my knowledge of things like Rico Carty’s lifetime batting average: Once locked in for no apparent reason, now erased. Backman explained cheerfully. A negative split is when you complete the second half of the run faster than the first. “I never had a negative split before, ever,” he said, joyously.

Maybe the negative split is a reward for his positive attitude — that contagious we’re-all-in-it-together ethos of the middle-of-the-pack marathoners.

Reach Star-Bulletin sports columnist Dave Reardon at dreardon@starbulletin.com, his “Quick Reads” blog at starbulletin.com, and twitter.com/davereardon.

Thanks to all my mentors…past and present. Thank you John and Curt. And especially, thank you Dave Reardon, for being in the right place at the right time. There must be gods and muses of the marathon who look favorably on aging but determined athletes

Happy Trails,

JRB

Pony Espresso Express

December 11, 2009

Dear  PE’s-

Winter is just around the corner…and perhaps has already reared its ugly head if you live in certain parts of the country.  If you are anything like me, you might be anticipating upcoming travel to warmer areas for vacation and/or business. I look forward to travel as an opportunity to meet new people, see new places and run in new environments. In this day and age travel has become a bit more cumbersome, especially if you’re planning air travel. None of us has to be reminded about the challenges of air travel…fewer flights, more lost baggage and, of course, the TSA. So, from many recent trips and personal experiences…some tips (in no particular order):

Plan and book early: This sounds much like the admonition to sign up early for races (especially, half marathons). With fewer flights available, the seats get reserved earlier and earlier. If you don’t plan ahead, you might find yourself on a more circuitous, expensive flight, or series of flights. More transfers means more lost luggage, more hassle, more time delays, and, perhaps, more expense to replace lost items. I’m told that booking on a Tuesday is likely to result in lower fares, although I can’t honestly say that I have found that true in my experience.

Travel Lightly: If at all possible, take only carry-on luggage. Assuming you don’t leave it on the plane, you’re much more likely to arrive at your destination with your possessions. If you are traveling to a run, most certainly, at a minimum, take your running shoes on the plane with you…on your feet or otherwise. If you have other special gear or medicines, make sure these accompany you as well. I have made this a habit for 30 years. Only once did I not follow my own advice, and, of course, the luggage got lost. We were traveling to a run in southern France, the Medoc Marathon. This is a race renowned for the fact that it is a costumed event. A hand sewn, designer costume was anonymously floating around the world somewhere when it should have been in my hotel room. Only through the intervention of divine providence did it arrive less than 12 hours before the race, and after a three day period of AWOL!

Get to the airport early: It is difficult to predict just how many others are likely to show up at the airport at the same time you arrive. Long lines at the ticketing counter and even longer lines at the TSA can cause a visceral reaction. There’s always someone who has more questions than the agent has answers, which inevitably leads to even longer delays. If possible, print your boarding pass at home before you leave for the airport! This is not always possible, as I recently learned. If you are traveling on multiple carriers, booked through a 3^rd party such as Orbitz, and the 1^st leg of the trip is not the primary carrier, you may need to get to the airport even earlier to get the boarding passes.

Go with the flow: The TSA is an unpleasant fact of life, but it’s unlikely to go away in the near future! Make sure all your liquids are in the correct size containers, packaged together in a quart sized baggie. Remember that certain “less than solid” foods, although still in the original sealed containers, are considered “liquids”. I found this out the hard way on a recent trip when my yogurt was confiscated L

Something for the stomach: Airline food has a long tradition of being notoriously bad. Now, you can add to that…expensive. If you plan ahead, you can have anything from the epicurean to the healthful to the deliciously sinful. You are an individual! Why shouldn’t your choices enhance the trip? You can bring a 5 course meal, if you like. No candelabra, however J

Something for the mind: This summer, I’ve been on airline flights ranging from 25 minutes to 23 hours (including airport time). You can spend a lot of time in transit…often more than you expected. Some people just like to just chill out. I like to get something accomplished. Catch up on old magazines, new books, a DVD or maybe even write a blog

Happy trails,

JRB

Pony Espresso Express

Dear PE’s:

Well, we are now within 3 weeks of the year’s shortest day. In or around December 21st, those of us in the northern hemisphere have the least daytime and most night time of the year. This always makes training difficult, and I must admit it is my “least favorite” time of the year. However, in the spirit of the “glass is half-full”, it is also my “favorite” day since we embark on the path of longer days and visions of warmer spring and beautiful summer days ahead. I mention this because it is easy to snuggle up in a warm bed and forget about those cold morning workouts or dark evening workouts. Now, of course, if you are a “gym rat” most of this does not apply. However, if you like to hit the trails, roads, parks, etc. let me propose a theory I have developed over the years. First, it is ALWAYS easier to get up and out if you are meeting an individual or group for exercise. With the best of intentions, I frequently succumb to the lazy path (i.e. bed) if I know I’m going to be out there by myself. Perhaps some of you have more discipline, but discussions with many runners over the years suggest that this is generally true. Second, once I am out and started, I ALWAYS feel good about it. It virtually always makes the day go more smoothly and always enables me to have that “guilt free” chocolate chip cookie! Now, the theory:

There is a “gravitational field”  which emanates from the mattress and extends approximately

30 inches from the edge of the mattress.  If you can get 2 1/2 feet from the edge of the bed, you

are able to break free of the field and be on your way. If you sit on the edge of the mattress

contemplating your task ahead, you will invariably be “sucked” back into bed and then be unable

to break free from that field!

I have not seen this elucidated any further in the literature, but hold that it is true until proven otherwise. Consequently, it is incumbent on you to make the Herculean effort necessary to get up and out early. There are several corollaries which follow from this. The first is from the plains of Africa:

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

The second relates to a recognized, but previously unexplained effect of chronic, intense exercise. We have all been at races, where the age-group winners have come to the podium to collect their awards and runners “good-naturedly” have cried out “check his (or her) ID” suggesting that the individual looked much to young to be competing in that division. Well, we may be on the road to explaining this phenomenon. See article below:

In an article appearing in the December 1, 2009 issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, Ulrich Laufs, MD of Saarland University in Homburg, Germany and his colleagues report an association between long-term intense exercise and a reduction in the shortening of telomeres that occurs with aging. Telomeres are protective segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that shorten with cell division. Shorter telomeres limit the number of cell divisions, and have been linked with conditions associated with aging of the whole human organism, such as high blood pressure and dementia. Activation of an enzyme known as telomerase elongates telomeres. The researchers assessed white blood cell telomere length in blood samples from 32 professional runners whose age averaged 20, middle-aged athletes of an average age of 51 who had engaged in continuous endurance exercise since youth, and young and old groups of healthy nonsmoking untrained athletes who did not engage in regular exercise. Not surprisingly, the athletes in the study had slower resting heart rates, lower blood pressure, a lower body mass index, and improved lipids compared with those who did not exercise regularly. Age-dependent telomere loss was found to be lower in the middle aged athletes who had engaged in endurance exercise for several decades compared to the older, untrained men. “The most significant finding of this study is that physical exercise of the professional athletes leads to activation of the important enzyme telomerase and stabilizes the telomere,” noted Dr Laufs, who is a professor of clinical and experimental medicine at Saarland University’s department of internal medicine “This is direct evidence of an antiaging effect of physical exercise. Physical exercise could prevent the aging of the cardiovascular system, reflecting this molecular principle.” “Our data improves the molecular understanding of the protective effects of exercise on the vessel wall and underlines the potency of physical training in reducing the impact of age-related disease,” he added.

So, there you have it. Right off the press.  Get out of bed in the morning. Run for the camaraderie. Run for the health benefits. Run for the anti-aging effects. And run for the guilt-free chocolate chip cookie

Happy trails,

JRB