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