Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Thankfulness

Things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving season:

My children love their mother very very very much.

I am thankful for blue eyes.

I am thankful for ice cream.

I am thankful that life doesn't stand still. It keeps moving forward whether we like it not.

Some friends have expressed worry, so I want to give an update and relieve your curiosity. Linden and I spent the fall looking at real estate, and are currently in the process of buying a house in the southwest hills of Portland.

The "looking for a house" phase was stressful, the "making an offer" phase was frustrating, but the "inspection and negotiation" phase is unbearable. We're fighting colds, sweating details, and trying not to worry about the packing, moving, and selling phases that are coming next.

Despite it all, I have an enduring sense that this is exactly how it is supposed to be. I am feeling thankful for all that we have, and trying to channel inner peace. Flow like water downhill and through a damp basement. Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.

The house isn't a lock yet, by any means. So we've been quiet about it. The picture above is Linden standing at the front door. It looks like home to me.
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Running and Being

The late Dr. George Sheehan wrote a little tome called Running and Being. In it, he details a simple philosophy of exercise. "Before we can be good humans," he writes, "we must first be good animals." I've always loved this. Dr. Sheehan was part of the running craze of the 1970's, and ran well into his own advancing age. Running was part of his identity, and it is a part of mine.

I started running during my sophomore year in high school. One spring I got up some nerve, joined the track team, bought a pair of shoes, and by May I was a runner. That was 1991, and I was sixteen years old. I ran a surprisingly brisk 2:02 in the 800m that year, and I was hooked. By my senior year I stretched out for a 4:31 mile and a 1:58 for the 800m.

High school running gave me some sense of balance and buoyancy, so I continued on into college. I ran three years at Lewis & Clark College, through my early 20's. By any account, my best years of running. I had a supportive coach, a great facility, and a light step. 3:59 in the 1500m, 1:56 in the 800m. These were great times, and I will always be proud of them.

Then my post collegiate twenties came along, and my running took a sharp dive. I wrecked a motorcycle, traveled the world, and generally stopped the workouts. I still felt like a runner, but I wasn't running much more than the occasional jog to blow off steam. Moving back to Portland in my later twenties, I found this sport again. I hadn't taken more than a few years away so getting back in shape was relatively easy. I found running friends that kept me motivated, and soon I was back to running for fitness and fun.

The point of this post is that running has been part of my identity for most of my adult life. I've never been particularly motivated, but I love a long run and I love to race. For the past ten years I have been running and racing regularly. I generally get into shape every spring and fall out of shape every winter. I run with the seasons, hating the hot sun and loving the cool rain. I rarely run more than twenty miles in a week. This seems like just enough to keep me healthy without causing any real injury.

And then BAM. Note my last post. This fall has been humbling and motivating. Somewhere in the aging process I began to rely more heavily on some of my bigger muscles at the expense of the smaller ones. I spent the last month doing physical therapy, massage, and stretching. And then yesterday I saw the running lady at my PT office and she did a running assessment. We took video of my stride and talked about my sloppy form. She showed me how my loping, bouncing stride is out of whack. How my footstrike is either too far forward or too far back. And that crossover? Forgetaboutit.

So what am I going to do? Here's the rub: I'm basically pain free. I'm jogging on the indoor track at my gym, and I can putz around on the treadmill, and I can ride the bike, but I DON'T TRUST IT. My injury in October was no fluke, and it happened almost without warning. I need to fix something about my basic stride if I want to keep at this - if I want to run into my own advancing age.

I am attempting to track my progress here on The Daddy Life. I want to transform my stride into what Alberto Salazar has called "the one best way." It may not be the fastest way, or the prettiest, and definitely not the easiest, but humans have been running efficiently for millenia. Anthropologists argue that running allowed us to hunt animals over long range, outperforming prey due to our ability to sweat instead of pant. So running really is built into our human identity. No wonder it feels so good.

I have just begun to take in the large body of literature about this ancient/modern theory of running. There is a whole barefoot movement out there just dying to get me out of my pronation control trainers. I think that's unnecessary, but there are some excellent training tools out there to build muscles, balance, and tone that will prevent my injury from October. First I'll detail the program put in place by my PT, Erika Lewis at the Providence Sports Clinic at Jeld-Wen Stadium. These guys work on the Portland Timbers, so they've got to know what they're doing, right?

THE PROGRAM
Erika the PT gave me three simple changes to remember while I'm building toward my new stride. Three is a good number for me - I'd never remember four.

1) Tuck my pelvis under. Tighten the abs, tighten the butt, and sit over my hips instead of tilting forward. This takes some concentration, but it's not too bad on a flat surface.

2) Strike in the middle of the foot. No more toe prancing or heel striking. I can do both equally well, but mid-foot striking seems to keep me over the center of my body.

3) Slow it down, but increase the cadence. Instead of loping along on the treadmill, Erika had me speed up my rate of footstrike to about 166 per minute, but without changing my speed. This is hard work. It feels more like a running drill than a jog.

Currently I can keep up this new stride for about twenty minutes on the indoor track. I checked myself with my watch, and I can stay pretty close to the 166 strikes per minute pacing. I have to report that this feels awkward, and everything is starting to hurt a little as I find new and unused muscles to abuse. But I'm running and I'm building stability. I'm fascinated to see if I can really do this. I'll give it a try for the next month, and keep tabs on how it goes!

I'm not ready to give up my identity as a runner just yet!